Talk:Plutarch

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No attributive usage for this name given. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 08:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The existence of Plutarchian (and Xenophanic) is highly suggestive. -- Visviva 09:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm increasingly of the opinion that certain authors, whose works are widely known and who are frequently referred to by a portion of their full name without ever giving the full name, merit an entry for the short form of their name. I think particularly of writers like Aeschylus, Plato, Tacitus, Livy, Chaucer, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Dickens, and the like. The short form is often used as a shorthand for the corpus of their works, or for one particularly well-known work. Consider: "I was reading Tacitus last night," would be understood to mean that you were reading a book by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, most likely his Historiae, even without giving his full name. Simply having an entry for Tacitus that said "given name of classical Latin derivation" and "a lunar impact crater" would not be in the least enlightening. --EncycloPetey 02:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Just found this interesting quote (b.g.c.):

• 2001: Jessica Martin, Walton's Live's, chapter 2, page 34

  Part of the intention in this chapter is to ask whether to call a biographer a 'Plutarch' is to pull a name of a popular classical biographer at random out of a hat of appropriate but imprecise possible compliments, or whether it confers a particular kind of commendation on Walton's practice.

So, apparently there is a tradition of calling a biographer a "Plutarch". Martin actually cites a 17th century discussion of this issue from Dryden. --EncycloPetey 02:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Cited, long ago, by Visviva. —Ruakh_TALK 21:03, 23 February 2010 (UTC)