Parallel Lives
This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans or Parallel Lives is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD by Plutarch. Parallel Lives comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived. Volume I contains 13 pairs of biographies from Theseus and Romulus to Cimon and Lucullus, with comparisons.
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- I think you can only answer this at a point in time - the book you loved at 20 may not carry the same weight at 50.
For now, though, I really enjoyed Plutarch's Parallel Lives. He compares the life of an ancient Greek and Roman - EG Alexander vs Caesar.
- Plutarch's Parallel Lives is a great read though.
- 1) Sakurai and Dirac's textbooks on quantum mechanics.
2) Axler's book on linear algebra. That's when I started to think in terms of vectors as more than the typical "magnitude and direction" concept you are used to in UG physics. It took many years, but I'm finally beginning to apply this to more advanced topics.
3) Concurrency in Action, by Anthony Williams. The training in multithreading aside, that motivated a deeper interest in things like how caches worked or atomics for someone without a CS background like myself. I haven't finished Three Easy Pieces yet, to my eternal shame as I read this thread, but that might also be added on this list by the time I'm complete.
4) On the right-hemisphere side of the brain, books such as Christopher Clark's "Sleepwalkers", Jonathan Smele's treatment of the Russian Civil War, and Richard Thornton's "Odd Man Out" on the Korean War have been useful in teaching me to dig deeper than the standard narrative when looking at history. I'm looking forward to Christopher Goscha's book on Dien Bien Phu and James Howard-Johnston's recent drop on the great final war of classical antiquity in the 7th Century, in a similar vein: both are out, just haven't gotten the chance to digest them yet. Also, Plutarch's Parallel Lives. They aren't "history" in the sense that we know it, but they do teach you that, yes, the lives of famous ancient figures do have lessons that can and should apply to you.
- We're going to disagree about the Iliad. It even has a good cop, bad cop scene in it in book 10, the Night Raid. Odysseus and Diomedes go on a night raid to get ... information. Was there ever a badder bad cop than Diomedes or a smoother talking good cop than Odysseus?
Hell to the fuck yeah, when you get to Plato, you have to want it. I still haven't made it through the Republic.
Plutarch Parallel Lives has a lot of really good biographies. Pick any. Hell, pick Life of Antony.
Herodotus is fun but junk. Thucydides is tough but meaty. Switching to the Romans, Tacitus Agricola is awesome.
Read Gorgias Encomium of Helen (short), I think he's the only Sophist we have, and you might think Plato was a little tough on him.
- As the quotes come via Plutarch, I'd like to recommend Plutarch's Parallel Lives - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives
He gives a biography of one famous Roman and one famous Greek and compares them.
- You seem like a fairly well adjusted fellow, if you've caught yourself being a jerk and want to make positive changes. Maybe you're more of a minor league egotist rather than an actual DSM narcissist. If you like keeping fit, it's difficult to be that kind of a jerk if someone's beating the shit out of you on a regular basis in a dojo. Sports in general are good for people living a life of the mind (aka HN nerds); it chips away at common character defects that come from being a disembodied brain waddling around. You'll expose yourself to people from all walks of life who will give you immediate feedback if you display bad character, and it will get you moving around and make you humble.
If you enjoy history and literature, maybe Plutarch's parallel lives of Alcibiades and Coriolanus; or Christopher Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" could provide some perspective. And as someone said below, Dale Carnegie's book on winning friends and influencing people, 100 years later, is a really useful, life changing book.
