* Agis IV ( 265 BC – 241 BC ), a Spartan king ; Plutarch included a chapter on him in his Parallel Lives

Other noteworthy and famous Greek historians include Plutarch ( 2nd century AD ), who wrote several biographies, the Parallel Lives, in which he wanted to assess the morality of its characters by comparing them in pairs, and Polybius ( 3nd century BC ), who developed Thucydides's method further, becoming one of the most objective historians of classical antiquity.

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives ( Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans )

His earliest work was a biography of the Greek statesman Philopoemen ; this work was later used as a source by Plutarch when composing his Parallel Lives, however the original Polybian text is lost.

** Parallel Lives by Plutarch, particularly:

In his chapter on Romulus from Parallel Lives, Plutarch criticises the continuous belief in such disappearances, referring to the allegedly miraculous disappearance of the historical figures Romulus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, and Croesus.

* Plutarch writes his Parallel Lives of Famous Men ( in Greek Βίοι Παράλληλοι ) containing fifty biographies, of which 46 are presented as pairs comparing Greek and Roman celebrities — for example Theseus and Romulus, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero.

* Plutarch, The Parallel Lives, The Life of Julius Caesar

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Solon

Epaminondas was one of approximately 50 ancient figures given an extensive biography by Plutarch in his Parallel Lives, in which he is paired with the Roman statesman Scipio Africanus ; however, both these " Lives " are now lost.

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives ( Numa Pompilius ), v. 8. 6

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Life of Numa Pompilius.

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives ( Romulus, 14 – 20 )

* The Greek historian / biographer Plutarch of Chaeronea wrote the On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great and " Life of Alexander " in his " Parallel Lives " series, paired with " Life of Julius Caesar "

* Plutarch, The Parallel Lives-The Life of Camillus:

Noteworthy in the Roman period were Strabo, a writer on geography ; Plutarch, the father of biography, whose Parallel Lives of famous Greeks and Romans is a chief source of information about great figures of antiquity ; Pausanias, a travel writer ; and Lucian, a satirist.

# Plutarch – Parallel Lives ; Moralia

However, Plutarch, who wrote about Eumenes in his series of Parallel Lives, mentions that it was about lodgings, and a flute-player, so perhaps this was an instance of some deeper antagonism breaking out into a quarrel over a triviality.

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Alexander, Eumenes

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives, " Demetrius ", " Pyrrhus ", " Aratus "

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives ; Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, Cimon

* Plutarch, Parallel Lives

A third edition of his Plutarch was published, in 1603, with more translated Parallel Lives, and a supplement of other translated biographies.

* Plutarch " Lives "

* Plutarch, Lives, Bernadotte Perrin ( translator ), Cambridge, MA.

Most of these have been recorded by Plutarch ( Lives of Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Camillus ), Florus ( Book I, I ), Cicero ( The Republic VI, 22: Scipio's Dream ), Dio ( Dion ) Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( L. 2 ).

* Plutarch ( Lives of Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Camillus )

Plutarch, on the other hand, was given to “ tendencies to stereotype, to polarize, and to exaggerate that are inherent in the propaganda surrounding his subjects .” Furthermore, because of the unlikelihood that Shakespeare would have had direct access to Plutarch ’ s Greek Lives and probably read them through a French translation from a Latin translation, his play, then, constructs Romans with an anachronistic Christian sensibility that might have been influenced by St. Augustine ’ s Confessions among others.

* Plutarch, Lives

The artistic unity of his work suffered severely from the frequent and lengthy digressions, of which the most important was On the Athenian Demagogues in the 10th book of the Philippica, containing a bitter attack on many of the chief Athenian statesmen, and generally recognized as having been freely used by Plutarch in several of the Lives.

The Athenian politician Aristides would spend the rest of his life occupied in the affairs of the alliance, dying ( according to Plutarch ) a few years later in Pontus, whilst determining what the tax of new members was to be.

Plutarch reports that Themistocles also proposed in secret to destroy the beached ships of the other Allied navies, in order to ensure complete naval dominance, but was overruled by Aristides and the council of Athens.

It is based primarily upon the Life of Themistocles and Life of Aristides from Plutarch.

