eBook: ePub eBook | 672 pages | ISBN 9780141970387 | 01 Mar 2012 | Penguin Classics
Plutarch’s parallel biographies of the great men in Greek and Roman history are cornerstones
of European literature, drawn on by writers and statesmen since the Renaissance, most
notably by Shakespeare. This selection provides intimate glimpses into the lives of these
men, depicting, as he put it, ‘those actions which illuminate the workings of the soul’. We
learn why the mild Artaxerxes forced the killer of his usurping brother to undergo the
horrific ‘death of two boats’; why the noble Dion repeatedly risked his life for the
ungrateful mobs of Syracuse; why Demosthenes delivered a funeral oration for the soldiers he
had deserted in battle; and why Alexander, the most enigmatic of tyrants, self-destructed
after conquering half the world.
