Plutarch
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Plutarch. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
plu'tark, a Greek writer of prose. He lived during the period of Grecian subjection to Rome,--during the reigns, it is inferred, of Nero to Trajan, inclusive. He is known chiefly for a series of Lives. The series consists of forty-six numbers. Each treats of a noted Grecian and of a Roman. Each pair is treated by way of contrast and comparison. A suitable moral points each pair of lives. Among the pairs are the lives of Alexander and Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, etc. He wrote the Lives in the Greek tongue. He drew his information from a vast number of manuscripts. Most of these manuscripts have been lost. Some authors are known, indeed, only through Plutarch's references. Many facts of Roman and Greek history are known to the historian through the Lives only, and many words in Greek lexicons have not been found outside of his writings. Nevertheless his Greek has borrowed too much from the Latin and from Rome, where he resided for a time, to take high rank in literature. As to historical value, fact and fable are mingled inextricably. None the less, Plutarch's Lives is an excellent boys' book and a charming volume for the mature student. The first printed edition of the Lives appeared at Florence in 1517. So far as ancient history is concerned, the Lives are considered "Shakespeare's storehouse." Extensive writings by Plutarch on moral subjects exist, but are little known save to the maker of a Greek lexicon.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a Greek biographer and moralist, a native of Chæronea, in Bœotia. In A. D. 66 he was a pupil pil of the philosopher Ammonius at Delphi. He visited Italy, and spent some time at Rome, lecturing there on philosophy as early as the reign of Domitian. He returned to his native town, where he held various magistracies, and was appointed priest of Apollo. He was still living in 120, but the time of his death is not known. His great work is entitled " Parallel Lives, " and consists of biographies of 46 eminent Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs, each pair accompanied by a comparison of characters. They are written with a moral purpose, and present not orderly narratives of events, but portraitures of men, drawn with much graphic power, with great good sense, honesty, honesty, and kind heartedness. Few books of ancient or modern times have been so widely read, so generally admired, as these "Lives." The most important of modern English translations of his work is A. H. Clough's (New York, 1910).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The biographical outline in both entries still stands: Plutarch of Chaeronea, born around A.D. 46, pupil of Ammonius, priest of Apollo at Delphi, alive in 120. The sharpest reversal is Aiton's remark that his "extensive writings on moral subjects exist, but are little known save to the maker of a Greek lexicon" — those essays, the Moralia, are now among the most quarried texts in ancient studies, filling fifteen Loeb volumes published between 1927 and 1976 and supplying much of what we know of ancient religion, education, marriage and animal ethics. Aiton's charge that his Greek "borrowed too much from the Latin" to rank high in literature has not survived either; Plutarch himself says he learned Latin late and imperfectly, and he is now read as a deliberate Atticist and an author in his own right rather than a mere quarry for lost historians. Clough's translation, praised by Collier's in 1921, is a Victorian revision of Dryden and has been displaced for most readers by twentieth-century versions from the Greek.
Written for this edition, 2026.