Solon

Plutarch’s Life and Works, Including His Greek and Roman Lives, and Moralia, His Stoic Sayings
Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Plutarch’s Life and Works, Including His Noble Greek and Roman Lives, and Moralia, His Stoic Sayings

07/17/2026 Bruce Strom 0

Over half of Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Romans influenced the history of the corrupt and violent last years of the Roman Republic, and the rise of the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar. Plutarch paired Greek and Roman lives based on their personalities and accomplishments. For example, Julius Caesar is paired with Alexander the Great, and the Greek companion to Cicero is Demosthenes, the renowned Greek orator who opposed Alexander the Great’s conquest of Greece. Plutarch used Xenophon as one of his sources for his lives of the Spartan Kings Agis and Agesilaus, Alcibiades, the lost life of Epaminondas of Thebes, and possibly Lycurgus of Sparta. The majority of Plutarch’s Roman lives featured the strivings of great men during the breakdown of the Roman Republic, and the subsequent struggles and civil wars that culminated in the reign of the first two emperors of the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, or Octavian.
Plutarch is more interested in highlighting the moral and character strengths and weaknesses of the famous men of history than he is in revealing how these great men influenced historical events. For this reason, you cannot consult only Plutarch for a complete historical review. We also consulted Will Durant’s account in his Story of Civilization, Volume 3, Caesar and Christ. Will Durant often quotes Cicero directly, and Plutarch is his primary source out of necessity. We also consulted the Wikipedia article on Cicero to fill in some background and details. […]

Greek Stoic and Cynic Philosophers: My Favorite Sayings
Greek Philosophy

Greek Stoic and Cynic Philosophers: My Favorite Maxims: Heraclitus, Antisthenes, Diogenes, and Zeno

02/16/2024 Bruce Strom 3

Diogenes was an exile in Athens who wanted to study under Antisthenes. Although Antisthenes threatened him with his staff, Diogenes was obstinate, he wanted to be his student, he shouted, “Strike, for you’ll not find wood hard enough to keep me away from you, as long as I think you have something to say.”
Diogenes noticed a mouse scurrying about in Athens, and he decided that, like the mouse, he would not be concerned about where he lived, so he lived in a tub, a large earthenware pot in the marketplace. When he saw a boy drinking water with his hands, he threw away the cup he owned, and later he threw away his bowl. He went barefoot even in the winter, his possessions consisted of a cloak and what he could carry in a knapsack.
Once, when traveling, he was captured by pirates and sold to a man who employed him to raise his sons to follow Cynic Philosophy. When his friends offered to ransom him from slavery, he refused, saying that “lions are not the slaves of those who feed them; it is the feeders, rather, who are the lions’ slaves. For fear is the mark of a slave, and wild beasts make men fearful.” […]

Summary of Greco-Persian Wars, Herodotus, Plutarch and Aeschylus Celebrate Greek Victory
Greek and Roman History

Summary of Greco-Persian Wars, Ancient Historians Herodotus, Plutarch and Aeschylus Celebrate Greek Victory

07/05/2023 Bruce Strom 2

The wars between Greek city-states, and Persian influence in these wars, continued after a short peace, and lasted another generation, exhausting the Greek city-states, leading to their subjection of Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. The lesson that Alexander learned from of all these wars, starting with the Greco-Persian Wars, and from Xenophon’s leading the Greek mercenary armies from the heart of the Persian Empire, Babylon, back to Greek territory, was that the Greek hoplite armies were vastly superior to the Persian fighting forces. This meant for Alexander the Great that the Persian Empire was ripe for the taking. […]

Greek and Roman History

Spartan Women, Marriage, Family Life and Sayings, From Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus

11/11/2022 Bruce Strom 2

Seizing women for marriage was part of many ancient cultures. When in war a particularly hated city-state was conquered, it was common practice to slaughter the military age men and enslave the women and children, and many of the women would be enslaved as concubines. Early in the Peloponnesian Wars, Thucydides tells us the dramatic of how first the Athenian Assembly condemned the city-state of Mytilene to this fate, then changed their mind the next day, and how a furiously rowed trireme bearing this good news beat the previous day’s trireme just in the nick of time, saving the city of Mytilene!

Thucydides also tells of the siege of the Melians, whose men were executed, and her women and children sold into slavery at the hands of the Athenians late in the war, and how the Athenians worried they would suffer the same fate when they lost the war to Sparta. […]

Greek and Roman History

Unique Spartan Warrior Culture and History, Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, Lawgiver of Sparta

08/31/2022 Bruce Strom 3

Sparta was the city-state that dominated the Peloponnese, the region that is separated from Athens and the rest of Greece by the narrow Isthmus at Corinth, and without that isthmus it would be an island to itself. Sparta was a traditional and conservative agricultural society that was not welcoming to foreigners, other than aristocratic guest-friends. […]

Greek and Roman History

Draco, Solon, and Cleisthenes, Democracy and Justice in Ancient Greece

03/09/2022 Bruce Strom 0

Homer’s Odyssey depict the deep Greek past where might makes right, where brave soldiers fight for justice, where grievances and murders are settled by blood feuds. As Greek emerged from its Dark Ages in the seventh century, the Greeks in Athens sought to establish a more systematic system of justice with laws governing the state. Draco was appointed by the ruling aristocracy to be a lawmaker to codify new laws to replace justice by feuds, now the Senate of the Areopagus would hear cases of homicide. […]

Greek and Roman History

Herodotus, Histories of Persia: Egypt and Scythia Before the Greco-Persian Wars

12/29/2021 Bruce Strom 6

Why did Herodotus write his Histories? Herodotus tells us in his first paragraph, “so that human achievements may not be forgotten in time, and great and marvelous deeds, some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians, may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.” Just as in the Iliad, the Greek soldiers and sailors in the Histories of Herodotus fight for cleos, or glory, and warriors in these warrior societies are immortalized by their great and marvelous deeds on the battlefield. Herodotus is interested in recording any mighty deeds of both the Greeks and the Persians, although the glory was earned mostly by the Greeks. […]