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“... even the most fastidious student’s ability to make moral distinctions. And nearly a third of Plutarch’s Roman Lives are devoted to men who flourished in the middle decades of the first century BC, sometime(s) friends, sometime(s) rivals, but all (well-)acquainted with one another: Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Caesar, Brutus, Antony, Cicero. But above all it ...”

“... and Remus (from ‘ruma’, the dug), as we had before, because they were found sucking the wolf. Plutarch, Parallel Lives Dear sons – for I am not, as you believed, your uncle – forgive me now my dereliction. In those nine months the single thought that grieved me most was not your terrible instruction in the works of men, the disillusionments ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... for dynastic kings. Whether he fostered such cults himself is harder to answer. According to Plutarch, ‘Antigonus the Elder’ – which may be Gonatas but is more likely his grandfather – cast ridicule on the idea of divinisation: ‘The slave who deals with my chamber pot knows better.’ On Antigonus’ coins, the god Pan is often depicted in a ...”

“... characters, but historical ones, created through the reading of classical writers such as Plutarch; they dominated the cult of emulation. Rousseau may have led his readers to identify with the fictional Julie, but as a boy he imagined himself rather as Pericles and Cato: ‘I thought myself Greek or Roman; I became the person whose life I was ...”