ABSTRACT
Renaissance thinkers frequently distinguished two forms of writing about the past:
one, which setteth down men’s doings and adventures at length, is called . . . history; the other, which declareth their natures, sayings, and manners, is properly named their lives. The one respect[s] more the things and the other the persons: the one is more common, and the other more private: the one concerneth more the things that are without the man, and the other the things that proceed from within: the one the events, the other the consultations. 1
This chapter is about lives – i.e. about “the marks and indications of the souls of men” as Plutarch put it in considering the lives of famous Greeks and Romans – and it follows Plutarch’s model in drawing parallels between them. Great events, Plutarch says, “do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men, sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations.” 2