The Reception of Plutarch's Lives in Fifteenth Century Italy

Plutarch's Lives of great Greek and Roman public figures are among the central texts of European culture. Like most Greek authors, Plutarch had been unknown in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, but when Renaissance humanists rekindled interest in Greek language and culture, he became one of the most widely read authors of the period. This doctoral thesis shows how Plutarch came to influence 15th-century Italian culture and how the overwhelming interest in the Lives can be explained by studying the way Classical Antiquity was used for ideological purposes in Renaissance Italy.