Biography is an art

Biography is an art rather than a science, and it is influenced by the attitudes of the historian writing the biography, the limits of his or her knowledge of the subject, the evidence that has been amassed, and often by political considerations which might shape how a figure is depicted. Different pictures of a figure can emerge from different biographies for these and other reasons. Two biographies of Julius Caesar from the classical era show different views of the Roman leader, that of Plutarch in his Lives and of Suetonius in The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

In the Roman era, much of Greek literature and culture was either adopted or held up as an example even though the Romans had a different worldview in many ways. The gods of Greece were carried over into the Roman pantheon, though the names and some of the stories were changed. Plutarch showed a belief in deeper connections between the Greeks and the Romans in his Lives in which he generally paired a Greek and a Roman, showing that the thought of the two halves of these pairings as equal in stature in some field, as the Greek Demosthenes and the Roman orator Cicero, or Alcibiades and Coriolanus. He wrote about the Greek political leader Pericles and compares him to Fabius Maximus, who fought against Hannibal, and says that they are "men alike, as in their other virtues and good parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper and demeanor," and further notes that each was "most useful and serviceable to t

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as a historian. As noted, Plutarch generally compares one Greek and one Roman, first writing the biography of each and then comparing the two. In the case of Caesar, the Roman leader is paired with Alexander the Great, but Plutarch did not write the comparison, though he did make an explicit comparison at the beginning of his section on Alexander while also suggesting the approach he takes to his subjects: It begin my purpose to write the lives of Alexander the king, and of Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed, the multitude of their great actions affords so large a field that I were to blame if I should not by way of apology forewarn my reader that I have chosen rather to epitomize the most celebrated parts of their story, than to insist at large on every particular circumstance of it (Plutarch 139). He further states that the most "glorious" exploits are not necessarily those which demonstrate most clearly the virtues and vices of the subject, and Plutarch then says that he "must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men" (Plutarch 139) than to the more common exploits addressed by other writers. Plutarch begins his story of Caesar by telling about how Sylla wanted

Category: Literature - B