Ideology, Rhetoric and Dialectalism in Plutarch's "Parallel Lives": A Note on "Pyrrhus", 26, 11 and "Cimon" 14, 3-17, 2

The rhetorical skill of the biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea in his Parallel Lives is made manifest by certain linguistic usages with which he characterizes his protagonists. Plutarch describes his literary technique as a sort of impressionist composition where some details of each character, signs or semeia of his soul, are highlighted, defining each character through this. In this paper we study Plutarch's masterly portraits of character with pro-Laconian inclinations as a result of the shrewd insertion of dialectalisms in his discourse as a writer well-known for his impeccable literary koine. As case studies for our analysis of the rhetorical usage of dialectalism in Plutarch when characterizing a certain ideology of his protagonists, we have chosen the lives of Pyrrhus and Cimon. Adapted from the source document.