not record all their more celebrated achievements or describe any of them
exhaustively, but merely summarize for the most part what they have accom-
plished, I ask my readers not to regard this as a fault. For I am writing biography,
not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of
the virtues and vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a
chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere
feat of winning battles in which thousands fall, or of marshalling of great armies,
or laying siege to cities.His is the school of history that sees great individuals influencing and shaping events.
He is open about his moral interest in the figures whose biography he is writing (he
puts virtues and vices first) and in this he perhaps reveals the way in which historical
writing had become an instrument of education. His juxtaposition of parallel lives
across time periods may even be considered anti-historical in principle, but this
preface in its emphasis and selection shows why this kind of historical writing has
been and remains popular. He also writes with an attractive flourish reflected here in
the three clauses of the final sentence, which are really elegant variations of the same
idea. Yet he preserves important material from his sources, as for example, in his ‘Life
of Lycurgus’ on the Spartan way of life.
Arrian
The slightly later and more systematic Greek writer Arrian c.AD89–175 is regarded
as the most reliable of the sources for the career of Alexander. He is more systematic
and is not writing either to please his readers or with the predominant moral
preoccupation of Plutarch. He reveals himself in his rather dry opening preface
written in utilitarian prose:
Wherever Ptolemy [one of Alexander’s generals] and Aristobulus [a minor officer
who served with Alexander] in their histories of Alexander, the son of Philip, have
given the same account I have followed it on the assumption of its accuracy; where
their facts differ I have chosen what I feel to be the more probable and interesting.
There are other accounts of Alexander’s life – more of them, indeed, and more
mutually conflicting than of any other historical character; it seems to me, however,
that Ptolemy and Aristobulus are the most trustworthy writers on this subject,
because the latter shared Alexander’s campaigns, and the former – Ptolemy – in
addition to this advantage, was himself a King, and it is more disgraceful for a King
to tell lies than for anyone else. Moreover, Alexander was dead when these men
wrote; so there was no sort of pressure upon either of them and they could not
profit from falsification of the facts. Certain statements by other writers upon44 THE GREEKS