Three Moments in Plutarch’s Modern Greek Afterlife: 1704, 1809, 1864

If Plutarch formed an integral part of the European intellectual apparatus since, at least, the quattrocento, how did the 18th and 19th century Greek-speaking scholars read the Moralia and Parallel Lives? What was the author’s legacy, and which transformations did his reception undergo? The study of modern Greek bibliography manuals shows that the printed tradition of the Plutarchian corpus in vernacular Greek has no particular gaps. The publishing history of Parallel Lives highlights three significant moments in Plutarch’s presence in modern Greek literature. The first dates back to 1704 and takes us to Bucharest. There, the Parallels of Greeks and Romans are translated and printed in honour of Constantin Brâncoveanu. The second is the Korais version, completed in 1814. These are two diametrically opposed moments in Plutarch’s reception record: on the one hand, the introduction of Greek education into Wallachia. On the other, the ideological programme of the scholar Korais. Third comes the edition of the Phanariot Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, who in 1864 studied Plutarch from a completely different perspective – scholarly, national and romantic. Assuming that the above cases prove that the reference to Plutarch constituted a component of the Greek-speaking cultural doxa, my aim in this chapter is to present a series of thoughts on how Plutarch’s Lives were read and used in the Greek-speaking world during three crucial moments in its ideological, cultural and political formation.