Digging into Plutarch

I visited a certain great blog about books earlier this month, a very profound blog, but I might as well have tried to have a conversation with my encyclopedia. No response to any of my comments. And I'm not interested in a conversation with myself. So I may not go back.

I liked how the author was able to be so succinct in Her reviews of the books that She has read -- and She reads an amazing amount! My reviews are not so tidy or professional.

But She is She and I am me.

Tonight I finally cracked open the pages of Plutarch's "Moralia," (Vol. 1) and read the introduction. He was from Chaeronea in Greece. Chaeronea, according to Wikipedia, was where Philip, father of Alexander the Great, broke the back of Greek resistance to Macedonian hegemony, changing the world forever. If the battle had been different, perhaps there would have been no Alexander and no Hellenistic empire, and perhaps the history of Rome might have been different, too.

But I digress. See, I just can't be succinct.

Wikipedia continues: "The site of the Theban defeat was found in 1818 with the discovery of the so-called Lion of Chaeronea, a nearly 20-foot tall funerary monument erected in honor of the Sacred Band. The fragmentary monument was reassembled and installed atop a pedestal at the site of its discovery." [That note is included for Kat and Scarlet, big cat fans]

Chaeronea (Greek: Χαιρώνεια) is still inhabited today, as a municipality in the Boeotia Prefecture of Greece. Population 2,218 (2001). It is located in the Kifisós River valley and NW of Thebes.

Back to Plutarch: He lived in the 1st Century AD, AD 45 to 120, between Claudius and Hadrian.

The introduction to my copy, tells me that "possessed as he was of a kindly nature, he could not bear to think of all evil-doers as destined to an everlasting torment ... and almost a part of his religion was his kindly affection for animals, which was quite unusual in his day."

Further: "Plutarch has been, and still is, one of the most widely read and most influential of authors in all literature."

If that is so, why did I have to special-order this book?

Click this link for photographic evidence of someone who apparently did not enjoy their literary date with Plutarch: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lshave/340024751/