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THE TERM ritratto paradossale has been used to describe a formula of character portrayal seen in Latin literature of the first centuries B.C. and A.D. whose basic process consists in combining in one character apparently contradictory traits (La Penna 1976).To be precise, the formula produced a type of man who in his moments of action shows energy, diligence, and constancy but exhibits licentious feelings, allows himself to be taken in by indolence, and succumbs to pleasures when his nego tia are finished.This model may already have been present in Greek historical literature of the fourth century B.c., as the portrait of Philip I1 that the historian Theopompus delineates seems to bear this stamp.The public image of Maecenas and the Petronius of Tacitus are two clear examples of ritratto paradossale.The figure of Sulla also falls under this influence; in fact, according to La Penna (1976, 284), Plutarch's biography of Sulla often exhibits these same characteristics.The terms "paradox" and "paradoxical" also occur frequently in works devoted to Plutarch's Life of Lysander.Its paradoxical features are the central point of Pelling's comments (1988a, 268-74) on that biography.Pelling explores aspects of "integration" in the Parallel Lives, a technique of portrayal which he defines as follows: "a man's qualities are brought into some sort of relation with one another, and every trait goes closely with the next."lAn almost universal literary habit in the 'Pelling 1988a, 262.The effect of integration is not exactly the unification, but rather the reconciliation, of the different elements of one character; in this way each trait predicts the next, and the reader easily grasps what idea these may comprise when all taken together.According to Pelling, integrated characters are a familiar element of Greco-Roman literature, and we see this in particularly full expression in Plutarch's biographies.(In contrast we might consider the discontinuity and fragmentation typical of character development in a broad sector of modern literature, e.g., Brecht, Strindberg, Pirandello, Strachey; cf.Pelling 1990, 235-40, 252.)Arnertcan Journal of Philology 121 (ZW)453-478 @ ZOOO by The Johns Hopktns Un!verrtty Press'See note 30.XAn effort justified by the complexity of the moral problems involved, as the pair Lysander-Sulla deals with people and actions that cannot be simply judged as "good" or "bad": see Duff 1997.182.
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