Antony is Cleopatra’s
Two of the lives which are lived in parallel in the account of Plutarch are those of ill-fated lovers Mark Antony and Cleopatra. And the imagery does indeed situate the grand romantic love affair as doomed, fueled by Antony’s tragic flaw of being too easily duped:
“Such being his temper, the last and crowning mischief that could befall him came in the love of Cleopatra, to awaken and kindle to fury passions that as yet lay still and dormant in his nature, and to stifle and finally corrupt any elements that yet made resistance in him, of goodness and a sound judgment. He fell into the snare thus.”
One-Eyed Tough Guys
The history of which Plutarch writes is one that seems inordinately abundant in warriors and generals who lose an eye in battle. There is, for instance, Lykurgus who is described to have “paid no heed” to the pain of losing an eye to the force of being struck with a club. Then there is Horatius who came to be called Cocles by virtue of a mispronunciation of Cyclops because of his loss of an eye. The imagery is so prevalent that Plutarch himself feels compelled to take notice:
“I may be allowed to add to these instances, that the most warlike of commanders and those who have accomplished most by a union of daring and cunning, have been one-eyed men”
This is Spartacus
Although it may seem like a typical Hollywood invention, the story of the slave uprising that famously unfolds on screen in the Kubrick film actually traces back to history. Or, at least, to Plutarch’s consideration of history. His short delineation of the highlights of the story expanded to epic proportions in the movie adaptation is an excellent use of imagery to convey character:
“They say that when Spartacus was first taken to Rome to be sold, a snake was seen folded over his face while he was sleeping, and a woman, of the same tribe with Spartacus, who was skilled in divination, and possessed by the mysterious rites of Dionysus, declared that this was a sign of a great and formidable power which would attend him to a happy termination. This woman was at that time cohabiting with Spartacus, and she made her escape with him.”
The Ship of Theseus
Some readers may be familiar with a philosophical question of the nature of existence often referred to as “Ship of Theseus” paradox or thought experiment or problem. Boiled down to the bare essentials, this is a philosophical proposition that serves up for debate the question of whether a thing is still that thing if has undergone a complete transformation. This thought experiment traces back to this example of imagery from Parallel Lives:
“Now the thirty-oared ship, in which Theseus sailed with the youths, and came back safe, was kept by the Athenians up to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They constantly removed the decayed part of her timbers, and renewed them with sound wood, so that the ship became an illustration to philosophers of the doctrine of growth and change, as some argued that it remained the same, and others, that it did not remain the same.”
