How The Complete Essays drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: Michel de Montaigne 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
The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne · 1580
RenaissanceRelevance
9/10
On The Complete Essays’s page
- The Essays don't just quote Plutarch — they grow out of him; Montaigne said Amyot's translation lifted him "out of the mire of ignorance"
- Plutarch's habit of judging a man by a stray gesture is the method Montaigne redirects onto his own mind
- Read him first and you'll catch Montaigne thinking with Plutarch's tools — even the Apology for Raymond Sebond ends by rewriting him
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- The book that made Montaigne — he credited Amyot's 1559 French Lives with lifting him "out of the mire of ignorance"
- Plutarch's way of reading a life — character revealed in the telling anecdote, the offhand remark — is the model Montaigne turns inward on himself
- The close of the Essays' Apology for Raymond Sebond is a direct rewriting of a passage from Amyot's Plutarch