Youth and Adolescence in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Some Historiographical Notes

Abstract

The present study pretends, from a preliminary analysis of the treatment of youth age in the Parallel Lives, to offer a first approach to the youth in Plutarch as a study object in its own right. For that, after highlighting the importance of this kind of studies, and after exposing some of the basic postulates which will guide this text, the main historiographical referents to the study of the first age-stages in the Greco-Roman antiquity will be analyzed. Then, we will approach the youth through the lens of the ancient authors, by which we will highlight the ambiguities and ambivalences attributed to this age-group –situated halfway between the intrinsic irrationality of the infancy and the prudence that is presupposed to the adult people–. Finally, and mainly by using some references selected for its special relevance inside the huge collection of anecdotes in the Parallel Lives, we will try to include the image of the youth given by Plutarch in his biographical writings inside this perspective, watching that, specificities apart, the way of thinking of our author coincides, in general features, with that of most of the writers of his time.

Keywords

• vidas paralelas
• agencia
• panorámica historiográfica
• anécdotas