Plutarch's Greek Lives Trivia Quiz

Answer: Theseus

Theseus was the son of King Aegeus of Athens and made his way there from Troezen, performing a series of fantastic heroic feats during the journey. While his life was often tragic, he is considered to be one of the great moral forces in the Athens' founding.

Answer: Lycurgus

Modern historians are not even sure if Lycurgus lived or when. Estimates range fron the Eighth to Sixth Century B.C. Plutarch despaired of writing about him because of the conflicting sources. But he is credited with giving Spartans their mixed constitution, which consisted of two kings, a council of elders and an assembly(later an executive branch would be added), as well the Agoge system, which made Sparta such a formidable military power.

Answer: Solon

Solon, a poet, was considered one of the Seven Wisemen of Ancient Greece. Economically, Athens was undergoing an agricultural crisis in which small farmers often had to secure loans with their wives, children and themselves in a form of indentured servitude. Solon's reforms forgave these debts and forbade these types of loans.

He also gave more political rights to the less than wealthy, which laid the foundation for the Athenian democracy of the Fifth Century.

Answer: Themistocles

In 483 B.C. Athens discovered silver at Larium in southern Attica. Themistocles convinced Athenians that the wealth should be poured into a navy. This navy would save Greece in the Persian War of 480-479 B.C.and form the basis of power for the Athenian Empire of the Fifth Century. Sadly for Themistocles he was ostracized in 471 B.C. and ended his days as a servant of the Great King of Persia.

Answer: Alcibiades

Alcibiades, a student of Socrates, had all the gifts for a brilliant political career but the one most needed: honor. Allegations of blasphemy and the Sicilian Expedition ended his career in Athens --for a while-- and sent him to the Spartan side, and later the Persian, during the Peloponnesian War. Such were his talents, he later redeemed himself with his polis, but ended up a hunted and dead man, despite all his maneuvering.

Answer: Timoleon

Around 364 B.C., Timoleon let his brother die rather defend a tyrant. This caused problems with his family and as a result he left politics for 20 years. In 344 B.C., citizens of Syracuse came to their founding city Corinth and asked for relief from the political instability that was plaguing their city and the island of Sicily in general.

The job was given to Timoleon, who landed with a small force in Sicily the same year. By 337 B.C. he had rid Syracuse of tyranny, given it a constitution and diminished the influence of the Carthaginians in Sicily. For his efforts he was accorded great honors and buried at public expense.

Answer: Pelopidas

Pelopidas led a force against his Theban opponents and the Spartan garrison supporting them at Thebes in 379 B.C., surprising and defeating them and thus bringing independence back to his polis. He served with the Sacred Band and the great Theban general Epiminondas at Leuctra in 371 B.C.

He died in battle at Cynoscephalae in 364 B.C. fighting the army of the Alexander, the tyrant of Pherae, but not before he had helped break the back of Spartan hegemony and made Thebes the most powerful city in Greece the first quarter of the Fourth Century. Plutarch also wrote about Epimanondas but this biogaphy is not extant.

Answer: Aristides

Known as Aristides the Just, he was early on associated with Cleisthenes, the democratic reformer of the late Sixth Century. After war broke out again with Persia in 480 B.C., he was recalled from exile and served with distinction at the Battle of Salamis.

He so impressed the other Greek allies after 479 with his fairness in dealing with them that he was asked to replace the harsh Spartan commander Pausanias.

Answer: Philopoemen

Philopoemen began his career with the Achaean League as a cavalry officer and fought in the both the Battle of Megalopolis (225) and the Battle of Selassia (222). He went onto Crete as a mercenary but returned in 209 B.C. when he became the strategos of the League for the first of eight times.

In 207, he defeated the Spartans at Mantinea,and repeated the trick against King Nabis of Sparta around 201 at Tegea. The Achaean League reached its greatest power under Philopoemen. He was captured while fighting rebellious Messenian forces in 182(he was around 70) and committed suicide rather than allow his captors the honor.

Answer: Pyrrhus of Epirus

Pyrrhus was King of Epirus at age 12 but began his career as a soldier and ally of Alexandrian Successor Antigonos the One Eye and his son Demetrius at the the Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. After years of involvement in Macedonian dynastic politics throughout the 290s and 280s, Pyrrhus invaded southern Italy in 279 at the request of the Greeks of Tarentum, who were under pressure from an aggressive Rome.

His victories at Heraclaea and Asculum proved costly and hence the phrase "Pyrrhic" victory. The Romans turned the tables and defeated him at Beneventum in 275.

He returned to Greece and died in close quarter combat in the streets of Argos in 272. Like Alcibiades, Pyrrhus had great skills but involved himself in unnecessary fights and seemed unable to settle down and just rule Epirus.

Answer: Lysander

Lysander is believed to be son of a Spartan father and a non-Spartan mother.
That would have put most in Sparta at a disadvantage. But Lysander was talented and massively ambitious, and he rose to lead the Spartan navy and brought Persia into an alliance through his relationship with the Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger. He brought about an oligarchic revolution in Athens and forced the city to tear down its walls in 404. He was instrumental in bringing about the Spartan Hegemony of Greece after the Peloponnesian War. He died fighting in Boeotia in 395 B.C.

Answer: Cimon

Cimon was from the conservative more pro-Spartan side of Athenian politics. He distinguished himself at Salamis and helped clear the Hellespont of Persian forces after 480 and generally helped to build up the Athenian Empire. His pro-Spartan policy was his undoing.

In 464 Sparta suffered a major earthquake and requested help from Athens to deal with a helot revolt. Cimon brought 4000 hoplites; but the Spartans grew distrustful of the democratic Athenians and sent them home. This action humiliated Athens and Cimon's party fell out of favor.

He was ostracized in 461. He later returned for service in the First Peloponnesian War, dying during a siege off Phoenecia in 451.

