In September 2002, the University of Coimbra hosted, for the first time, a conference of the Réseau Thématique Plutarque, a research network created by several European universities in order to promote regular annual meetings of junior and senior scholars who share a common interest in Plutarch's work. The Coimbra meeting of 2002 was devoted to the fragments of Plutarch, and the results of that event were published one year later, in a volume edited by José Ribeiro Ferreira and Delfim Leão, under the title Os fragmentos de Plutarco e a recepção da sua obra (Coimbra, 2003). During the following years, many other universities organized conferences of the Réseau on a rotating basis, until the event came back to Coimbra, where the Portuguese section of the International Plutarch Society (SoPlutarco) hosted, from 16 to 18 June 2011, the twelfth meeting of the network, devoted this time to the subject "Nomos, kosmos and dike in Plutarch". The present volume comprises most of the contributions presented during the Coimbra meeting, after having been submitted to a process of revision, which involved the direct collaboration of the several regional sections of the Réseau. Although the volume kept the multilingual diversity of the participants in the conference, its structuring elements were composed in English, in order to reinforce the coherence of the book and to enlarge the number of potential readers.

A groundbreaking and wide-ranging presentation of Plutarch’s ethics based on the cosmological foundation of his ethical thought Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 45-120 CE) is the most prolific and influential moral philosopher in the Platonic tradition. This book is a fundamental reappraisal of Plutarch’s ethical thought. It shows how Plutarch based his ethics on his particular interpretation of Plato’s cosmology: our quest for the good life should start by considering the good cosmos in which we live. The practical consequences of this cosmological foundation permeate various domains of Greco-Roman life: the musician, the organiser of a drinking party, and the politician should all be guided by cosmology. After exploring these domains, this book offers in-depth interpretations of two works which can only be fully understood by paying attention to cosmological aspects: Dialogue on Love and On Tranquillity of Mind.

The Dynamics of Intertextuality in Plutarch explores the numerous aspects and functions of intertextual links both within the Plutarchan corpus itself (intratextuality) and in relation with other authors, works, genres or discourses of Ancient Greek literature (interdiscursivity, intergenericity) as well as non-textual sources (intermateriality). Thirty-six chapters by leading specialists set Plutarch within the framework of modern theories on intertextuality and its various practical applications in Plutarch’s Moralia and Parallel Lives. Specific intertextual devices such as quotations, references, allusions, pastiches and other types of intertextual play are highlighted and examined in view of their significance for Plutarch’s literary strategies, argumentative goals, educational program, and self-presentation.

Plutarch's Cities is the first comprehensive attempt to assess the significance of the polis in Plutarch's works from several perspectives, namely the polis as a physical entity, a lived experience, and a source of inspiration, the polis as a historical and sociopolitical unit, the polis as a theoretical construct and paradigm to think with. The book's multifocal and multi-perspectival examination of Plutarch's cities - past and present, real and ideal-yields some remarkable corrections of his conventional image. Plutarch was neither an antiquarian nor a philosopher of the desk. He was not oblivious to his surroundings but had a keen interest in painting, sculpture, monuments, and inscriptions, about which he acquired impressive knowledge in order to help him understand and reconstruct the past. Cult and ritual proved equally fertile for Plutarch's visual imagination. Whereas historiography was the backbone of his reconstruction of the past and evaluation of the present, material culture, cult, and ritual were also sources of inspiration to enliven past and present alike. Plato's descriptions of Athenian houses and the Attic landscape were also a source of inspiration, but Plutarch clearly did his own research, based on autopsy and on oral and written sources. Plutarch, Plato's disciple and Apollo's priest, was on balance a pragmatist. He did not resist the temptation to contemplate the ideal city, but he wrote much more about real cities, as he experienced or imagined them.

An orator turns to an actor for advice, citizens expect assemblies to unfold like dramas, and a theater-goer cries at a play thinking of his fallen enemy: no Life escapes the mention of theatrical imagery in Plutarch’s paralleled biographies. And yet this is the first book not only to examine Plutarch’s consistent and coherent use of this imagery but also to argue that it is systematically employed to describe, explore, and evaluate politics in action. The theater becomes Plutarch’s invitation for us to question and uncover key moments of Athenian, Spartan, and Roman history as it unfolds.

Engaging introduction by leading scholars to the many aspects of Plutarch's numerous and varied works and their subsequent reception.

Philology, philosophy, commentary and reception in Plutarch's work are only some of the main topics discussed within a large academic output devoted to the writer of Chaeronea by Professor Paola Volpe Cacciatore. The volume is divided into four sections: Plutarchean Fragments, Quaestiones convivales, Religion & Philosophy, and Plutarch's Reception from Humanism to Modern Times. The eighteen studies collected in this volume, originally published in Italian and here translated into English, concern the Corpus Plutarcheum, including Table-Talks, De Iside et Osiride, the treatises against the Stoics, De genio Socratis, De liberis educandis, De musica, and some Plutarchean fragments. The volume is a tribute to celebrate the lifelong study of Plutarch's work by Professor Paola Volpe Cacciatore, one of the most remarkable Plutarchean scholars of the last decades.

Plutarch's Lives were once treasured. Today they are studied by classicists, known vaguely, if at all, by the educated public, and are virtually unknown to students of ancient political thought. The central claim of this book is that Plutarch shows how the political form of the city can satisfy an individual's desire for honor, even under the horizon of empire. Plutarch's argument turns on the difference between Sparta and Rome. Both cities stimulated their citizens' desire for honor, but Sparta remained a city by linking honor to what could be seen first-hand, whereas Rome became an empire by liberating honor from the shackles of the visible. Even under the rule of a distant power, however, allegiances and political actions tied to the visible world of the city remained. By resurrecting statesmen who thrived in autonomous cities, Plutarch hoped to rekindle some sense of the city's enduring appeal.

The role of natural science in the Roman Imperial Era In his Quaestiones naturales, Plutarch unmistakably demonstrates a huge interest in the world of natural phenomena. The work of this famous intellectual and philosopher from Chaeronea consists of forty-one natural problems that address a wide variety of questions, sometimes rather peculiar ones, pertaining to ancient Greek physics, including problems related to the fields of zoology, botany, meteorology and their respective subdisciplines. By providing a thorough study of and commentary on this generally neglected text, written by one of the most influential and prolific writers from Antiquity, this book contributes to our better understanding of Plutarch’s natural scientific programme and the condition and role of ancient natural science in the Roman Imperial Era in general.

This volume approaches Plutarch’s intellectual and professional activity, and the the way he managed to cover such an impressive range of areas and interests, which make of his work an inexhaustible source of information on the ancient world.