Plutarch's Lives, Vol. 1

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 100

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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Theseus”

Content warning: This section of the guide mentions suicide.

After a short prelude in which he reflects on the difficulties of writing a historical account of mythical figures, Plutarch begins describing the lineage of Theseus, an important mythical king of Athens. Theseus is the son of the Athenian king Aegeus, who had no sons for many years, and a princess of Troezen named Aethra. Aegeus sleeps with Aethra after receiving an oracle warning him against getting drunk before returning home. At Troezen, however, Aegeus does get drunk, and Pittheus, the king of Troezen, tricks him into having sex with his daughter Aethra, hoping that she would bear an heir to Aegeus. Before Aegeus leaves Troezen, he hides a sword and a pair of sandals under a rock to serve as a test for his and Aethra’s child: If Aethra has a son who is strong enough to move the rock, Theseus tells her to send him to Athens.

When Aethra’s son is born, she names him Theseus. When he comes of age, he lifts the rocks and finds his father’s sword and sandals, and Aethra sends him to Athens to seek his inheritance. Theseus, hoping to gain some glory before meeting his father, decides to take the dangerous overland route to Athens rather than the safer sea route. On his journey, he rids the route of many dangerous bandits, including the club-wielding Periphetes and the robber Sciron.

When Theseus arrives in Athens, the first person to realize his identity is Medea, Aegeus’s current consort. Medea sees Theseus as a threat because he stands to claim the inheritance that would otherwise go to her sons, so she tricks Aegeus into giving him poison. Just in time, however, Aegeus notices that Theseus is carrying his sword and wearing his sandals, and he stops him from consuming the poison. Medea runs away, and Aegeus acknowledges Theseus as his son.

Theseus achieves a few impressive feats in Athens to show his mettle, including defeating Aegeus’s political rivals, the sons of Pallas, and subduing the monstrous Bull of Marathon. His most famous exploit comes when he decides to join the tributes sent annually to Crete to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, said to be a part-human, part-bull monster. Theseus resolves to put an end to the forced tribute.

Plutarch explores several variants of the Minotaur myth, including several rationalized accounts that replace the fantastical Minotaur with something more believable (including one story in which the Minotaur is a treacherous general named Taurus). In the end, Theseus manages to kill the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, the daughter of the Cretan king Minos, and sails back to Athens. On the way, he leaves Ariadne behind, either deliberately or by accident (Plutarch recounts several different versions). Reaching Athens, Theseus forgets to swap the black sail for a white sail, as his father asked him to do if he returned alive; seeing the black sail and thinking his son has died, Aegeus dies by suicide.

Theseus returns to Athens to find his father dead. He becomes king and sets out to unify Athens politically with the surrounding region of Attica. He institutes some festivals and holidays, including the Panathenaea, and codifies citizenship laws.

Plutarch then describes Theseus’s other adventures, including his war with the Amazon women, his friendship with the troublemaker Pirithous, and his misguided abduction of Helen when she is still a child. Theseus’s misadventures with Pirithous result in his being taken prisoner by a king in western Greece. He is eventually rescued by Hercules, but when he comes back to Athens he is ousted from power and exiled. Theseus goes to the island of Scyros, where he dies after falling (or being thrown from) a cliff.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Romulus”

Plutarch begins by discussing the name of the city of Rome, relating several different stories about where the name might have come from. He then turns to Romulus, named by most sources as the founder of Rome.

He recounts Romulus’s lineage, which he traces back to the Trojan hero Aeneas, who fled to Italy after his city was destroyed. Aeneas had sired a line of kings who ruled the central Italian kingdom of Alba Longa. Eventually, one Alban king, Numitor, is overthrown by his brother Amulius. Amulius, hoping to end Numitor’s bloodline, tries to prevent his daughter Rhea Silvia from having children by making her into a Vestal Virgin. The war god Mars, however, falls in love with Rhea and sleeps with her anyway. Rhea bears twin sons, Romulus and Remus, whom Amulius promptly leaves to die in the wilderness. The twins are saved somehow (by a wolf and a woodpecker in some myths, or by the sex worker wife of a shepherd).

