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 ( AD 46 – 120 ) wrote that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC Julius Caesar accidentally burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate Achillas ' attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea.

As Platonism developed in the phases commonly called ' middle Platonism ' and neoplatonism, such writers as Plutarch, Porphyry, Proclus, Olympiodorus and Damascius wrote explicitly about the symbolic interpretation of traditional and Orphic myths.

Plutarch wrote that, according to Volumnius, Brutus repeated two verses, but Volumnius was only able to recall the one quoted.

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.

In the early 2nd century AD, Plutarch wrote the most complete ancient account of the myth in De Iside et Osiride, an analysis of Egyptian religious beliefs.

It was to a Greek priestess of Isis that Plutarch wrote his account of the myth of Osiris.

Ancient authors such as Herodotus and Plutarch are the main source of information, yet they wrote about Solon long after his death, at a time when history was by no means an academic discipline.

According to Plutarch however, Solon originally wrote poetry for amusement, discussing pleasure in a popular rather than philosophical way.

Plutarch is the only ancient source for this account and yet it is considered credible on the basis of some literary evidence ( Pindar wrote a paean celebrating Ceos, in which he says on behalf of the island " I am renowned for my athletic achievements among Greeks " 4, epode 1, a circumstance that suggests that Bacchylides himself was unavailable at the time.

Throughout his life he was an extreme profligate, something that Plutarch wrote reflected ill upon his patron Julius Caesar.

He lived a life of cheerful simplicity, and Plutarch, who wrote a detailed biography of Crates which unfortunately does not survive, records what sort of man Crates was:

Plutarch wrote that Harpocrates was the second son of Isis and that he was born prematurely with lame legs.

Plutarch wrote that Marcellus, when he had previously entered the city for a diplomatic meeting with the Syracusans, had noticed a weak point in its fortifications.

* 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 wrote in De Superstitiones 171:

Plutarch later wrote that Agesilaus was a king of the traditional Spartan ideals, often seen wearing his traditional cloak which was threadbare.

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

Plutarch, while writing about Alexander's correspondence, reveals an occasion when Hephaestion was away on business, and Alexander wrote to him.

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.

This is a Hellenism, like sylva for classical Latin silva, reinforced by the fact that our two major sources, Plutarch and Appian, wrote in Greek, and call him Σύλλα.

Alexander appears to have been quite jealous of Antipater's victory ; according to Plutarch, the king wrote in a letter to his viceroy: " It seems, my friends that while we have been conquering Darius here, there has been a battle of mice in Arcadia ".

Plutarch wrote that demons could not feel sexual desire because they did not need to procreate, his work inspiring later Remy's opinion.

This was inferred from Plutarch, who wrote that Alcibiades had his galley bed hung from ropes, but did not specifically describe it as a net or sling.

In much the same way, we recognize the importance of Shakespeare's familarity with Plutarch and Montaigne, of Shelley's study of Plato's dialogues, and of Coleridge's enthusiastic plundering of the writings of many philosophers and theologians from Plato to Schelling and William Godwin, through which so many abstract ideas were brought to the attention of English men of letters.

Plutarch relates that Alexander worshiped the spear he slew his uncle with as if it were a god.

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.

However, Cornelius Nepos, Pausanias and Plutarch all give the figure of 9, 000 Athenians and 1, 000 Plateans ; while Justin suggests that there were 10, 000 Athenians and 1, 000 Plataeans.

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.

Among them were editions of Chaucer, Plutarch, two books in Italian, and folio editions of Cicero and Plato.

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.

Though the arguments he used were lost, Plutarch stated that Seleucus was the first to prove the heliocentric system through reasoning.

Plutarch, in his Eroticos, maintains that Heracles ' male lovers were beyond counting.

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.

He and Ictinus were architects of the Parthenon ( Plutarch, Pericles, 13 ).

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.

To reconcile the contradictory aspects of his character, as well as to explain how Minos governed Crete over a period spanning so many generations, two kings of the name of Minos were assumed by later poets and rationalizing mythologists, such as Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch — " putting aside the mythological element ", as he claims — in his life of Theseus.

Plutarch and others have noted that the sacrifices to Osiris were " gloomy, solemn, and mournful ..." ( Isis and Osiris, 69 ) and that the great mystery festival, celebrated in two phases, began at Abydos on the 17th of Athyr ( November 13 ) commemorating the death of the god, which was also the same day that grain was planted in the ground.

Plutarch claims that his remains were returned to Athens and placed in Cimon's family vault.

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.

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 recounts that " honors he enjoyed were far beyond those paid to other foreigners ; nay, he actually took part in the King's hunts and in his household diversions.

Among his last words were, according to Plutarch, " By all means must we fly ; not with our feet, however, but with our hands.

Ingres's choice of subjects reflected his literary tastes, which were severely limited: he read and reread Homer, Virgil, Plutarch, Dante, histories, and the lives of the artists.

His colleague John Baines, on the other hand, says that temples may have kept written accounts of myths, which later were lost, and that Plutarch could have drawn on such sources to write his narrative.

Through the work of classical writers such as Plutarch, knowledge of the Osiris myth was preserved even after the middle of the first millennium AD, when Egyptian religion ceased to exist and knowledge of the writing systems that were originally used to record the myth were lost.