Childhood and Personality in Greek Biography

Abstract

Abstract Everybody notices when a great man dies; it is more difficult to notice when one is born, or when one is growing up. It is not surprising that ancient biographers often faced a dearth of reliable material on their subject’s childhood and youth; and, for writers of a certain sort of biography, the temptation to fill this gap with the telling, fictional anecdote was difficult to resist. This is clear in biographies of literary figures: Similar tales were told about Plato, Homer, Hesiod, Lucan, Ambrose, and others. Or stories could be less supernatural: stories, for instance, of Homer’s travels as a young man to Ithaca, or of his studying poetry with a schoolteacher named Phemius; or of Sophocles’ magnificent appearance in the chorus celebrating the victory of Salamis.

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