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“... Suidas or ‘Zenodotus’. These were helped out by the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Plutarch, and, amongst the moderns, by the Italian humanists Politian, Ermolao Barbaro and Valla. A compendium such as the Adages could so easily have been a bore or merely a crib. By the time we reach the fullest versions in 1533 and 1536 it had become a bedside ...”

“... obscurities and riddles of what purported to be divine messages. As Heraclitus, cited by Plutarch, remarked: ‘The lord whose shrine is at Delphi neither states nor conceals, but signs (sêmainei)’ – i.e. hints – and that only to those he favours. Convincing evidence of divine authenticity was crucial for success, not least since from the very ...”

“... own city had been created in the same way: according to the traditions reported by Dionysius, Plutarch and Appian, Romulus – or Romulus and Remus together – marked out ‘square Rome’ with each side four stadia in length (about 740m), big enough to enclose the Palatine. Even if we make an arbitrary choice and use Fabius Pictor’s date rather than ...”

“... veil, while the image of babies being burned in Baal’s fiery furnace appeared in Strabo, Cicero, Plutarch, St Augustine, Eusebius and Tertullian. (Salammbô’s pet python was probably inspired by Valerius Maximus’ account, based on Livy, of a battle between a Roman legion and a monstrous snake in the First Punic War, as well as the snake-charming ...”

“... practice. On what possible grounds, he asked, could his colleagues treat a biography by Plutarch (writing in the second century CE) as a ‘primary’ source for the career of Pericles – who lived more than five hundred years earlier? How could they trust any ancient account of Rome’s foundation in the eighth century BCE when it could easily and ...”

“... and On the Education of Children, a Greek tract from around the same era sometimes attributed to Plutarch. In these there is nothing to match the optimistic faith in the power and creativity of the young mind found in modern theorists of education from Rousseau to Piaget and beyond. Quintilian writes of the need for play in education, but only to win ...”

“... A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare, following a minor variant of the myth reported by Plutarch, calls her Hippolyta, not Antiope.) The idea that an Amazon queen once ruled their land fascinated the Athenians, as did the notion that their ancestors had fought off an Amazon invasion triggered by the abduction of Antiope. The legend of Amazonomachy ...”

“... never to return’. It’s easy to see the appeal of this idea.Writing more than a century later, Plutarch tells a story about the Roman general Quintus Sertorius meeting some mariners from ‘the Atlantic isles’. They describe islands of abundant fertility and temperate climate to him. ‘A strong belief has penetrated as far as the barbarians,’ ...”

“... and variations drawn from the rest. Among the rest, the next most utilised, probably, is Plutarch (c.400 years aa), who is pretty useless as a historian, but cites sources. Jostling him for second position are Diodorus of Sicily (c.300 aa), liable to get a bit confused, and Quintus Curtius Rufus (c.350 aa probably), stylish and rhetorical. Bringing ...”

“... by Dryden at a similar point in All for Love, his play on the same subject; both writers drew on Plutarch’s Life of Antony. Cleopatra is dead. In Shakespeare’s version a Roman soldier enters, sees the dead queen and asks Cleopatra’s attendant, Charmian: ‘What work is here, Charmian? Is this well done?’ And Charmian replies: ‘It is well done, and ...”

“... it appears, if the text was his, follows North’s translation of a French translation of Plutarch. One would have thought that his ‘small Latin’ would have sufficed to warn him. Here, surely, is a case where for everyone’s, including Shakespeare’s, advantage, it is wiser to follow the usual practice of correction. ‘Corioles’ sounds ...”

“... importance in it’. Or when I try to make sense of his claim that since, according to Plutarch, Antony took lessons in the art of rhetoric, and since masters of rhetoric usually came from Asiatic Greece, his reference to Octavius Caesar as ‘my countryman’ in Act Four, Scene 15 must be ‘particularly poignant’. Whatever point Bayley is ...”

“... decadent and gross: pursuit of bathhouse boys was seen as a symptom of undesirable excess. And, as Plutarch emphasised, the role of the boy in such relations came to be thought of as anomalous (the pleasures lacked reciprocity) and without honour. To what did these transformations in the techniques of the self collectively amount? Though all pointed towards ...”

“... his attempt to act like a doctor and keep the city on a strict and moderate regime.’ So writes Plutarch, in his biography of Dion, describing a moment in the turbulent politics of Syracuse in the 350s BC, when the tyrant Dionysius II had lost control, and the opposition at once divided between Dion, the friend and pupil of Plato, and those who sought the ...”

“... to find himself no more inspired than usual.’ But laurel, or its fumes, work for the Pythia. Plutarch records that her responses were unpredictably various, that sometimes things went wrong; she might, instead of prophesying, scream, collapse or run away, causing terror among the onlookers. His remarks are remembered in this book. Lacking any convincing ...”