Ancient Biographies of Statesmen

This chapter discusses ancient biographies of statesmen. What is the nature of ancient political biography? It is the description of the life and deeds of a significant political player of the recent or far past, individually told or in a series, with the intent of edifying the readers. This means that such a work often has an encomiastic, or at any rate evaluative cast, and may even employ certain acknowledged untruths in order to bring out the characteristic significance of a given politician. This too is the aim with which intimate details or gossip are told: so as to convey a clear image of what kind of man Solon, Demosthenes, Augustus, or Nero was, and how this influenced his career and his deeds.