Speaking generally, political biography represents the personal approach to history. Its focus is not on larger elements of causation, such as the constant seesaw of action and retribution and the limits of human nature seen in Herodotus and Thucydides, but on the personal. It asks what kind of character a historical actor possessed, what motivated his behavior, what he accomplished or failed to achieve. Passing over large-scale movements and consequences, it tends to focus on details and anecdotes. Authorial comments are more frequent than is usual in history, but speeches are rare. Narrative, in particular, is more episodic, or completely excluded. In general, it is not that biography is less accurate or more interpretive than history, but that its scope and purpose are different, even when it uses the same sources.
It is hardly coincidental that our earliest extant biographies, those of Nepos, belong to a time of acute political strife at Rome, which saw the emergence of strong competing personalities, and that our three later authors wrote during and shortly after two crises of empire, when the problem of leadership was particularly acute. In such cases, personal and moral factors, always present to some degree in standard political history, come to the fore. The biographer must evaluate good and bad behavior, look for its sources, and consider its effects. In a time when dynasts and then emperors could control the fate of so many, insight into the character of political leaders became a necessity. Biography was not only a source of information and recreation, it was also a tool for living.
FURTHER READING
For ancient genre in general see Conte 1992; for historiography, Marincola 1997 and 1999; for ancient biography, Gentili and Cerri 1988: 61-85 and Burridge 1992. For an overview of the problems in reconstructing Hellenistic biography, see Momigliano 1971a, 1971b.
The basic study of Nepos is Geiger 1985. For Suetonius see in general Wallace-Hadrill 1983; for the Caesars Lewis 1991b and Bradley 1991. On Plutarch, the best overview is Duff 1999; valuable essays are collected in Stadter 1992; Scardigli 1995; and Pelling 2002.
World History
