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This volume 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; as a historical and sociopolitical unit; 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 Cover -- Plutarch's Cities -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Preface -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Plutarch, Lives -- Plutarch, Lives-Comparisons -- Plutarch, Moralia -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- Part I: Contemporary Cities: Ttravel, Sojourn, Autopsy, and Inspiration -- 1: Plutarch's Chaeronea -- The Impact of Plutarch's Fame on Posterity -- Plutarch's Involvement in the Affairs of Chaeronea -- The Long History of Chaeronea -- Chaeronea's Mythical Past -- The Persian Wars -- The Later Fifth Century and the Peloponnesian War -- The Early Fourth Century -- The Middle Decades of the Fourth Century -- Third Century BCE -- Sulla's Battles of Chaeronea and Orchomenus -- After Sulla -- Rome's Civil Wars -- The Religious and Cultural Life of Chaeronea -- Local Cults -- Cultural Life in Chaeronea -- Public Entertainment -- Conclusions -- Appendix -- 2: Plutarch and Delphi -- Plutarch's Roles at Delphi -- The Presence of History -- The Divine Enigmas of Delphi -- The Influence of Delphi on Plutarch -- 3: Plutarch and the City of Rome in Plutarch's Own Times -- Comparing Athens and Rome -- Plutarch as an Autoptic Researcher of Documents for Roman History -- The Topography of Ancient Rome -- Plutarch's Everyday Life in Rome (and a Conclusion) -- Appendix -- 4: City and Sanctuary in Plutarch -- 5: Athenian Monumental Architecture, Iconography, and Topography in Plutarch's De Gloria Atheniensium -- Euphranor's Wall Painting of the Battle of Mantinea in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios -- The Wall Painting of the Battle of Marathon in the Stoa Poikile -- Reminiscing about the Other Great Boeotian, Whom the Athenians Honoured, in the Sanctuary of Ares -- Plutarch in Athens -- Part II: Cities of the Past: History, Politics, and Society -- 6: Stereotyping Sparta, Stereotyping Athens: Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch -- Thucydides -- Herodotus.
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