This, or nearly this, was the attitude of the educational world in the first decades of the second century, and it was in this world that Plutarch of Chaeronea became a figure of special eminence and distinction. For in whatever light the modern reader may regard Plutarch as a man of letters, to his own times he was first and foremost an educator. It is from this point of view that we must consider both his _Parallel Lives_ and his _Moral Essays_, if we are to perceive in them that unity of character and purpose which he intended all his work to possess.
Plutarch, then, was born about A. D. 48 in the very heart of Greece, at the comparatively small town of Chaeronea, famous as the scene of the decisive victory of the Macedonians over the southern Greeks, and also of that in which the forces of Mithridates were routed by Sulla. His family must have been of high local standing, and the fact that his father—a man of cultivated tastes and refined manners—was the owner of the ‘finest kind of horses’ is enough to show, to those who appreciate the significance of the word _hippotrophia_, that he must have been possessed of considerable means. The same conclusion may be drawn both from what Plutarch himself incidentally reveals concerning his brothers, Lamprias and Timon, as well as other members of the family circle, and also from what is known of his own life and upbringing. That as a boy he passed through the orthodox curriculum, is obvious from his wide acquaintance with literature and his intelligent, if not particularly profound, references to both music and mathematics. When of an age to receive an education in philosophy, he was placed, or placed himself, chiefly under the distinguished Ammonius, an Alexandrian philosopher of a broad semi-Platonist, semi-Peripatetic school, who had become established in a prominent intellectual and public position at Athens. It was the accepted rule for the student to attend, but not necessarily to confine himself to, the lectures of a selected teacher. Often he lived in that teacher’s house, or at least, in intimate connexion therewith. If the philosopher was strictly conscientious he felt it his duty to watch over the developing character of his pupil, to visit him with any deserved reproof,[1] to serve as his father confessor, to answer his questions, and to meet his moral and intellectual difficulties. The familiar phrase ‘guide, philosopher, and friend’ perhaps describes the relations with unusual exactness. We find both Plutarch and his brother in the company of Ammonius at Delphi when Nero, in the year 66, graced that city with his imperial and artistic presence.