Houghton-Medieval Studies Lecture in Early Book History

Thomas Schmidt (Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature and Curator of the papyrus collection of the Bibel+Orient Museum, University of Fribourg), The Materiality of the ‘Plutarchan Book'. Co-sponsored by the Committee on Medieval Studies and Houghton Library; free and open to the public.

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.”