Plutarch
Books by Plutarch
How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership
by Jeffrey Beneker & Plutarch
"Should an Old Man Engage in Politics?" is the title of one of Plutarch's essays, translated in Jeffrey Beneker's How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership. The book is part of Princeton University Press's "Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers" series and we can safely say that many of the issues Plutarch worried about remain relevant today.
We spoke to Jeff Beneker about the Best Books on Leadership (from Ancient Greek and Rome).
“Plutarch would argue that what you’re doing in your private life will predict what’s going to happen if we put you in charge of public life. If you can’t run the small economy of your household in a competent way, why would we put you in charge of the city’s economy? It’s that way of thinking.” Read more...
The best books on Leadership: Lessons from the Ancients
Jeffrey Beneker, Classicist
“But Shakespeare is using Plutarch all the way through his Roman plays—Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra—through to Timon of Athens.“ Read more...
Robert S Miola on Shakespeare’s Sources
Robert S Miola, Classicist
Interviews where books by Plutarch were recommended
Robert S Miola on Shakespeare’s Sources
William Shakespeare has a strong claim to be the most influential writer of all time. But whose works influenced him? And how? Robert S Miola discusses the breadth of Shakespeare’s reading, the vexed question of how we can reconstruct what he read, and the staggeringly innovative ways that Shakespeare shaped his sources
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1
The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives
by Ian Scott-Kilvert & Plutarch -
2
The Greek Alexander Romance
by Richard Stoneman -
3
Atticus
by Cornelius Nepos & Nicholas Horsfall -
4
Agricola
by Harold Mattingly, James Rives & Tacitus -
5
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius (ed. James Miller, trans. Pamela Mensch)
The best books on Leadership: Lessons from the Ancients, recommended by Jeffrey Beneker
The best books on Leadership: Lessons from the Ancients, recommended by Jeffrey Beneker
Whatever modern leadership books may say about what’s required to be a good leader, for the ancients there was only one vital requirement: studying philosophy. Jeffrey Beneker, Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talks us through what ancient biographies reveal about how to be a leader.
