First Short Written Assignment:
The student will read a chapter by Plutarch on either Caesar, Cicero, or Cleopatra in his Antony chapter.
These chapters can be found online by putting in for your search Plutarch-Lives of Noble Grecians and
Romans (web address: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/lives). The website usually pops right up in
your first or second search result. Click into the website and scroll to Table of Contents and click on it. A
lot of chapters show up and you just read the one of the aforementioned three.
After reading the chapter, you answer one
of two questions that you’ll find in the first file we used in the
course titled Quiz on Prehistory/Ancient Near East. The questions are the second item in the file just
after the practice quiz. You answer the one question depending on which chapter you read. If the Caesar
chapter, answer question 1; if the Cicero chapter, answer question 2. If you read about Cleopatra in the
Antony chapter, answer question 1, just changing the name from Caesar to Cleopatra in it.
Your answer should be about a half to a page in length. It can be longer, but not shorter. It can be typed
or hand written, double spaced if typed and single spaced if hand written. You must provide at least 2
short quotations from the chapter to support your answer. You need only cite the web address in
parantheses following the quotation the first time you quote and need not keep on citing it after each
subsequent quotation. Do not provide your quotations and examples from just the first few pages of the
chapter. Do not copy somebody else’s answer. In over 20 years, I’ve seen them all.
Here are the two questions:
1. What does Plutarch seem to think of Caesar? Does he provide any evidence that could be used to formulate an opinions of Caesar different than his ? How would you rate Plutarch as a historian in terms of objectivity and insight?
2. What does Plutarch view as strengths and weaknesses of Cicero ? What motives does he attribute to Cicero ? What kinds of things does Plutarch like to focus on in his writing of history ?
