Painting Of Antony And Cleopatra by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1885): a late-Victorian romantic view of the affair which Plutarch immortalized in his Life of Antony.
Plutarch's influence on the Renaissance was considerable, and North's translation of the Parallel Lives (1579) inspired Shakespeare's play which set the tone for the
modern conception of the fatal lovers.
Some of the Moralia provoke comparison with Seneca. Both men wrote on Tranquillity and on Anger, though with different philosophical outlooks and with different
expectations of their readership: Plutarch is far richer in learned allusion and quotation, and is naturally critical of Stoic views. 'Essays' such as these and the pieces on
Curiosity, Talkativeness, and False Shame have been to many the most attractive of Plutarch's works. Through the translations of Amyot and Philemon Holland they have
made a strong impact on the French and English essayists, from Montaigne to Emerson. But Plutarch himself would presumably have laid the weight elsewhere, on his more
substantial philosophical exegesis (below, pp. 704 f.) and controversy, and especially on a group of dialogues which he wrote, it seems, towards the end of his life. Four of
these have their setting in contemporary Delphi, and explore the antiquities of the oracle and the theory of prophecy. The most elaborate of them-'On those whom God is
slow to punish'-rehearses views on the nature of evil, and concludes with a myth in the Platonic manner on the fate of the soul after death. Plutarch's revival of this theme-he
used it twice besides in the works we have, and notably also in the lost On the Soul-is remarkable. His 'Underworld' has a stellar setting, and his descriptions are full of
colour, light, and vividly imagined horror.