How Self-Reliance and Nature drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: Ralph Waldo Emerson demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Self-Reliance and Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1844
RomanticismRelevance
5/10
On Self-Reliance and Nature’s page
- When Emerson reaches for a measure of the self-reliant great man, he reaches for "Plutarch's heroes" — the Lives were his lifelong bible for heroes
- Self-Reliance invokes "Plutarch's age" as its benchmark for greatness; the ancient biographies are the standard Emerson is holding the modern individual against
- Read Plutarch first and you hear exactly what Emerson means by a life worth admiring
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- Emerson called Plutarch his "bible for heroes" — the Lives modeled his own great-men project and gave him his yardstick for human greatness
- In Self-Reliance he invokes "Plutarch's age" as the benchmark a self-reliant man should measure himself against
- "We cannot read Plutarch," Emerson wrote, "without a tingling of the blood"