Reading an essay by Eliot Weinberger, I learn of numerous Plutarchs, (Plutarchi? Polyplutarch? Call this apparently Hydra-headed scribe from antiquity what you will), whereas before I'd only been aware of one.
There is the rather imperious-looking Greek Plutarch, who wrote engaging biographies of famous men and other, slightly less interesting books such as obviously tedious Moralia.
Then there is the faceless, so-called Pseudo Plutarch, author of many works originally attributed to the genuine Plutarch but later identified as the fabrications of mostly anonymous authors over a span of many centuries.
For some reason, probably innate facetiousness, I prefer the works of the Pseudo Plutarchs to those of the genuine Plutarch. On Rivers, for instance, and even Consolation to Apollonius, sound much more like my kind of read than the aforementioned Moralia, no matter how intellectually or artistically inferior the contents might be regarded after authorial reassignment.
In fact, I wish there was an equally prolific Pseudo Demosthenes, Pseudo Xenophon, Pseudo Hesiod, Pseudo Pliny, both elder and younger, Pseudo Catullus, Pseudo Suetonius, a Pseudo Cicero would be really nice, and so on.
There is a Polybius, of course, but alas I don't think his name means that there are many Biuses.
Anyway, I think I'm going to spend the next few days forging a text called On Actually Having Written What Scholars Don't Think I Did by Pseudo Juvenal. It's about time the Loeb Classical Library published some new material, don't you think?
