The Rise And Fall of Athens

Plutarch

feb 2024 · Random House

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Plutarch traces the fortunes of Athens through nine lives - from Theseus, its founder, to Lysander, its Spartan conqueror - in this seminal work

What makes a leader? For Plutarch the answer lay not in great victories, but in moral strengths. In these nine biographies, taken from his Parallel Lives, Plutarch illustrates the rise and fall of Athens through nine lives, from the legendary days of Theseus, the city's founder, through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias and Alcibiades, to the razing of its walls by Lysander. Plutarch ultimately held the weaknesses of its leaders responsible for the city's fall. His work is invaluable for its imaginative reconstruction of the past, and profound insights into human life and achievement. This edition of Ian Scott-Kilvert's seminal translation, fully revised with a new introduction and notes by John Marincola, now also contains Plutarch's attack on the first historian, 'On the Malice of Herodotus'.

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Plutarch lived from c.45 to c.120 AD, and was one of the last of the classical Greek historians. His Moralia consists of his philosophical, scientific and literary essays and dialogues. He wrote his historical works later in life, and his Parallel Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans is perhaps his best-known and most influential work.