Biography

BIOGRAPHY (from the Gr. f31os, life, and ypag50, writing), that form of history whichiiis applied, not to races or masses of men, but to an individual. The earliest use of the word /Sto-ypacNa. is attributed to Damascius, a Greek writer of the beginning of the 6th century, and in Latin biographia was used, but in English no earlier employment of the word, "biography" has been traced than that of Dryden in 1683, who uses it to describe the literary work of Plutarch, "the history of particular men's lives." It is obvious that this definition is necessary, for biography is not the record of "life" in general, but of the life of a single person. The idea of the distinction between this and history is a modern thing; we speak of "antique biography," but it is doubtful whether any writer of antiquity, even Plutarch, clearly perceived its possible existence as an independent branch of literature. All of them, and Plutarch certainly, considered the writing of a man's life as an opportunity for celebrating, in his. person, certain definite moral qualities. It was in these, and not in the individual characteristics of the man, that his interest as a subject of biography resided.