Plutarch and the City of Rome in Plutarch’s Own Times

Chapter 3 explores Plutarch’s eyewitness accounts of Rome. Acknowledging the difficulty of distinguishing the information based on autopsy from information that Plutarch drew from his literary sources, it discusses why certain inscriptions, statues, and buildings carry more weight as witnesses to first-hand observation than second-hand knowledge. The discussion centres on Plutarch’s aesthetic and ideological judgement on the altered marble columns of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, an inscription at the temple of Health, a Greek inscription on the bronze statue of Flamininus, the catalogue of the temples of Fortuna, and the references to incidents such as a dog show in the theatre of Marcellus or Arulenus Rusticus’ refusal to interrupt Plutarch’s lecture in order to read a message from Domitian. All these descriptions show the importance of autopsy, and of the emotions it elicited, for Plutarch’s vivid reconstructions of the settings of the Roman Lives.