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Andrew’s first review of the year
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Ploútarchos' Nine Athenian 'Lives' Chronicle The Exploits Of The Legendary Greek Heroes Of Classical Antiquity.
Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' was originally published in 1960 in a Penguin edition which was translated by Ian-Scott Kilvert, & since that time Penguin Classics has published utterly exceptional reissues of Plutarch's other collections such as 'On Sparta', 'The Fall Of The Roman Republic', 'Makers Of Rome', 'Rome In Crisis', 'T Ploútarchos' Nine Athenian 'Lives' Chronicle The Exploits Of The Legendary Greek Heroes Of Classical Antiquity.
Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' was originally published in 1960 in a Penguin edition which was translated by Ian-Scott Kilvert, & since that time Penguin Classics has published utterly exceptional reissues of Plutarch's other collections such as 'On Sparta', 'The Fall Of The Roman Republic', 'Makers Of Rome', 'Rome In Crisis', 'The Rise Of Rome', & 'The Age Of Alexander' with additional expanded notes, bibliographies, & updated reading suggestions. Plutarch's 'Life Of Epaminondas' & 'Life Of Scipio' are both lost (it is unknown whether this was Scipio Africanus or his adopted grandson, Scipio Aemilianus) but he did write 23 paired short biographies, 19 with comparisons, called 'Parallel Lives', of popular Greek & Roman historical figures, as well as 4 standalone 'Lives' : Artaxerxes, Aratus Of Sicyon, Galba, & Otho. This brand-new, updated 2024 Penguin Classics edition of the original 1960 'Rise & Fall Of Athens' set of 9 Athenian 'Lives' features a revised introduction & translation work with an unbelievable amount of additional polish administered by John Marincola, who was educated at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania & Brown University, & is the author of the 2017 'On Writing History From Herodotus To Herodian', published by the Penguin Classics. This edition of 'Athens' features the 'Lives' of Theseus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, & Lysander, as well as considerable portions of Plutarch's famous invective on the Greek Historian Herodotus, entitled 'On The Malice Of Herodotus'.
The Greek hero Theseus is widely considered to be the founder of Athens whose mythical exploits paved the way to the city's early rise to dominance over the Attica region, & in Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' collection of short biographies, Theseus' 'Life' is paired with that of Rome's legendary founder, Romulus. Portions of the 'Life Of Theseus' contain fantastical, unbelievable tales which are pulled straight from Greek folklore featuring mythical figures & creatures such as half-human centaurs, a vicious minotaur, & tribes of female Amazon warriors who attack Athens while Theseus desperately rallies the citizens to drive them back after a fierce battle ensues. Scarcely more believable are the poetically-vicious encounters between Theseus & a motley assortment of outlaws & brigands he meets while traveling the Attican countryside, ne'er-do-wells with names such as Perphetes 'The Club-Bearer', Sinis 'The Pine-Bender', & Phaea 'The Wild Sow Of Crommyon' are each dealt with according to Theseus' own brutal moral code as he progresses, '..punishing the wicked & meting out to them the same violence that they had inflicted on others, so that they suffered a justice that was modelled on their own injustice.' The 'Life Of Theseus' is the sole biography in this set which features these obviously non-historically accurate vignettes yet it still remains an immensely entertaining read.
The Athenian lawgiver Solon's far-reaching & all-encompassing reforms affected practically every aspect of Attican life, from marriage, to commerce, & he even enacted a series of laws regulating the drawing of wells, the placing of bee-hives, & the planting of trees. Solon was considered a champion of the poor with his decree known as the 'shaking off of burdens' which cancelled all existing debts & prevented the person of a debtor from being accepted as security in future. He also increased the value of money by fixing the value of the 'mina' from 73 drachmas to 100. Solon was far from perfect, however, & after prematurely divulging his intention to abolish debts to his 3 dear friends Conon, Clinias, & Hipponicus, according to Plutarch, 'They promptly took advantage of this confidence & anticipated the decree by borrowing large sums from the rich & buying up big estates. Then, when the decree was published, they went on enjoying the use of their property but refused to pay their creditors.' This brought great shame & dishonor upon the lawgiver's name, & his friends became ever after known as 'debt-cutters'. Solon regulated the export of certain Attican resources, ruling that olive oil was the only commodity which was legal to ship abroad, imposing upon offenders either a 100-drachma fine or the curse of the Archon, & the export of Attican figs was expressly forbidden, with any who informed against illegal merchants being called 'skophanteis', or 'fig-declarers'. Finally, Solon held a census during his time as archon in which he assigned specific titles & duties to the 4 levels of Athenian society : the '500-measure men', the 'horse-tax payers', the 'teamsters', & the 'thetes'. These 4 tiers were primarily wealth & property-based & denoted which civic duties were eligible to each of the classes. Plutarch & the translators, Ian Scott-Kilvert & John Marincola, perform admirable work in rendering the bureaucratic material found in the 'Life Of Solon' surprisingly exciting to read about. The expanded notes for this 'Life' are nothing short of remarkable.
