Word: plutarch
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...ever endured at the Met. The occasion was the U.S. premiere of the Bolshoi Ballet's Spartacus, an extravaganza so preposterous it was hard to believe a professional dance company was responsible for it. The story dealt with Rome's slave revolt, as reported by Appian and Plutarch, and ended with the death of the slaves' leader, the gladiator Spartacus (once referred to by Karl Marx as "the most splendid fellow in all ancient history"). The choreography was by the Kirov Ballet's Leonid Yakobson, the music by Stalin Prizewinner Aram Khatchaturian, the role...
Spartacus, hailed by Plutarch as a man "in understanding and gentleness superior to his condition," was the leader of a band of 78 slaves who in the year 73 B.C. escaped from a training school for gladiators at Capua, 130 miles south of Rome. Eluding the Roman garrison, the gladiators stole weapons, pillaged estates, and freed thousands of slaves (who then made up four-fifths of the population of Rome). After two years of revolt, during which he defeated nine armies sent against him by the Roman Senate, Spartacus commanded a force of 90,000, cavalry and foot. Emboldened...
...success. He wrote speedily-his editors noted that his manuscripts were scarcely ever blotted-and turned out an average of two plays a year. Plots to Shakespeare were like pots to Merlin: any borrowed tub, from Holinshed's Chronicles to Plutarch's Lives, would do to mix the magic in. One of the intellectuals of the day, Robert Greene, addressing his university-trained colleagues, Nashe, Peele and Marlowe, sneered at the "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers." But Londoners worshiped...
Concentrating on Rome's first 40 years, about which virtually nothing is known beyond the legends handed down by Livy and Plutarch, Duggan sketches a fascinating if somewhat too breezily modern story. The Rome of 8th century B.C., as described by Duggan, sounds very much like a common European caricature of the 20th century U.S. Rome is slow to war. and quick to extend aid to an enemy once he has been beaten. Its conglomerate citizens-Latin farmers, Sabine hillmen, Etruscan renegades, Greek exiles-are swiftly shaped into a conforming whole; they dress and act alike and are fond...
...largely up to his readers to know who Mithradates was and why his longevity was worthy of note. In this book, able and highly readable, Historian Alfred (Julius Caesar) Duggan writes the first full-dress account of Mithradates' amazing life. Deftly stitched together from sundry classical sources (Plutarch, Appian, Strabo), King of Pontus is not only an excellent piece of history but a first-rate tale of war and adventure whose hero is never more heroic than in the closing years of a long and lusty life...