Plutarch's formal comparison (synkrisis) closing the paired lives of Pericles and Fabius Maximus, weighing their generalship, statesmanship, and integrity with money against each other.
This short comparison is Plutarch's capstone to the paired biographies of Pericles, the Athenian statesman who guided the city through its imperial peak, and Fabius Maximus, the Roman dictator who steadied Rome during its darkest years against Hannibal. Rather than narrating new events, Plutarch here steps back to judge the two men side by side, testing which faced the harder task and which showed the surer judgment.
The comparison unfolds point by point: Pericles inherited an Athens already flourishing and victorious, while Fabius took charge of Rome at its most disgraceful and ill-fated hour, after catastrophic defeats had strewn the land with the bodies of destroyed armies. Plutarch weighs their battlefield records (Pericles's nine trophies against Fabius's rescue of Minucius from Hannibal, but also Fabius's embarrassing escape from the trick of the oxen), their foresight about how their wars would end, their treatment of rivals (Fabius's gentleness toward Minucius against Pericles's exiling of Cimon and Thucydides), and their relationship to money and public building.
The passage matters historically as a rare surviving example of Plutarch's explicit comparative method, showing how a Greek biographer under Roman rule directly measured a canonical Greek statesman against a Roman counterpart, using shared virtues (courage, prudence, incorruptibility) as the measuring stick rather than nationality. It captures Plutarch's core project in the Parallel Lives: instruction in character through calibrated, judicious comparison rather than simple praise.
“Since both have left behind many fine examples of political and military virtue, let us first take this point about their military careers: Pericles, dealing with a people who were doing splendidly and were at their greatest in his own time and most flourishing in power, might seem to have come through unscathed and unstumbling on the strength of the common good fortune and might of affairs,”
— Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius
“but Fabius, seeing many routs and defeats, many deaths and slaughters of supreme commanders and captains — lakes, plains, and woodlands strewn with the bodies of destroyed armies, rivers running with blood and slaughter all the way to the sea, laid hold of the city as it was rushing and plunging headlong in his own time, and by bracing himself against it did not allow it, swept along by their disasters, to be utterly poured out and destroyed.”
— Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius
“yet Pericles has no exploit set down to match what Fabius accomplished in snatching Minucius from Hannibal and saving an entire Roman army whole — a fine deed, and one that combines courage together with prudence and goodness alike”
— Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius
“Still, the fair-mindedness and gentleness of Fabius toward Minucius convicts the factional strife of Pericles against Cimon and Thucydides, good men and of aristocratic sympathies, whom he drove into exile and ostracism.”
— Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius
“the one showed it by taking nothing from those who offered it, the other by giving away much to those in need, ransoming the captives with his own funds.”
— Comparison Of Pericles With Fabius
It is Plutarch's synkrisis, or formal comparison, that closes his paired biographies of the Athenian statesman Pericles and the Roman dictator Fabius Maximus. Rather than telling new stories, it directly weighs the two men's records against one another on shared standards of military skill, judgment, and character.
Both men are remembered chiefly for steady, cautious leadership of their states during pivotal periods, Pericles guiding Athens at its height and Fabius steadying Rome during its lowest point against Hannibal. Plutarch's Parallel Lives regularly pairs one Greek and one Roman figure whose careers rhyme in this way.
Plutarch gives Fabius credit for the harder circumstance, since he took charge of Rome in its most disgraceful and ill-fated hour, amid routs, slaughtered commanders, and rivers running with blood, while Pericles inherited an Athens already flourishing and victorious.
He credits Pericles with nine trophies won by land and sea and no recorded blunder, while crediting Fabius with the singular achievement of rescuing Minucius and his army from Hannibal, but also noting Fabius's embarrassing escape from Hannibal's trick with the oxen.
Plutarch praises Pericles for taking nothing despite vast opportunities to profit from allies and kings, calling him the most incorruptible and purest of men, and praises Fabius for giving away his own funds, about six talents, to ransom captives.
He favors Fabius here, citing his fair-mindedness and gentleness toward his rival Minucius as a rebuke to Pericles's factional strife against Cimon and Thucydides, whom Pericles drove into exile and ostracism.
Plutarch says Pericles held greater power and dominance, strong enough that he could largely prevent other Athenian commanders from bringing disaster on the city through poor judgment, whereas Fabius lacked comparable authority to restrain Roman colleagues, which Plutarch says cost Rome many disasters.
Plutarch says the Athenians' eventual defeat vindicated Pericles's warnings against overreach, while Rome's success under Scipio, achieved by going against Fabius's own cautious strategy, showed Fabius's calculations to have been wrong on that point.
Aemilius Paulus · Agesilaus · Agis · Alcibiades · Alexander · Antony · Aratus · Aristides · Artaxerxes · Caesar · Caius Gracchus · Caius Marius