A central concern of Plutarch’s works is what constitutes a good and honorable life, and they commonly claim to “improve” the character and behaviour of their elite readers, especially in politics and leadership. This chapter assesses this educational approach across the whole corpus, paying particular attention to works of literary criticism, works of practical morality, political texts, and the Parallel Lives. It highlights, among other themes, the importance both of comparison (syncrisis) and of examples (paradeigmata) drawn from history, literature, or everyday life to stimulate reflection. Though profoundly influenced by Plato, Plutarch is particularly concerned with the practical application of philosophical principles to real-life situations, whether faced by the statesmen of the past or by his own readers. Indeed, rather than preaching simplistic lessons, many of Plutarch’s texts bring out how complex moral judgments can be in practice and invite readers to think deeply about morality, literature, and politics.

This chapter explores Plutarch’s presentation of greatness as it equates with leadership ability and outcomes. He expressly values civic participation and leadership that aims to secure and promote the welfare of the community. Subsequent to the presentation of some basic information concerning his theories of education, especially ethical education, attention is then focused on the innate components of greatness and the appropriate means to develop this inborn talent in training individuals to wield power in an effective and responsible fashion. A comparative analysis is then undertaken to set forth the similarities and differences between the psychological/behavioral makeup of Plutarch’s ideal leader and recent influential work in leadership theory by Daniel Goleman, James MacGregor Burns, and Bernard M. Bass. The significant degree of correspondence elucidated leads to a discussion of the literary techniques Plutarch employs to place in sharper relief the salient aspects of great leadership (and its opposite), including his developed use of synkrisis and the Socratic paradigm, as well as the representation of performative acts of leadership.

Plutarch’s various comments about wealth are usually recognizable as springing from the same personality, but the emphasis is different in different contexts. This chapter explores this variety within the Lives, and in particular the characteristic connection with moral decadence and decay. Two pairs are explored as test-cases, Agis–Cleomenes–Gracchi and Agesilaus–Pompey. Rome, with signs of luxury and decadence everywhere, might be expected to be particularly in focus, but talk of decadence is most frequent in the Spartan Lives. Is this an indirect way of passing comment on Rome without causing offense That may also explain his frequent reluctance to talk as openly about Roman corruption and bribery as one might expect, especially in connection with a Life’s central figure. He may also be sidestepping too great an emphasis on Roman luxury as this had traditionally been associated with the Greek East.

The classical past, for Plutarch, offered a huge reservoir of history, art, and traditions, from which he drew examples of virtue for inspiration and encouragement. He expected that his readers should do the same. But he also insisted that the examples that we draw from that reservoir must be carefully strained and tested, using investigative acumen and skeptical discussion and evaluation, to remove the inevitable debris, the inescapable outcome of human ambition, competition, greed, and desire. Internecine war and personal rivalries polluted those great times even as they did his own day, and still do the present world. The best qualities of the classical past could be reacquired only by the constant exercise of prudent reason and controlled passion. Plutarch dared his readers to accept this challenge.

This chapter deploys the modes of relating to the classical past established in the previous chapter to survey the contemporary resonances of the full range of declamation scenarios, paying particular attention to the realm of the imaginary. The interpersonal conflicts (murder, rape, disownment, etc.) of the genre are very close to the gossip about and probably some of the reality of many star declaimers' lives. Similarly, declamations on war tapped into a major Greek imperial discourse as well as the civil wars and foreign incursions about which most of our sources keep a diplomatic silence. Declamations on tyranny tapped into another common discourse and offered space for reflection on illegitimate power. The survey continues with civil strife and misconduct in public life and and moves on to consider honours, embassies, religion, migration, both collective and personal, and construction projects. In these areas, too, declamation speaks both to contemporary realities and to contemporary discourses.

This chapter shows how declaimers (and sometimes audiences too) made use of declamation’s parade of characters with great creativity to claim and negotiate status and identity. The following examples are considered: Aristides' return to oratory after illness figured as Demosthenes returning to political life; the hesistant Heliodorus before Caracalla as Demosthenes before Philip; Megistias and Hippodromus sparring for status like warring magicians; the itinerant Alexander Clay-Plato as a nomadic Scythian; Polemo as Cynegirus and Callimachus at the Battle of Marathon, with the sophist's spectacular illness of the joints matching the grisly fates of the two heroes; and numerous other smaller examples. Finally, the ancient rhetorical concept of 'figured speech' is considered as a model for this sort of role-playing: it is argued that the major advantages are not so much literal safety as deniablity and greater impact.

Through a careful examination of all aspects of the experience of hearing or reading a declamation, this chapter explores how in practice the audience could move from the declamatory past to the extra-declamatory present. The framing of declamations, whether by prefaces (prolalia, protheoria) or in Philostratus’ Vitae sophistarum, blurred the line between text and context. The location of a performance was also often suggestive: declamations were texts to a significant degree experienced by audiences in the same physical spaces that its fictions traversed. A declaimer’s language was another way in which the fiction remained tethered in reality: declaimers had distinct personal styles and often partook in the ‘Asian’ style so different from that of their historical subjects. Finally, by means of their body language and by means of a running ‘metarhetorical’ commentary declaimers frequently ‘dropped the mask’ in the course of their performances. In short, this was a genre that far from shutting out the world beyond its fiction, repeatedly included it in the performance.

After rejecting as tendentious ancient and modern accounts of declamation that stress the difference between classical past and imperial present, this chapter explores the ways in which audiences could relate to declamation's classicism. It was the almost universal assumption of antiquity that history was useful, and declamation, which frequently uses the same materials and even the same language as contemporary biography and political oratory, was no exception; indeed, this was a natural continuation of educational practice. Declamation offered not simply examples to follow or avoid, but also helped in gaining a sense of the distinctive qualities of a situation, appreciating a situation’s true scale, and recognising abiding truths about human life. Many of the imagined speakers of declamations actually model these processes for us in their speeches, a phenomenon I term 'meta-exemplarity'. Finally, I consider what was distinctive about declamation's invocation of the past, vivid, oblique yet powerful, and open-ended. Imperial declamation accordingly represents an important development in the historiographical culture of ancient Greece.

This chapter looks at the broader contemporary significance of declamation, focusing on (Macedonian) imperialism, and taking as its major case study Aristides' To the Thebans: concerning the alliance I–II (Orr. 9–10), in which Aristides recreates Demosthenes' speech urging alliance between Thebes and Athens before Chaeronea. The image of an attack by a despotic and barbaric king echoed some presentations of the Parthian menace, potentially ennobling a contemporary conflict. But the image of the greedy despot also echoed discourses about 'bad' emperors, thereby offering a negative exemplum to heed. Finally, Macedon in these texts further recalls the Roman empire more generally: accordingly, these texts make available an unusually negative attitude to the empire, but also, I argue, a celebration and a justification of Rome's power over Greece. I compare the discourses present in a fragment of Pollux's declamation On the Islanders, where the Persian court recalls Lucian's denunciation of the vulgarity of rich Romans in his De mercede conductis. In closing, I note the particularly high number of potentially meta-exemplary remarks in Aristides' declamations, encouraging audiences to ponder these texts' meaning deeply.