Plutarch claimed that this triumph represented Pompey's-and therefore Rome's-domination over the entire world, an achievement to outshine even Alexander's.

A closer look at this intertextual link reveals that Shakespeare used, for instance, Plutarch ’ s assertion that Antony claimed a genealogy that led back to Hercules, and constructed a parallel to Cleopatra by often associating her with Dionysus in his play.

According to Plutarch, however, the Megarians claimed that Sciron was not a robber, but identified him with the Megarian warlord named Sciron.

Herodotus claimed that the institution was created by Lycurgus, while Plutarch considers it a later institution.

Plutarch mentions that the Athenians saw the phantom of King Theseus, the mythical hero of Athens, leading the army in full battle gear in the charge against the Persians, and indeed he was depicted in the mural of the Stoa Poikile fighting for the Athenians, along with the twelve Olympian gods and other heroes.

According to Plutarch, Paullus replied to Fabius that he feared the votes in Rome more than Hannibal's army.

The Pompeion and many other buildings in the vicinity of the Sacred Gate were razed to the ground by the marauding army of the Roman dictator Sulla, during his sacking of Athens in 86 BC ; an episode that Plutarch described as a bloodbath.

Plutarch said the inhabitants of Caria carried the emblem of the rooster on the end of their lances and relates that origin to Artaxerxes, who awarded a Carian who was said to have killed Cyrus the Younger at the battle of Cunaxa in 401 B. C " the privilege of carrying ever after a golden cock upon his spear before the first ranks of the army in all expeditions " and the Carians also wore crested helmets at the time of Herodotus, for which reason " the Persians gave the Carians the name of cocks ".

Plutarch reports that " many things horrible and dreadful to see " occurred during the infliction of punishment, which was witnessed by the rest of Crassus ' army.

According to Livy and Plutarch, the Aequi gathered their army at Bolae.

According to Plutarch, at the time of the Battle of the Hydaspes River, the Nanda Empire's army numbered 200, 000 infantry, 80, 000 cavalry, 8, 000 chariots, and 7, 000 war elephants, which discouraged Alexander's men and prevented their further progress into India:

As Plutarch pointed out, " Lucullus the first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed the Tigris, took and burnt the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings, Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media, and making the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians.

Plutarch mentions the Carians as being referred to as " cocks " by the Persians on account of their wearing crests on their helmets ; the epithet was expressed in the form of a Persian privilege when a Carian soldier responsible for killing Cyrus the Younger was rewarded by Artaxerxes II ( r. 405 / 404 – 359 / 358 BC ) with the honor of leading the Persian army with a golden cock on the point of his spear.

According to Plutarch, Antigonus's army before the battle numbered around 70, 000 infantry, 10, 000 cavalry and 75 war elephants.

The Persian army hurried to the location of Alexander's crossing, with the cavalry reaching the scene of the battle first before the slower infantry, and then the battle continued largely as described by the Arrian and Plutarch accounts.

According to Plutarch, at the time of Alexander's Battle of the Hydaspes River, the size of the Magadha's army further east numbered 200, 000 infantry, 80, 000 cavalry, 8, 000 chariots, and 6, 000 war elephants, which was discouraging for Alexander's men and stayed their further progress into India:

Plutarch states that in this way Archelaus had no choice but to array his army on the plain, or risk being stoned to death by the Romans from above.

Archidamus III, king of Sparta, fell beneath its walls in 338 BC, while leading the army of the latter ( Manduria is also referred to as " Mandonion " in works by the Greek and Roman historian Plutarch ).

His army of 20, 000 infantrymen was composed of Spartan hoplites, possibly Spartan pikemen ( according to Plutarch, Cleomenes had armed 2, 000 Lacedaemonians in the Macedonian military style ), perioeci, mercenaries and about 650 cavalry.

Some historians, most notably Plutarch, wrote that Tigranes considered Lucullus ' army to be far too small, and upon seeing it, is quoted to have said that " If they come as ambassadors, they are too many ; if they are soldiers, too few ," although some have expressed doubt on the veracity of this quote.