Romulus and Remus are finally adopted by a shepherd who brings them up. The brothers are very ambitious from an early age because of their royal blood. Numitor, who is still alive, eventually discovers the identity of Romulus and Remus. The twins kill Amulius and restore their grandfather Numitor to the Alban throne. They then set off to found their own city. They settle on a spot on the banks of the Tiber River but cannot agree over which of them will be the king of the city. They quarrel and separate, and Romulus begins laying the foundations of Rome. As he builds, Remus mocks him, and Romulus (or one of his followers) finally kills him in a fit of rage.

Plutarch discusses some of the traditions about the founding of Rome, including the date of the foundation (April 21st, 753 BCE, according to the most authoritative sources) and the organization of the early Roman military and political system. He then relates the story of the Sabine women. Why Romulus abducted the Sabine women, according to Plutarch, is unclear, though Plutarch is of the opinion that Romulus simply needed wives for the men of his new city. Romulus invites the neighboring Sabines to Rome for a festival, then steals their women when they arrive. This hostile act leads to war between the Romans and the Sabines. Romulus eventually makes a treaty with the ruler of the Sabines and the populations of the Romans and Sabines are united as one. Plutarch takes this as an opportunity to further discuss the organization of Rome, describing the three Roman tribes, Roman holidays and priesthoods, and some Roman laws.

Romulus grows increasingly tyrannical as his reign wears on. One day, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. Different explanations are given for Romulus’s disappearance: Some say that he rose to heaven as a god, while others say that the senators murdered him and cut him into pieces that they then disposed of. Plutarch says it is impossible to know what really happened to Romulus.

Chapter 3 Summary: “The Comparison of Romulus with Theseus”

Plutarch compares Romulus with Theseus. He notes meaningful similarities between the two men: They were both natural leaders, though neither quite “lived up to the true character of a king” (50). Both sometimes behaved rashly and unreasonably, and both committed acts of sexual violence against women. While Theseus sought to help others and increase his power of his own will, Romulus acted chiefly from necessity. Romulus, though, rose from very humble beginnings, while Theseus had the upbringing of a noble.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

There is very limited evidence on when Plutarch published his lives or in what order he published them. Though Plutarch’s parallel Lives of Theseus and Romulus are traditionally numbered as the first texts in the collection, it is clear that they were not the first Lives that Plutarch wrote, as Plutarch mentions at the beginning of his Theseus that he had already published his “account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king” (1). In the absence of adequate direct evidence on publication dates, the collection is generally printed today in roughly chronological order.

The biographies of Theseus and Romulus touch on many of the central themes of the collection. At the beginning of Theseus, Plutarch gives us a very important reminder that he is writing “lives,” not history. Thus, he asks for some leeway in his treatment of what are ultimately mythical figures who lived before “those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in” (1). He does hope that through his approach, “Fable may […] so submit to the purifying process of Reason as to take the character of exact history,” but he also asks his readers to bear with him and to “receive with indulgence the stories of antiquity” (1). After all, Plutarch’s goals, as he reminds us again and again throughout his Lives, are not the same as a historian’s goals: He is less interested in determining strict facts about the past than in establishing the personal qualities, characters, and values of important historical figures so that he can examine The Influence of Character on History.

Both Theseus and Romulus furnish Plutarch with a complex lens through which to dissect The Role of Leadership and Morality in Public Life. As Plutarch writes in his Comparison of Romulus with Theseus, “[b]oth men were by nature meant for governors” (50): Theseus effectively reorganized the Athenian government, while Romulus founded his own city. At the same time, Plutarch is very alert to the weaknesses of both men. Theseus, especially toward the end of his life, caused a lot of trouble for Athens through his recklessness. His abduction of the princess Helen from Sparta, for instance, caused Helen’s brothers Castor and Pollux to invade his territory and lay waste to it. Romulus was also not always responsible. His notorious rape of the Sabine women led to war with his neighbors.

Both men were sometimes morally problematic too. Among Theseus’s offenses, according to Plutarch, are his poor treatment of women and his role in the death of his son Hippolytus, while Romulus, among other things, killed his own brother Remus. By trying to examine both the admirable qualities and flaws of his case studies, Plutarch attempts to offer a nuanced portrait of his subjects and to draw moral lessons from their lives and conduct.