L’article analyse la solution au problème du destin chez Plotin en Enn., III. 1 [3], identifiant ses sources platoniciennes principales et ses affinités avec la théorie médioplatonicienne « standard ». Bien que fidèle à certains éléments de cette dernière, Plotin suit aussi une autre voie de réception des intuitions platoniciennes, que l’on trouve notamment dans le Didaskalikos, chap. 2. Pour Plotin, les actions vertueuses des sages dépendent entièrement d’eux. Les actions des autres, normalement, ne dépendent pas d’eux mais des causes (...) externes, ce qui signifie « agir selon le destin ».Sur la conception plotinienne du destin dans le traité 3The article analyzes Plotinus’ solution to the problem of fate in Enn., III. 1 [3], its key Platonic sources, and its similarities to the common Middle-Platonist theory. While picking up certain elements of the latter, Plotinus also follows another line of reception of Platonic intuitions, as found notably in Didascalicus, chap. 2. For Plotinus, the virtuous actions of the sages depend entirely on them, while the actions of others normally do not depend on them, but rather on external causes, and this is what it means to act in accordance with fate. (shrink)

This study focuses not on individual Lives or pairs of Lives, but on the book as a whole and its articulation across the full corpus. It argues that the Plutarchan book consists of up to four distinct sections: prologue, first Life, second Life, synkrisis. Each of these sections has a fairly consistent internal structure, and each has a distinct set of strategies for opening, for closure, and for managing the transition from one section to the next. Prologues provide an introduction (...) to both Lives, and are clearly delineated from them, even though in our manuscripts they appear as part of the first Life; in fact, there is often a stronger break between prologue and first Life than there is between the two Lives themselves. Prologues usually begin with generalized reflections, to be followed only later by the naming of the subjects and a statement of their similarities. Most Lives begin with a thematically organized section , which surveys the subject's life as a whole, not just their youth, and which is marked off with varying degrees of distinctness from the narrative that follows. Crucially, proemial openings do not narrate and the logic of their structure is not chronological. Closure in many Lives is signalled by ‘circularity’ and sometimes by a closural or transitional phrase, though first Lives are different here from second Lives. Synkriseis are structured both by a series of themes on which the two subjects are compared, and by a two-part, agonistic structure in which first one of the subjects is preferred, then the other. Synkriseis may also recall the prologue; both prologue and synkrisis operate at the level of the book, and between them frame and weld together the two Lives. (shrink)

The author of this article is interested in how Plutarch of Chaeronea created the picture of the Sullan War in Parallel lives, especially in the Life of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Firstly, the author notes that in presenting the civil war Plutarch was dependent on the Memoirs of Sulla. But not only. There are fragments from other source too, probably the same that Appian of Alexandria used. Therefore the Author wonders to what extend Plutarch was tendentious in presenting the Sullan War. (...) Secondly, the author shows which moments of the Sullan War were of especial interest to Plutarch of Chaeronea and tries to answer why some of the events Plutarch was to described so briefly. Finally, the author indicates why this report of Plutarch of Chaeronea remains a very important source for any historian of the civil wars in Rome. (shrink)