Plutarch
historical figure · 6 works · 23 mentions · 40 anchored passages · author page
in the texts
The Rights of War and Peace
Greek biographer whose Lives are cited repeatedly as evidence for claims about human nature and reported sayings.
In conformity to which, Plutarch, in the life of Cato the elder, observes, that we are formed by nature to use law and justice towards men only.
Plutarch too agrees entirely with what has been said, as appears from a passage in his life of Pompey, affirming that man neither was, nor is, by nature, a wild unsociable creature.
This law admits of what Anaxarchus said, as Plutarch relates in the life of Alexander, though without sufficient accuracy, that God does not will a thing, because it is just, but that it is just, or binding, because God wills it.
The Freedom of the Seas (Mare Liberum)
Greek biographer/moralist quoted on the pretext of 'civilizing' barbarians.
Iam olim Plutarchus πρόφασιν πλεονεξίας fuisse dicit ἡμερω̄σαι τὰ βαρβαριϰὰ, improbam scilicet alieni cupiditatem hoc sibi velum obtendere, quod barbariem mansuefacit.
Plutarch said long ago that it was greed that furnished the pretext for conquering barbarous countries, and it is not unsuspected that greedy longing for the property of another often hid itself behind a pretext of civilizing barbarians.
Plutarch, Pericles XXIX, 4.
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Ancient biographer and moralist whose arguments on suicide are cited as well known.
The arguments of Plutarch, of Seneca, of Montaigne, and a hundred others, are well known.
Elements
Greek biographer and essayist whose De Communibus Notitiis adversus Stoicos preserves the report of Democritus's question about conic sections.
Plutarch speaks of Democritus as having raised the question in natural philosophy (φυσικῶς):
Institutes of Roman Law
Greek biographer cited for the account of the wife's declaration of equality during coemption.
’ Plutarch informs us that the wife asserted her equality by the terms, Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia, Quaest.
Dissertations on Early Law and Custom
Greek biographer whose 'Pyrrhus' is cited as evidence of a Niyoga-like custom surviving among the Spartans.
A well-known story told by Plutarch (‘Pyrrhus,’ 26) of the relations between a brilliant Lacedæmonian officer, Acrotatus, and Chelidonis, the wife of Cleonymus, and of the way in which the old men of Sparta applauded these relations and invoked blessings on the offspring of Chelidonis, does assuredly suggest that, in that old-fashioned and never very delicate society, some institution like that of …