Compare And Contrast Plutarch And Arrian

Throughout Josephus’ work in Jewish Antiquities, he wrote about the need to properly recount history. Josephus claimed that there were many who “perverted the truth.” Due to Josephus’ vast understanding of the Roman and Jewish Wars, he felt it was his duty to properly account the events that occurred within this war. I feel this point of view is much different from other ancient historians. I feel that the very people in whom Josephus criticizes could in fact be Plutarch and Arrian. Plutarch was an ancient historian who recounted the life of Alexander. Plutarch primarily focused on the virtue of Alexander. For example, Plutarch felt that other historians regarded Alexander as an angry, power thirsty individual. Plutarch, however, did not feel this was correct. Contrary to popular belief, Plutarch felt that Alexander was a tremendous leader with strong character and thus, described the many stories of Alexander’s life. In one scenario, Plutarch mentions how Alexander tamed a wild horse. Plutarch metaphorically compared the taming of the horse to the many strong qualities …show more content…
Both Plutarch and Arrian felt Alexander was an iconic part of history that deserved much praise. Arrian, however, saw Alexander as one of the most important Greeks to ever live. Arrian stated that many lesser ancient heroes who are “not at all comparable” have much more detailed histories than Alexander the great. For this reason, Arrian felt he needed to recount Alexander’s history in a way that was “worthy of his deeds.” Arrian was similar to Plutarch in his belief that history needed to be properly recounted. However, I do not believe Arrian completed this objective. In many stories presented by Arrian, Alexander appears to be over-glorified. This places Arrian’s credibility on a slippery slope because events and details presented by Arrian may not be legitimate and rather told in a way that merely glorifies