The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Vol 1
2000
First Published
4.05
Average Rating
764
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Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives, ' written at the beginning of the second century A.D., form a brilliant social history of the ancient world. They were originally presented in a series of books that gave an account ofone Greek and one Roman life, followed by a comparison of the two: Theseus and Romulus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Demosthenes and Cicero, Demetrius and Antony. Plutarch was interested in the personalities of his subjectsand on the way their characters molded their actions, leading them to tragedy or victory. He was a moralist of the highest order. 'It was for the sake of others that I first commenced writing biographies, ' he says, 'but Ifind myself proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these great men serving me as a sort of looking-glass, in which I may see how to adjust and adorn my own life.' Plutarch was a man of immenseerudition who had traveled widely throughout the Roman Empire, and the Lives are richly anecdotal and full of detail. They were the principal source of Shakespeare's Roman plays.
Avg Rating
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Author
Hugh Clough Arthur
Author · 5 books
Arthur Hugh Clough was the son of a Liverpool cotton merchant who moved the family to South Carolina when he was four. He returned to England to attend Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and then Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford the influence of W.G. Ward and Newman destroyed his Anglican faith without providing a substitute. He was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College in 1842, but resigned his tutorship on religious grounds in 1849 and spent the subsequent year in Paris and then Rome. After two years as head of University Hall in London he visited the USA, returning to an examinership in the Education Office. He also worked for his relation Florence Nightingale. He died of a fever and is buried in Florence.
