In this chapter I argue that Plutarch in the Life of Pericles reports many anecdotes and rumors about Aspasia, but has arranged his information so as to describe a couple bound together by an intellectual rather than merely a sensual attraction. I also argue that this characterization is in accord with Plutarch’s overall approach to Pericles in t…[Read more]

In this paper I discuss a technique for incorporating prose composition into a first-year Latin course. This technique requires each student to create an original composition, in stages, over the course of a semester or a year. The goals of the exercise are to encourage beginning students to engage actively with the complexities of Latin grammar…[Read more]

This article argues that several anecdotes and themes from Plutarch’s Lives of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus are interrelated and that these Lives must be read together in order for the anecdotes and theme to be fully appreciated.

An examination of how Plutarch explains Pompey’s loss in the war with Caesar partly by narrating his devotion to his wives, which distracts him at critical moments in his career.

This paper examines Plutarch’s accounts of ostracism and explores how he thought it worked in theory and in practice. Accounts of ostracism are found in six of the Lives, all of fifth-century Athenians, and in one of the Moralia. These accounts often relate the same event, and so they allow us to see how Plutarch presents the same material from…[Read more]

Plutarch’s biography of Julius Caesar, compared with other accounts, deliberately plays down sexuality as a motive in Caesar’s life, in order to stress his single-minded political ambition.