Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a Boeotian, has to say for Cadmus, the Phoenician who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for ox — which, unlike Hesiod, the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities.

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.

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.

Says Kahn: " Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out.

Plutarch states that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest general, Hannibal is said to have replied either Alexander or Pyrrhus, then himself, or, according to another version of the event, Pyrrhus, Scipio, then himself.

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 ".

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

When the Persian fleet finally arrived at Artemisium after a significant delay, Eurybiades, who both Herodotus and Plutarch suggest was not the most inspiring commander, wished to sail away without fighting.

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.

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.

The myth can be traced back to Plutarch, who includes no less than 17 " sayings " of " Spartan women ," all of which paraphrase or elaborate on the theme that Spartan mothers rejected their own offspring if they showed any kind of cowardice.

Plutarch, a Greek scholar who lived from 46 CE to 120 CE, wrote Isis and Osiris, which is considered a main source about the very late myths about Isis.

The religious value of the boundary marker is documented by Plutarch, who ascribes to king Numa the construction of temples to Fides and Terminus and the delimitation of Roman territory.

Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

After 200 BC at any given time there were two priests of Apollo, who were in charge of the entire sanctuary ; Plutarch, who served as a priest during the late first century and early second century AD, gives us the most information about the organization of the oracle at that time.

However, most commonly, these refer to an observation made by Plutarch, who presided as high priest at Delphi for several years, who stated that her oracular powers appeared to be associated with vapors from the Kerna spring waters that flowed under the temple.

All of these symptoms match the experience of the Pythia in action, as related by Plutarch, who witnessed many prophecies.

His verses have come down to us in fragmentary quotations by ancient authors such as Plutarch and Demosthenes who used them to illustrate their own arguments.

So too could the first major English author to write in this style, William Painter, who borrowed from, amongst others, Herodotus, Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Claudius Aelianus, Livy, Tacitus, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, and Bandello himself.

" Later in the work, however, Plutarch indicates that " her beauty, as we are told, was in itself neither altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.

Plutarch explains that Androcles, a political leader, used false witnesses who accused Alcibiades and his friends of mutilating the statues, and of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries.

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.

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 claimed that the army had fought against three million men during the Gallic Wars, of whom one million died, and another million were enslaved.

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.

We know little more of the life of Andronicus, but he is of special interest in the history of philosophy, from the statement of Plutarch, that he published a new edition of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which formerly belonged to the library of Apellicon, and were brought to Rome by Sulla with the rest of Apellicon's library in 84 BC.

The main literary sources for Servius ' life and achievements are the Roman historian Livy ( 59 BC – AD 17 ), his near contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch ( c. 46 – 120 AD ); their own sources included works by Quintus Fabius Pictor, Diocles of Peparethus and Quintus Ennius.

Of his written works, none have survived except as fragments embedded in the works of later authors like Cicero, Seneca, Galen, Plutarch, and others.

Plutarch tells us that he superintended the great works of Pericles on the Acropolis.

An ancient cult of Aphrodite-Ariadne was observed at Amathus, Cyprus, according to the obscure Hellenistic mythographer Paeon of Amathus ; Paeon's works are lost, but his narrative is among the sources cited by Plutarch in his vita of Theseus ( 20. 3 -. 5 ).

The first known written account of a run from Marathon to Athens occurs in the works of the Greek writer Plutarch ( 46 – 120 ), in his essay On the Glory of Athens.

His chief works were: an epic Thebais, an account of the expedition of the Seven against Thebes and the war of the Epigoni ; and an elegiac poem Lyde, so called from the poet's mistress, for whose death he endeavoured to find consolation telling stories from mythology of heroic disasters ( Plutarch, Consul, ad Apoll.

His principal works are translations of Strabo and of some of the Lives of Plutarch, a compendium of the Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, and a series of commentaries on Persius, Martial, the Satires of Juvenal, and on some of the writings of Aristotle and Cicero.

He wrote some fifty works, of which only fragments have survived preserved by writers such as Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus, Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch.

However, in the published version he restricts himself to noting that in works by Cicero he had found an account of the theories of Hicetas and that Plutarch had provided him with an account of the Pythagoreans Heraclides Ponticus, Philolaus, and Ecphantus.

" Other works of Guevara are the Decada de los Césares ( Valladolid, 1539 ), or " Lives of the Ten Roman Emperors ," in imitation of the manner of Plutarch and Suetonius ; and the Epistolas familiares ( Valladolid, 1539 – 1545 ), sometimes called " The Golden Letters ," often printed in Spain, and translated into all the principal languages of Europe.

The works of the latter two, however, survived long enough for later authors like Plutarch, Diodorus, and Polyaenus to base their works on.

Xylander was the author of a number of important works, including Latin translations of Dio Cassius ( 1558 ), Plutarch ( 1560 – 1570 ) and Strabo ( 1571 ).

As an illustrator his activity was prodigious, the list of works illustrated by his crayon amounting to about forty-five, among which are Béranger's poems, the History of the Revolution by Adolphe Thiers, the History of Napoleon by de Norvins, the great Walter Scott by Auguste Defauconpret, the French Plutarch and Frédéric Bérat's Songs.

His chief works were Latin versions of Plutarch, Aristotle and John Chrysostom.

When very young he went to Athens, where he enjoyed the society of Cimon, of whom he left laudatory notices in some of his works which are quoted by Plutarch.

To counterbalance these high honours, the Dialis was subjected to many restrictions and privations, a long catalogue of which was compiled by Aulus Gellius from the works of Fabius Pictor and Masurius Sabinus, while Plutarch, in his Roman Questions, endeavours to explain their import.

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 ).

He also wrote several other medical and philosophical works, of which nothing but the titles and a few fragments have been preserved by Stobaeus, Plutarch, and Galen.

Recounted by Livy and Plutarch ( Parallel Lives II, 15 and 19 ), it provided a subject for Renaissance and post-Renaissance works of art that combined a suitably inspiring example of the hardihood and courage of ancient Romans with the opportunity to depict multiple figures, including heroically semi-nude figures, in intensely passionate struggle.

In refutation of it Plutarch wrote two works, a dialogue, to prove, That it is impossible even to live pleasantly according to Epicurus, and a work entitled Against Colotes.