Answer: Nicias

The pious Nicias was given command of the Sicilian Expedition-- which, as it turns out, he had rightly been against from the beginning-- along with Alcibiades and Lamachus. Alcibiades was summoned to Athens to face blasphemy charges and Lamachus died in fighting.

This left Nicias as a senior commander. He seems to have delayed abandoning the Expedition out of pride and fear of the Athenian demos; and by the time he made up his mind to leave, the Athenian fleet became trapped in Syracuse Harbor and Athens lost its entire fleet and army. Nicias would also pay with his life.

As a result, Sparta renewed the war--breaking the Peace that Nicias had brokered ironically -- and Persia is convinced to join it. Athens would hang on for nine more years, but the die --Athens' defeat-- was cast.

Answer: Eumenes of Cardia

Upon the death of Alexander, and after the Partition of Babylon, Eumenes would be awarded the satrapies of Cappadocia and Pamphylonia in eastern and northern Asia Minor. This was not prime territory given that the area was still independent of Macedonian control, but Eumenes took up the challenge.

He was loyal to the Regent Perdiccas throughout the First Successor War(322-320 B.C.) and defeated, amazingly enough,one of Alexander's best generals, Craterus, in 320, despite his limited military experience.

He became a marked man for Antipater, Ptolemy and Antigonos after the death of Perdiccas in 320 and the Partition of Triparadisus. For four years he demonstrated considerable generalship. His weakness was that as a Greek, his Macedonian soldiers never fully trusted him.

He was captured by Antigonos and executed in 316.

Answer: Agesileus II

Agesileus, despite being somewhat lame, was a Spartan's Spartan and had completed the very difficult Agoge system that all Spartiates were required complete to be full citizens (except the Kings). His policies towards the rest of Greece came to some degree to symbolize the harshness of the Spartan Hegemony after the Peloponnesian War, which led to war with a Greek Coalition starting in 395.

His policy towards Thebes was so aggressive that the Spartan diplomat Antalcidas claimed that the king had taught the Thebans how to fight.

Indeed, beginning in the 370s, Thebes went over on the offensive, with the rise of the Theban generals Pelopidas and Epimanondas. These two men would destroy the Spartan Hegemony and, really, with the freeing of the helots, the Spartan way of life. Agesileus would die in exile trying to raise money for a Spartan comeback that would never come.

Answer: Phocion

Known as Phocion the Good for his simple and uncorruptible lifestyle, his military service spanned nearly fifty years for Athens. His battles with Macedon had begun in the late 350s, and he saw Athen's position steadily decline. He opposed Athen's rebellion against post-Alexander Macedon in 322, as he knew what the result would be.

When Athens was indeed defeated by the Macedonians, it was forced to accept a Macedonian garrison. The problem arose in 319 when the Successors Polyperchon and Cassander became involved in a dispute over the regency in Macedon; the former, in an effort to drum up allies in the Greek world, promised freedom for the Greeks, while the latter naturally sided with his father Antipater's support for pro-Macedonian oligarchs. Phocion sided with the oligarchic faction; and when Polyperchon's son Alexander showed up at Athens with an army, Phocion became a victim of the demagogue Agonides' accusation of teachery. Arrested, he was fored to drink hemlock in 318.

Answer: Cleomenes III

Cleomenes was one of three kings who attempted to reform Sparta socially, politically and economically (Agis III and Nabis were the other two)during the second half of the Third Century and early Second Century. His reforms probably should be considered the most successful and he was an extremely capable military leader, as he battered the Achaean League on several occasions. Ultimately this led the League to call the Macedonians back into the affairs of the Peloponnesus, resulting in Cleomenes' defeat at Selassia in 222.

He fled to Egypt, where he died in 219.

Answer: Demosthenes

Born in 384, Demosthenes initially practised oratory in order to win back his inheritance which had been stolen from him by relatives. But by 351, with his First Phillippic, he began to speak on the cause that would distiguish his political career for the next thirty years: Athenian resistance to Macedonian expansionism, a cause that Plutarch would call "just and noble." When Athens rebelled against Macedon on Alexander's death in 323, Demosthenes naturally supported it.

When the Athenian cause went down in defeat at the Battle of Crannon, the Macedonians had had enough of him and demanded his person. Demosthenes committed suicide in 322 rather than let the Macedonians catch him.

Answer: Dion

Dion lived from 408 to 354 B.C. and brought his friend Plato in to advise the tyrants. The Elder became so upset with the great philosopher's advice that he tried to have him assassinated. After the Elder Dionysus died, Dion brought Plato back to advise the Younger, but the philosopher had no success with him either. Dion was exiled to Athens and he was a celebrity throughout Greece. Soon Syracusans grew disgusted with the Younger tyrant, and Dion overthrew him to the near unanimous joy of the city. Plutarch said the Syracusans supplicated to him "as a god in prayers." But upon assuming power, Dion was no better than the two Dionysuses and prone to favor oligarchy over democracy.

He was overthrown and assassinated by a pupil of Plato named Calippus in 354.

Answer: Aratus of Sicyon

Aratus first burst on the scene when he jumped the walls of his home town of Sicyon and liberated it from the tyrant in 251 B.C. He later became the strategos--a position he held every other year after 245--for the Achaean League until his death. He consistently pursued a policy of bringing cities into the League and turning them into moderate democracies and keeping the Macedonians out of the Peloponnesus.

However he and the League suffered several battlefield defeats at the hands of the Spartan Cleomenes III, and he reversed years of effort by bringing in Macedonian forces to help.

The League and Macedon defeated Cleomenes at Selassia in 222, but Plutarch condemned Aratus' decision to invite the Macedonians. Aratus fell out of favor soon thereafter and he was poisoned in 213.