Parallel Lives, by Plutarch

Originally published on Josh Friedlander's Goodreads Reviews.

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An interesting way to do biography, pairing two subjects (a Greek and a Roman) who have some kind of thematic overlap and comparing them at the end. (There are also some standalone biographies included in this edition.) Part of Plutarch's goal was apparently to show that the Romans were no less noble than their Greek predecessors, and he has a clear ethical program that comes out in the Lives in his praise and criticism, and in his choices of subjects (who are by no means all positive examples.) His values include courage and stoicism, loyalty, and a kind of mission-focus - as opposed to the "effeminate" trait of decadence. The latest of the lives is that of the Roman emperor Otho, of the Year of the Four Emperors, when Plutarch was in his twenties.

Some of the stories I knew from middle school Shakespeare (Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, heavily based on Plutarch's versions). The life of Caesar was probably my favourite, showing Caesar's brilliance and ambition, his self-promotion and ability to take advantage of moments of crisis. All of these allowed him to take control of a stable, prosperous republic whose one rule was "No Tyranny" and become a tyrant, and the people loved him for it. (One of his secrets: generous redistribution of wealth.) Some of the side-characters in his story have their own bios - Pompey, Brutus, Cicero, Antony, as well as Cato, whose unyielding opposition to Caesar and gruesome botched suicide (which involves yanking out his own bowels and tearing them) were hard to forget. (This source suggests that the chaotic scene is reflecting Stoic disapproval of suicide as an irrational and unmanly choice.)

I listened to this (extremely long) book on audio, and it is based on Dryden's translation (I assumed this probably wasn't the Dryden but it is! There aren't many other full translations. This would not have been the translation used by Shakespeare, who lived slightly earlier.) I've included some snippets I enjoyed, from the Dryden translation hosted on MIT's Internet Classics Archive.

About excessive fondness for animals:

Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind.

About hydraulics - are there underground reservoirs of water, or does the energy of digging convert the soil into water?

Aemilius, considering that he was at the foot of the high and woody mountain Olympus, and conjecturing by the flourishing growth of the trees that there were springs that had their course underground, dug a great many holes and wells along the foot of the mountain, which were presently filled with pure water escaping from its confinement into the vacuum they afforded. Although there are some, indeed, who deny that there are reservoirs of water lying ready provided out of sight, in the places from whence springs flow, and that when they appear, they merely issue and run out; on the contrary, they say, they are then formed and come into existence for the first time, by the liquefaction of the surrounding matter; and that this change is caused by density and cold, when the moist vapour, by being closely pressed together, becomes fluid. As women's breasts are not like vessels full of milk always prepared and ready to flow from them; but their nourishment being changed in their breasts, is there made milk, and from thence is pressed out. In like manner, places of the earth that are cold and full of springs, do not contain any hidden waters or receptacles which are capable, as from a source always ready and furnished, of supplying all the brooks and deep rivers; but by compressing and condensing the vapours and air they turn them into that substance. And thus places that are dug open, flow by that pressure, and afford the more water (as the breasts of women do milk by their being sucked), the vapour thus moistening and becoming fluid; whereas ground that remains idle and undug is not capable of producing any water, whilst it wants the motion which is the cause of liquefaction. But those that assert this opinion give occasion to the doubtful to argue, that on the same ground there should be no blood in living creatures, but that it must be formed by the wound, some sort of spirit or flesh being changed into a liquid and flowing matter. Moreover, they are refuted by the fact that men who dig mines, either in sieges or for metals, meet with rivers, which are not collected by little and little (as must necessarily be, if they had their being at the very instant the earth was opened), but break out at once with violence; and upon the cutting through a rock, there often gush out great quantities of water, which then as suddenly cease. But of this enough.

On symmetric-key cryptography.

When the Ephors send an admiral or general on his way, they take two round pieces of wood, both exactly of a length and thickness, and cut even to one another; they keep one themselves, and the other they give to the person they send forth; and these pieces of wood they call Scytales. When, therefore, they have occasion to communicate any secret or important matter, making a scroll of parchment long and narrow like a leathern thong, they roll it about their own staff of wood, leaving no space void between, but covering the surface of the staff with the scroll all over. When they have done this, they write what they please on the scroll, as it is wrapped about the staff; and when they have written, they take off the scroll, and send it to the general without the wood. He, when he has received it, can read nothing of the writing, because the words and letters are not connected, but all broken up; but taking his own staff, he winds the slip of the scroll about it, so that this folding, restoring all the parts into the same order that they were in before, and putting what comes first into connection with what follows, brings the whole consecutive contents to view round the outside.

(There was also a quote I couldn't find, about how civil war is more bloody than regular war because there is no value in taking prisoners.)