Such was Aristides' selflessness as a politician that he would introduce his own reforms & proposals via other men so as not to allow his bitter rivalry with Themistocles prevent measures from coming to pass which benefitted all Athenians, & as the reader proceeds through Aristides' 'Life' he or she will likely agree with the high praise of the Greek historian Herodotus, cited in the volume's extended notes : 'the more I have learned of his character, the more I have come to believe that he was the best & most just man that Athens ever produced.'
Cimon executes a daring maneuver to expel the Persian forces who had invaded & occupied the Chersonese & enlisted the assistance of the neighboring Thracians at around 466/5, where with a mere 4 triremes he sets sail from Athens & expertly captures 13 Persian vessels & subdues their Thracian allies to successfully restore the territory to Athenian control. Cimon later wins a decisive sea battle against the citizens of Thasos who had revolted from Athenian sovereignty where 33 Thasian ships are captured before the city is besieged & forced into surrender & the neighboring gold mines on the mainland are annexed & made to be Athenian assets. Cimon's popularity with his fellow citizens does not last, however, & he garners extreme criticism when he sends military aid to Athens' mortal enemy when in either 465/4 or 464/3 BC a cataclysmic earthquake wracks the city of Sparta during the 4th year of the Spartan King, Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, & subsequently ignites a brutal revolt of the Spartan helots to such an degree that Sparta must entreat the allies for assistance. Sparta again entreats the Delian League for aid against the Messenians & the helots in Itholme around 461/0 BC, but, according to Plutarch's narrative, '..because the Spartans feared the Athenians' daring & brilliance, they sent them alone of the allies, away as dangerous revolutionaries. The Athenians returned home in a fury & proceeded to take revenge against the friends of Sparta & Cimon in particular. They seized upon some trifling pretext to ostracize him for ten years, for this was the period laid down for all those banished by ostracism.' The 'Life Of Cimon' despite being the shortest in the set of 9 is extremely engaging & should appeal to a wide variety of readers.
During his Archonship Pericles undertook an ambitious building programme which resulted in the construction of much of Athens' classical architecture, although men would occasionally poke fun at his propensity for speech over action, such as when the Athenisan poet Cratinus' used good-natured, mocking verse to make fun of the long time it was taking to complete the initiation chamber at Eleusis : 'For so long has Pericles moved it forward in words; but in fact he has not even started it.' In chapter 27 of the 'Life Of Pericles' Plutarch references the writings of Theophrastus the philosopher, who recorded that in order to forestall war with Sparta Pericles would send a yearly bribe of 10 talents to the Spartan political leadership which proved effective until the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. Plutarch's 'Life Of Pericles' is paired with that of Fabius Maximus 'Cunctator', the Roman general who successfully utilized tactics of avoidance & prevarication against the well-trained Carthaginian army led by the Hannibal Barca during the Second Punic War.
For the 'Life Of Nicias', Plutarch supplements Thucydides' excellent base narrative with the writings of the Sicilian historians Philistus of Syracuse & Timaeus of Tauromenium, & he uses the verse of poets such as Aristophanes, Teleclides, & Eupolis to provide examples of Nicias' negative character traits, such as his cowardice & propensity to bribe informers & his enemies. Nicias was a prominent Athenian general & statesman who swiftly rose to power in the years following the death of Pericles in 429, during the first half of the Peloponnesian War which lasted 27 years in total, from 431 - 404 BC. Enormously wealthy & also very pious, Nicias owned valuable commissions at the lucrative silver mines at Laurium & would regularly stage costly religious processions in an effort to further his career in Athenian politics.
Overall, this new 2024 edition of Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' is a truly exceptional update to an already-outstanding piece of classical scholarship which serves as the capstone to Penguin's impressive library of Plutarch's considerable body of work. It is a wonderful companion piece to the other Greek-oriented Plutarch compilations such as 'The Age Of Alexander', 'On Sparta', & to a lesser extent, 'The Rise Of Rome'. It is by far the most complex & nuanced of the Plutarch sets & as such it is best recommended for readers who possess a reasonable comfort level with Plutarch's language & writing style. This should make a fantastic addition to any Greek history lover's library. ...more
Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' was originally published in 1960 in a Penguin edition which was translated by Ian-Scott Kilvert, & since that time Penguin Classics has published utterly exceptional reissues of Plutarch's other collections such as 'On Sparta', 'The Fall Of The Roman Republic', 'Makers Of Rome', 'Rome In Crisis', 'T Ploútarchos' Nine Athenian 'Lives' Chronicle The Exploits Of The Legendary Greek Heroes Of Classical Antiquity.
Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' was originally published in 1960 in a Penguin edition which was translated by Ian-Scott Kilvert, & since that time Penguin Classics has published utterly exceptional reissues of Plutarch's other collections such as 'On Sparta', 'The Fall Of The Roman Republic', 'Makers Of Rome', 'Rome In Crisis', 'The Rise Of Rome', & 'The Age Of Alexander' with additional expanded notes, bibliographies, & updated reading suggestions. Plutarch's 'Life Of Epaminondas' & 'Life Of Scipio' are both lost (it is unknown whether this was Scipio Africanus or his adopted grandson, Scipio Aemilianus) but he did write 23 paired short biographies, 19 with comparisons, called 'Parallel Lives', of popular Greek & Roman historical figures, as well as 4 standalone 'Lives' : Artaxerxes, Aratus Of Sicyon, Galba, & Otho. This brand-new, updated 2024 Penguin Classics edition of the original 1960 'Rise & Fall Of Athens' set of 9 Athenian 'Lives' features a revised introduction & translation work with an unbelievable amount of additional polish administered by John Marincola, who was educated at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania & Brown University, & is the author of the 2017 'On Writing History From Herodotus To Herodian', published by the Penguin Classics. This edition of 'Athens' features the 'Lives' of Theseus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, & Lysander, as well as considerable portions of Plutarch's famous invective on the Greek Historian Herodotus, entitled 'On The Malice Of Herodotus'.
The Greek hero Theseus is widely considered to be the founder of Athens whose mythical exploits paved the way to the city's early rise to dominance over the Attica region, & in Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives' collection of short biographies, Theseus' 'Life' is paired with that of Rome's legendary founder, Romulus. Portions of the 'Life Of Theseus' contain fantastical, unbelievable tales which are pulled straight from Greek folklore featuring mythical figures & creatures such as half-human centaurs, a vicious minotaur, & tribes of female Amazon warriors who attack Athens while Theseus desperately rallies the citizens to drive them back after a fierce battle ensues. Scarcely more believable are the poetically-vicious encounters between Theseus & a motley assortment of outlaws & brigands he meets while traveling the Attican countryside, ne'er-do-wells with names such as Perphetes 'The Club-Bearer', Sinis 'The Pine-Bender', & Phaea 'The Wild Sow Of Crommyon' are each dealt with according to Theseus' own brutal moral code as he progresses, '..punishing the wicked & meting out to them the same violence that they had inflicted on others, so that they suffered a justice that was modelled on their own injustice.' The 'Life Of Theseus' is the sole biography in this set which features these obviously non-historically accurate vignettes yet it still remains an immensely entertaining read.
The Athenian lawgiver Solon's far-reaching & all-encompassing reforms affected practically every aspect of Attican life, from marriage, to commerce, & he even enacted a series of laws regulating the drawing of wells, the placing of bee-hives, & the planting of trees. Solon was considered a champion of the poor with his decree known as the 'shaking off of burdens' which cancelled all existing debts & prevented the person of a debtor from being accepted as security in future. He also increased the value of money by fixing the value of the 'mina' from 73 drachmas to 100. Solon was far from perfect, however, & after prematurely divulging his intention to abolish debts to his 3 dear friends Conon, Clinias, & Hipponicus, according to Plutarch, 'They promptly took advantage of this confidence & anticipated the decree by borrowing large sums from the rich & buying up big estates. Then, when the decree was published, they went on enjoying the use of their property but refused to pay their creditors.' This brought great shame & dishonor upon the lawgiver's name, & his friends became ever after known as 'debt-cutters'. Solon regulated the export of certain Attican resources, ruling that olive oil was the only commodity which was legal to ship abroad, imposing upon offenders either a 100-drachma fine or the curse of the Archon, & the export of Attican figs was expressly forbidden, with any who informed against illegal merchants being called 'skophanteis', or 'fig-declarers'. Finally, Solon held a census during his time as archon in which he assigned specific titles & duties to the 4 levels of Athenian society : the '500-measure men', the 'horse-tax payers', the 'teamsters', & the 'thetes'. These 4 tiers were primarily wealth & property-based & denoted which civic duties were eligible to each of the classes. Plutarch & the translators, Ian Scott-Kilvert & John Marincola, perform admirable work in rendering the bureaucratic material found in the 'Life Of Solon' surprisingly exciting to read about. The expanded notes for this 'Life' are nothing short of remarkable.
