Plutarch's Antony

Plutarch's Antony

To what extent does Plutarch Antony confirm the truth of what Cicero says in the Second Philippic about Antony's character and early life?

There is as yet no agreement amongst scholars on the literary sources which Plutarch might have used for his Life of Antony. Since Antony friendly as well as Octavian friendly tendencies have been noted in this Life, and because of similarities as well as differences between Plutarch and the other major sources of this period (Appian, Cassius Dio, and Suetonius), it is fairly generally accepted that Plutarch consulted several sources in writing the Life of Antony and the group of Lives which belong to the same era. (Plutarch 1988)

The Life of Antony has much in common with the Life of Brutus. Pelling voices much the same sentiment when he says of a group of Republican Lives (Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Brutus, and Antony).These Lives, then, are not just informed by the Pollio source; an admixture of biographies, memoirs, histories, and even first-hand contemporary material, gives depth and colour to Pollio's account? Of the contemporary sources which Pelling considers Plutarch to have used at first-hand, Cicero's works feature prominently in the earlier Lives of the Republican era. Besides Cicero's Letters, and Speeches, Pelling suggests that Plutarch knew Brutus' Letters, Tiro's Biography of Cicero and his De locis. While he points out that Plutarch mentions Antony's Replies to the Second Philippic, he denies him a first -hand knowledge of Antony's speeches as well as those of Caesar, Crassus, Cato, and Brutus, although many of these were in circulation at the time. According to Pelling there is such a -resounding similarity- between the early chapters of the Life of Antony and the Second Philippic that one must assume a direct use of this work of Cicero. Bengtson believes that the image of Antony in the Ancient World and also in modern histories has been shaped mainly by the Philippics.

Recent scholarship has not only tended to recognise Plutarch's independence in the use of his sources, but has also acknowledged to an increasing extent his own contribution to the particular portrayal of his heroes, and his capacity for creative imagination to transform what his sources offered. Many of the variations in Plutarch's account of events common to more than one Life may be due to Plutarch's literary methods rather than a dependence on differing sources": Other studies have shown that Plutarch is not a slave to his sources. Dealing with certain philosophical theories, where Plutarch's adherence to established or known schools of thought can be identified, Gorgemanns concludes that Plutarch, while using several sources and without following any major source, is independent in his own conclusions-". Plutarch's independence of intermediary sources also seems to be implied in the article of A. Dihle which argues for the retention of a reading in Cicero, which he believes has been uniquely retained in Plutarch's Vito Brut. There is, therefore, some evidence that for the presentation of certain philosophical, literary and linguistic material, Plutarch did ...