Houghton Library and the Standing Committee on Medieval Studies present Dr. Thomas Schmidt on “The Materiality of the ‘Plutarchan Book.’” The Greek biographer and moralist Plutarch of Chaeronea (45–125 CE) is well known as the author of the Parallel Lives, a collection of 23 pairs of biographies, each comparing a famous Greek and a famous Roman. Immensely influential in the West since their rediscovery during the Renaissance, these works were already well known and widely circulated in Late Antiquity. Drawing on papyrological evidence, this lecture will focus on the bibliological characteristics and the transmission of what is commonly referred to as “the Plutarchan book.”

Registration is encouraged to help us plan for catering, but is not required.

Please arrive a few minutes early. The lecture starts promptly at 5:30 PM. 

Thomas Schmidt is Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature and Curator of the papyrus collection of the Bibel+Orient Museum at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). His areas of expertise are Plutarch and the Greek literature of the Second Sophistic, papyrology, Greek patristics, and the exegetical tradition of Gregory Nazianzen in the Byzantine period. His publications include a monograph on Plutarch and the Barbarians (1999) and critical editions of Basilius Minimus’ commentary on Gregory Nazianzen's Oratio 38 (2001) and Titus of Bostra’s Contra Manichaeos (2013–2015), as well as collectives volumes such as Perceptions of the Second Sophistic and its Times (2011), The Dynamics of Intertextuality in Plutarch (2020), and Traitement du passé et construction de la mémoire chez les auteurs de la Seconde Sophistique (2023).

Image credit: P.Oxy. LII 3684 (detail). Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus 31. 6-8. University of Oxford.