Plutarch's Essays and Miscellanies gathers some of antiquity's most searching reflections on religion, ethics, politics, and love. In these translated and carefully revised essays, readers enter Delphi, Egypt, Rome, and the private circles of philosophers as Plutarch probes prophecy, providence, and the hidden order of the world. The collection includes the famous dialogue "Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers," where learned men debate the silence of sacred shrines; "Of Isis and Osiris,"...

Plutarch's essays range from sharp moral exhortation to playful banquet talk, moving with ease between public virtue, private conduct, and the hidden workings of nature. He argues against "living concealed," insisting that character should be exposed to scrutiny so vice can be corrected, and explores exile, brotherly love, forgiveness, family duty, and the dignity of misfortune with the same ethical seriousness. At the dinner table, the mood shifts to wit and inquiry as guests debate seati...

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD.

"Plutarch's Lives" is a collection of biographical essays written by the Greek historian and philosopher Plutarch in the 1st century AD. The work consists of 50 paired biographies of famous Greek and Roman figures, with each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman. The lives covered in the work range from legendary figures such as Theseus and Romulus, to famous politicians and military leaders such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.The purpose of "Plutarch's Lives" is to provide ...

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Parallel Lives, contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals biographized, but...

Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal workWhat makes a leader? For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths. In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristid...

The essays here rendered into English have not been selected as the very best pieces in Plutarch’sMoralia, but, first, as typical examples of his writing in that kind, and, second, as covering between them a tolerably large field of interesting matter. The Moralia offer us perhaps the best of all extant material for judging the civilization of the middle classes of society just before and after the year 100 of our era. From them and from Pliny’s Letters we are able to form a fairly complet...

Originally curated by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot as a complete liberal education in fifty volumes, the Harvard Classics gathers philosophy, science, literature, and history into a single indispensable library. Plato's dialogues and Marcus Aurelius's meditations sit alongside Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis Bacon's essays, Charles Darwin's scientific writing, and Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, tracing the foundations of Western thought from ancient Greece to the modern age. Homer...

Plutarch's vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of this remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta's leaders and his recording of memorable Spartan Sayings he depicts a people who lived frugally and mastered their emotions in all aspects of life, who also disposed of unhealthy babies in a deep chasm, introduced a gruelling regime of military training ...

Marcus Cato Sulla Aemilius Paullus Pompey The Gracchi Marius Julius Caesar Anthony 'I treat the narrative of the Lives as a kind of mirror...The experience is like nothing so much as spending time in their company and living with them: I receive and welcome each of them in turn as my guest.' In the eight lives of this collection Plutarch introduces the reader to the major figures and periods of classical Rome. He portrays virtues to be emulated and vices to be avoided, but his purpose is a...

Lives of Greece and Rome retold for young readers from Plutarch — Lycurgus and Solon, Pericles and Alcibiades, Cicero and Pompey, the death of Caesar — with the anecdotes kept and the moralising left as Plutarch wrote it. The Lives were a schoolbook of Europe from the Renaissance on and the source Shakespeare worked from for his Roman plays. What survives the abridgement is Plutarch's method: judge a man by a small act, not a battle. Twenty-seven plates after Corot and Monet, among others,...

In each biography, Plutarch employs a comparative approach, often pairing a Greek figure with a Roman counterpart to highlight similarities and differences in their virtues and vices. For instance, the life of Alexander the Great is juxtaposed with that of Julius Caesar, allowing readers to glean insights into their respective contributions to history and their differing moral landscapes. Plutarch's narratives are rich with anecdotes, philosophical reflections, and moral lessons, providing...