Sublime

these things were done out of wantonness and lust.” Plutarch did such a remarkable job, Parallel Lives became the handbook for modern history’s heroes.

Plato was the most important in early Christianity, Aristotle in the medieval Church; but when, after the Renaissance, men began to value political freedom, it was above all to Plutarch that they turned. He influenced profoundly the English and French liberals of the eighteenth century, and the founders of the United States; he influenced the roman

We may say, then, that achievements of this kind, which do not arouse the spirit of emulation or create any passionate desire to imitate them, are of no great benefit to the spectator. On the other hand virtue in action immediately takes

Pendant des siècles, la Vie des hommes illustres de Plutarque fabrique nombre de tempéraments dans l’Europe judéo-chrétienne, de Montaigne à Charlotte Corday, parente de Corneille, lui aussi nourri au lait romain, en passant par Érasme et Rabelais, Bacon et La Boétie, de Maistre et Rousseau, Shakespeare et Emerson, ainsi que les autres transcendent

‘Cato the Younger’ – the great grandson of ‘the Elder’ (p. 204) and one of Caesar’s most uncompromising enemies – argued that the city was overturned not when Caesar and Pompey fell out but when they became friends.

Polybius on the politics of Rome