Book Review: Plutarch's Greek Live (translation by Robin Waterfield)
Or "Come for Alexander, stay for Alcibiades".
I wanted to better my knowledge of Alexander the Great but my copy of Herodotus's Histories was looking excessively large so when I saw "Greek Lives" for sale I snapped it up.
I wish I'd bought a "Complete Lives" instead. It's so good.
Plutarch brings the lives and times to life in an interesting way, and the translator does a very good job of making the work flow and be understandable without resorting to artificial modernising.
I could have done with some of the chapter introductions being fuller, some of them assumed knowledge I most certainly didn't have (the 4 out of 5 is because of that, Plutarch himself gets 5/5). Some of the footnotes/endnotes were a bit enigmatic too.
I think I agree with the idea put forward in the introduction that Plutarch wrote these to suggest good ways to be a public person of power, particularly if you consider the different way Cimon is treated depending on the message Plutarch is conveying in a life.
Poor Agesilaus who, after a certain point, couldn't get anything right for trying to the right thing, was completely new to me, and I learned a lot about Ancient Greece.
Definitely worth reading.
~~~~
I still say Alcibiades or the entire Peloponnesian War would make for a fantastic tv show. I know Bruno Heller is probably sick of chitons and togas but he'd be just the man and he could get Simon Baker to play Alcibiades.
Next book - The Mauritius Command, because I finally have both a copy and time after long periods without one or the other.
( LibraryThing Suggestions )
Skipping two which are different collections of the same thing. Several of these are things I'd like to read and I have a copy of one of them.
Unsuggester is still borked.
I wanted to better my knowledge of Alexander the Great but my copy of Herodotus's Histories was looking excessively large so when I saw "Greek Lives" for sale I snapped it up.
I wish I'd bought a "Complete Lives" instead. It's so good.
Plutarch brings the lives and times to life in an interesting way, and the translator does a very good job of making the work flow and be understandable without resorting to artificial modernising.
I could have done with some of the chapter introductions being fuller, some of them assumed knowledge I most certainly didn't have (the 4 out of 5 is because of that, Plutarch himself gets 5/5). Some of the footnotes/endnotes were a bit enigmatic too.
I think I agree with the idea put forward in the introduction that Plutarch wrote these to suggest good ways to be a public person of power, particularly if you consider the different way Cimon is treated depending on the message Plutarch is conveying in a life.
Poor Agesilaus who, after a certain point, couldn't get anything right for trying to the right thing, was completely new to me, and I learned a lot about Ancient Greece.
Definitely worth reading.
~~~~
I still say Alcibiades or the entire Peloponnesian War would make for a fantastic tv show. I know Bruno Heller is probably sick of chitons and togas but he'd be just the man and he could get Simon Baker to play Alcibiades.
Next book - The Mauritius Command, because I finally have both a copy and time after long periods without one or the other.
( LibraryThing Suggestions )
Skipping two which are different collections of the same thing. Several of these are things I'd like to read and I have a copy of one of them.
Unsuggester is still borked.