‘Bad Fathers’ in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. An Approximation

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the bad relations between parents and sons in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Their study will allow us to highlight, once again, the marked separation between the ideal state of things, reflected in the Moralia, and the conflict-ridden realities that we read in the Lives. Rather than being satisfied with merely listing the passages that confirm the (evident) existence of bad fathers in Graeco-Roman antiquity, we will try to explain not only the traits that make a father ‘bad’, but also what motivations and causes were usually behind the inadequate relations between fathers and children. Plutarch, in his biographies, was particularly interested in the repercussions of these disputes on both the individual (private) and the collective (state) levels, although it is certainly true that he usually favoured the latter view, as he tended to be much more interested in fulfilling one of his major ambitions in writing his Lives: to contribute to the proper ethical and moral education of new generations of Greek’s and Roman’s elites.