Snippets of biographical information are provided by ancient authors as diverse as Tatian, Proclus, Clement of Alexandria, Cicero, Aelian, Plutarch, Galen, Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides and several anonymous authors in the Palatine Anthology.

* Plutarch, Aristides

More detail for the whole period is provided by Plutarch, in his biographies of Themistocles, Aristides and especially Cimon.

Themistocles can still reasonably be thought of as " the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Greece " from the Persian threat, as Plutarch describes him.

Themistocles was born in Athens around 524 BC, the son of Neocles, who was, in the words of Plutarch " no very conspicuous man ".

Plutarch indicates that, on account of his mother's background, Themistocles was considered something of an outsider ; furthermore the family appear to have lived in an immigrant district of Athens, Cynosarges, outside the city walls.

Plutarch further reports that Themistocles was preoccupied, even as a child, with preparing for public life.

Since it was his long-standing advocacy of Athenian naval power which enabled the Allied fleet to fight at all, and it was his stratagem that brought about the Battle of Salamis, it is probably not an exaggeration to say, as Plutarch does, that Themistocles " is thought to have been the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Hellas ".

Furthermore, Plutarch reports that at the next Olympic Games: " Themistocles entered the stadium, the audience neglected the contestants all day long to gaze on him, and pointed him out with admiring applause to visiting strangers, so that he too was delighted, and confessed to his friends that he was now reaping in full measure the harvest of his toils in behalf of Hellas.

In itself, this did not mean that Themistocles had done anything wrong ; ostracism, in the words of Plutarch, " was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.

It should be noted that both Diodorus and Plutarch considered that the charges were false, and made solely for the purposes of destroying Themistocles.

Plutarch has the ship docking at Cyme in Aeolia, and Diodorus has Themistocles making his way to Asia in an undefined manner.

Diodorus and Plutarch next recount a similar tale, namely that Themistocles stayed briefly with an acquaintance ( Lysitheides or Nicogenes ) who was also acquainted with the Persian king, Artaxerxes I.

Thucydides and Plutarch say that Themistocles asked for a year's grace to learn the Persian language and customs, after which he would serve the king, and Artaxerxes granted this.

Plutarch provides the most evocative version of this story: But when Egypt revolted with Athenian aid ... and Cimon's mastery of the sea forced the King to resist the efforts of the Hellenes and to hinder their hostile growth ... messages came down to Themistocles saying that the King commanded him to make good his promises by applying himself to the Hellenic problem ; then, neither embittered by anything like anger against his former fellow-citizens, nor lifted up by the great honor and power he was to have in the war, but possibly thinking his task not even approachable, both because Hellas had other great generals at the time, and especially because Cimon was so marvelously successful in his campaigns ; yet most of all out of regard for the reputation of his own achievements and the trophies of those early days ; having decided that his best course was to put a fitting end to his life, he made a sacrifice to the gods, then called his friends together, gave them a farewell clasp of his hand, and, as the current story goes, drank bull's blood, or as some say, took a quick poison, and so died in Magnesia, in the sixty-fifth year of his life ... They say that the King, on learning the cause and the manner of his death, admired the man yet more, and continued to treat his friends and kindred with kindness.

The Magnesians built a " splendid tomb " in their market place for Themistocles, which still stood during the time of Plutarch, and continued to dedicate part of their revenues to the family of Themistocles.

Plutarch indicates that he met in Athens a lineal descendant of Themistocles ( also called Themistocles ) who was still paid these revenues, 600 years after the events in question.

Plutarch offers a more nuanced view of Themistocles, with more of a critique of Themistocles's character.

* Plutarch, Themistocles.

According to Plutarch, the Cean had a statue of himself made about this time, which inspired the Athenian politician Themistocles to comment on his ugliness.

Penia was also mentioned by other ancient Greek writers such as Alcaeus ( Fragment 364 ), Theognis ( Fragment 1 ; 267, 351, 649 ), Aristophanes ( Plutus, 414ff ), Herodotus, Plutarch ( Life of Themistocles ), and Philostratus ( Life of Appollonius ).

Vote cast against Themistocles ; a quorum of 6, 000 was required for ostracism under the Athenian democracy, according to Plutarch ; a similar quorum was necessary in the following century for grants of Athenian citizenship # Athenian_citizenship | citizenship