Such was Aristides' selflessness as a politician that he would introduce his own reforms & proposals via other men so as not to allow his bitter rivalry with Themistocles prevent measures from coming to pass which benefitted all Athenians, & as the reader proceeds through Aristides' 'Life' he or she will likely agree with the high praise of the Greek historian Herodotus, cited in the volume's extended notes : 'the more I have learned of his character, the more I have come to believe that he was the best & most just man that Athens ever produced.'
Cimon executes a daring maneuver to expel the Persian forces who had invaded & occupied the Chersonese & enlisted the assistance of the neighboring Thracians at around 466/5, where with a mere 4 triremes he sets sail from Athens & expertly captures 13 Persian vessels & subdues their Thracian allies to successfully restore the territory to Athenian control. Cimon later wins a decisive sea battle against the citizens of Thasos who had revolted from Athenian sovereignty where 33 Thasian ships are captured before the city is besieged & forced into surrender & the neighboring gold mines on the mainland are annexed & made to be Athenian assets. Cimon's popularity with his fellow citizens does not last, however, & he garners extreme criticism when he sends military aid to Athens' mortal enemy when in either 465/4 or 464/3 BC a cataclysmic earthquake wracks the city of Sparta during the 4th year of the Spartan King, Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, & subsequently ignites a brutal revolt of the Spartan helots to such an degree that Sparta must entreat the allies for assistance. Sparta again entreats the Delian League for aid against the Messenians & the helots in Itholme around 461/0 BC, but, according to Plutarch's narrative, '..because the Spartans feared the Athenians' daring & brilliance, they sent them alone of the allies, away as dangerous revolutionaries. The Athenians returned home in a fury & proceeded to take revenge against the friends of Sparta & Cimon in particular. They seized upon some trifling pretext to ostracize him for ten years, for this was the period laid down for all those banished by ostracism.' The 'Life Of Cimon' despite being the shortest in the set of 9 is extremely engaging & should appeal to a wide variety of readers.
During his Archonship Pericles undertook an ambitious building programme which resulted in the construction of much of Athens' classical architecture, although men would occasionally poke fun at his propensity for speech over action, such as when the Athenisan poet Cratinus' used good-natured, mocking verse to make fun of the long time it was taking to complete the initiation chamber at Eleusis : 'For so long has Pericles moved it forward in words; but in fact he has not even started it.' In chapter 27 of the 'Life Of Pericles' Plutarch references the writings of Theophrastus the philosopher, who recorded that in order to forestall war with Sparta Pericles would send a yearly bribe of 10 talents to the Spartan political leadership which proved effective until the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. Plutarch's 'Life Of Pericles' is paired with that of Fabius Maximus 'Cunctator', the Roman general who successfully utilized tactics of avoidance & prevarication against the well-trained Carthaginian army led by the Hannibal Barca during the Second Punic War.
For the 'Life Of Nicias', Plutarch supplements Thucydides' excellent base narrative with the writings of the Sicilian historians Philistus of Syracuse & Timaeus of Tauromenium, & he uses the verse of poets such as Aristophanes, Teleclides, & Eupolis to provide examples of Nicias' negative character traits, such as his cowardice & propensity to bribe informers & his enemies. Nicias was a prominent Athenian general & statesman who swiftly rose to power in the years following the death of Pericles in 429, during the first half of the Peloponnesian War which lasted 27 years in total, from 431 - 404 BC. Enormously wealthy & also very pious, Nicias owned valuable commissions at the lucrative silver mines at Laurium & would regularly stage costly religious processions in an effort to further his career in Athenian politics.
Overall, this new 2024 edition of Plutarch's 'The Rise & Fall Of Athens' is a truly exceptional update to an already-outstanding piece of classical scholarship which serves as the capstone to Penguin's impressive library of Plutarch's considerable body of work. It is a wonderful companion piece to the other Greek-oriented Plutarch compilations such as 'The Age Of Alexander', 'On Sparta', & to a lesser extent, 'The Rise Of Rome'. It is by far the most complex & nuanced of the Plutarch sets & as such it is best recommended for readers who possess a reasonable comfort level with Plutarch's language & writing style. This should make a fantastic addition to any Greek history lover's library. ...more
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