The lineage of Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye)

Following one thread, 5 works from Crime and Punishment (Prestupleniye i nakazaniye) to Iliad. Back to all 27 works

1. c. 100

   Parallel Lives

   Plutarch

   Roman Empire. Roman Greece. written in Ancient Greek.

   Paired biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen and generals, written to examine character.

   What it handed down

   To The Robbers (Die Räuber) (1781)

   Direct source, well documented.

   Karl Moor's first speech in Act One, Scene Two, begins with disgust at his 'ink-blotting age' when he reads of great men in his Plutarch. The Lives supply the heroic standard that drives him to crime, the same appeal to greatness that Raskolnikov later makes.

   To Essays (Essais)

   Direct source, well documented.

   Montaigne read Plutarch in Jacques Amyot's French translation of 1559 and called him his favorite author. The Essays quote and argue with the Lives constantly and borrow Plutarch's habit of judging men by small acts of character.

   Where it came from

   • Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE

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