Source Analysis of Plutarch’s The Life of Demetrius

 Plutarch therefore has often been regarded as an important source of information about the Hellenistic world after the death of Alexander the Great in general and the conflicts between his successors in particular.1 Alexander the Great had rapidly built up an enormous empire, yet his sudden and unexpected death with only an infant son as heir brought about instability as well as conflicts between his generals and other military or political leaders. Demetrius I Poliorcetes and his father, Antigonus I Monophthlmus were amongst the political and military leaders that intended to gain from the unexpected death of Alexander the Great by winning in the subsequent conflicts. Plutarch regarded the disputes as the ideal subjects for his chronicles and his biographies. Plutarch could certainly have plenty to choose from when writing epic histories of events some three centuries before his own lifetime had began.

Plutarch was lucky enough to live during a very interesting not to mention dramatic period in history when the Roman empire was still actually expanding. The Ancient Greeks and Macedonians had been involved in wars between each other and against the Persians for many decades, and there were myths about their military achievements.2 The ancient Greeks and the Macedonians were used to fighting each other instead of fighting alongside each other until Alexander the Great started his glorious campaigns of military conquest that took his armies as far as India. Plutarch was actually writing around 350 years after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and his subsequent death, and thus could choose which of Alexander the Great’s successors to write about. After all these were some of the people that had helped to shape his own world. Plutarch was a Greek who lived in an era when the empire of Alexander the Great paled into insignificance in comparison to the Roman empire, which had gone to conquer all the Ancient Greek cities and Macedonia. Besides the Roman empire already consisted of the majority of territory that had once been Alexander the Great’s empire in Asia Minor and the Middle East.3

The Life of Demetrius was part of Plutarch’s ambitious plan to write a series of biographies about the most important Greeks, Macedonians, and Romans up to his own times. In total Plutarch wrote over 40 biographies in the series that included The Life of Demetrius. Taken separately or in combination with the whole series The Life of Demetrius is a useful source of information concerning some of the leading figures in ancient Greek, Macedonian and Roman history. Aside from Demetrius I Poliorcetes, Plutarch’s biographies included Alexander the Great and one of Demetrius I Poliorcetes’s main rivals Ptolemy in the conflicts to grab parts of Alexander the Great’s disintegrating empire. Except for when Alexander the Great was alive was the only time when the ancient Greeks and the Macedonians had been ruled together within his empire whereas as before and afterwards they were divided and frequently fighting each other.4