Concerning the liberal use of the death penalty in the Draconic code, Plutarch states: " It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones.

Plutarch tells us that Fabius believed that the disaster at Lake Trasimene was due, in part, to the fact that the gods had become neglected.

Plutarch states that Metilius " boldly applied himself to the people in the behalf of Minucius ", and had Minucius granted powers equivalent to those of Fabius.

By this, Plutarch probably means that as Plebeian Tribune, Metilius had the Plebeian Council, a popular assembly which only Tribunes could preside over, grant Minucius quasi-dictatorial powers.

Compare the carved and incised " sacred glyphs " hieroglyphs, which have had a longer history in English, dating from the first Elizabethan translation of Plutarch, who adopted " hieroglyphic " as a Latin adjective.

Some " calumnious fictions " were written about Herodotus in a work titled On the Malice of Herodotus, by Plutarch, a Theban by birth, ( or it might have been a Pseudo-Plutarch, in this case " a great collector of slanders "), including the allegation that the historian was prejudiced against Thebes because the authorities there had denied him permission to set up a school.

Plutarch writes that many Romans found the triumph held following Caesar's victory to be in poor taste, as those defeated in the civil war had not been foreigners, but instead fellow Romans.

Whatever conflicts existed between the two men, Antony remained faithful to Caesar but it is worth mentioning that according to Plutarch ( paragraph 13 ) Trebonius, one of the conspirators, had ' sounded him unobtrusively and cautiously ... Antony had understood his drift ... but had given him no encouragement: at the same time he had not reported the conversation to Caesar '.

Both Livy ( in Latin, living in Augustus ' time ) and Plutarch ( in Greek, a century later ), described how Rome had developed its legislation, notably the transition from a kingdom to a republic, by following the example of the Greeks.

Plutarch suggests that the rivalry between the two had more sordid beginnings, when they competed over the love of a boy: "... they were rivals for the affection of the beautiful Stesilaus of Ceos, and were passionate beyond all moderation.

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.

Plutarch reports that, as might be imagined, Artaxerxes was elated that such a dangerous and illustrious foe had come to serve him.

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.

Plutarch mentions an interesting element of Epirote folklore regarding Achilles: In his biography of King Pyrrhus, he claims that Achilles " had a divine status in Epirus and in the local dialect he was called Aspetos " ( meaning unspeakable, unspeakably great, in Homeric Greek ).

According to Plutarch, a seer had foreseen that Caesar would be harmed not later than the Ides of March ; and on his way to the Theatre of Pompey ( where he would be assassinated ), Caesar met the seer and joked, " The ides of March have come ", meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied " Aye, Caesar ; but not gone.

As a boy Demosthenes had a speech impediment: Plutarch refers to a weakness in his voice of " a perplexed and indistinct utterance and a shortness of breath, which, by breaking and disjointing his sentences much obscured the sense and meaning of what he spoke.

According to Plutarch, this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish.

A century after Plutarch, Aelian also said that Peistratus had been Solon's eromenos.

In his Life of Antony, Plutarch remarks that " judging by the proofs which she had had before this of the effect of her beauty upon Caius Caesar and Gnaeus the son of Pompey, she had hopes that she would more easily bring Antony to her feet.

Among ancient sources, the poet Simonides, another near-contemporary, says the campaign force numbered 200, 000 ; while a later writer, the Roman Cornelius Nepos estimates 200, 000 infantry and 10, 000 cavalry, of which only 100, 000 fought in the battle, while the rest were loaded into the fleet that was rounding Cape Sounion ; Plutarch and Pausanias both independently give 300, 000, as does the Suda dictionary.

Plutarch says that Demetrius " fought brilliantly and routed his enemy ".

Plutarch, in his " Life of Marius ," did mention that the soil of the fields the battle had been fought upon were made so fertile by human remains that they were able to produce " magna copia " ( a great quantity ) of yield for many years.