Pelling on Plutarch is always an event: this one is a blockbuster. The importance of the Alexander-Caesar for students of ancient biography and of ancient history can hardly be exaggerated, and neither category of reader will be disappointed by P.'s commentary. As sensitive to this text's interpretative or historiographical issues as he is unfailingly responsive to its every relevant historical problem, P. elevates our understanding of the Caesar — and of Caesar — to a new level.

A brief review can hardly examine the commentary itself in detail. Suffice it to say that its careful and extensive notes exhibit erudition, acumen, and P.'s unmatched interpretative flair, which is of course not to say that specific comments will not attract subsequent qualification or disagreement. The translation is at once elegant and lucid (and includes a passage from Zonaras that P. long ago identified as a likely fragment of the now lost introductory chapters of the Caesar). An introduction offers readers a concise but fairly comprehensive treatment of Plutarch and Plutarchan biography. Its coverage extends to Plutarch's own historical situation, the literary achievement of his biographical project, and Plutarch's methods of research and composition — in sum, nearly every aspect of the construction of this Life. Shakespeare's appropriation is not ignored, nor its potential for illuminating Plutarch's original purposes in his characterization of Caesar. On all of these topics P. has already made numerous and significant contributions; still, even on points that are more or less settled, he continues to revise and refine (e.g. p. 24, nn. 50 and 51; p. 40 n. 91; p. 57 n. 149, and so forth). Careful attention is given, both in the introduction and throughout the commentary, to Plutarch's inventive rewriting of his sources, not least to the various conflations and displacements intended to enhance the vividness and narrative effect of his story (however much they may frustrate or even mislead modern historians and biographers). P. is also consistently attentive to the Caesar's relationship with the Alexander as well as its connections (and divergences) from other Plutarchan Lives. Throughout the commentary, detailed literary and historical analyses sit side by side and routinely complement one another.

If anything is missing, it is in the way of a thoroughgoing mapping out of Plutarch's moral universe, the virtues he prizes as well as the vices and foibles that impede their realization, recurring and conspicuous concerns in most of the Lives. Naturally P. does not fail to discuss Plutarch's moralism (especially pp. 16ff.: ‘so character, ēthos, is the point’, and at pp. 434ff. he rightly stresses the importance of philotimia to the Life as a whole), but the philosophical and ethical expectations Plutarch regularly applies in his biographies are perhaps given less emphasis here than elsewhere in P.'s previous work (compare his Life of Antony (1988), 10ff.) — although P. is careful to direct his readers to Tim Duff's expansive treatment of the Plutarchan hero (Plutrach's Lives (1999), 52ff.) and to his own various essays on Plutarchan characterization and on the complexities of Plutarch's moral assessments (see, e.g., his Plutarch and History (2002), passim).

Now this is not entirely unreasonable for the Caesar: as P. correctly observes, in this Life ‘the moral voice is strangely muted’ (19). Strangely, yes, by comparison with Plutarch's normal practice, and also surprisingly in view of the distinction between biography and history registered at Alex. 1.2, which appears to give priority not to the recording of great deeds but rather to isolating ‘a person's good or bad qualities’. The Caesar, however, unlike, say, the Marcellus or Fabius Maximus, exhibits little in the way of explicit or extended ethical analysis. Instead, Plutarch's Caesar is, as P. has put it elsewhere, ‘a big-thing person’, and at Caes. 15 Plutarch's admiration for the Big Things accomplished by his hero leaves ‘no room for moral reservation’ (208). Even Caesar's clementia, which Plutarch predictably attributes to his praotes — a key virtue for Plutarch — is given short shrift in this Life (it is only otherwise adduced at Caes. 15.4), and in this pairing it is a quality more frequently associated with Alexander (Alex. 4.8; 13.4; 58.8). Likewise other Plutarchan virtues whose exploration one might naturally anticipate in a biography of Caesar: no sophrosyne for Caesar, for instance, though his mother possesses it (Caes. 9.3), as does Alexander (Alex. 4.8; 21.11; 30.11; 47.8); and as for moderation, with Caesar it is only ever a pose (Caes. 31.1, well discussed by P.), whereas, in the case of Alexander, it is something of a symptom that intriguingly comes and goes (Alex. 28.1; 44.4; 58.6). Even at Caes. 57, when Plutarch diagnoses, along Platonic lines, his subject's descent into tyranny, he is ‘not particularly interested in drawing up a moral balance sheet’ (421). The death of Caesar's daughter (Caes. 23.5–7) presented his biographer with an opportunity to draw attention to Caesar's fortitude in the face of grief (one thinks of Aemilius Paullus amongst other Plutarchan subjects), but instead Plutarch ‘prefers not to distract his reader from the military narrative’ (258). Now it is probably no accident that Caesar's praotes occurs only at Caes. 15 and 57, chapters that punctuate the structure of his Life. But Plutarch's focus, as P.'s commentary underlines again and again, is less on the man's moral make-up than it is on his exploits. There is something singular about this Life, which, as P. correctly concludes, ‘becomes a rather unusual one, not wholly isolated among the Parallel Lives … but still well to one end of Plutarch's spectrum’ (23).

The mandatory quibble: although P.'s bibliographical coverage is extensive, in view of the importance of the theme of demagogy in this Life (well attested throughout the commentary), it would have been useful to refer to P. J. J. Vanderbroeck, Popular Leadership and Collective Behaviour in the Late Roman Republic (ca. 80–50) (1987), still valuable for its collection of the evidence and its interest in the literary configuration of demagogy in our sources (though in fairness P. cites other scholars who will lead the curious there). P.'s analysis of erotic language in this Life (easily traceable by way of P.'s detailed index) should now be read in conjunction with the recent and interesting discussion of the Alexander-Caesar by J. Beneker, The Passionate Statesman: Eros and Politics in Plutarch's Lives (2012), 103ff. I noticed very few typographical errors: the pp. 00 cited on p. 6 should read p. 43.

This commentary traces its origins to P.'s doctoral thesis and in his preface he apologizes for his delay in bringing it into print, though he can hardly be said to have been indolent in the interval. The result is certainly worth the wait: a commentary that will remain an indispensable resource for historians and historiographers alike — and which constitutes something of a reproof to anyone insisting that history and historiography are incompatible enterprises.