Sample Plutarch Narrations

I'm cleaning out cupboards, nooks, crannies, and secret bookshelves, the detritus of decades.  By secret, I mean something more like forgotten.  One of the bedrooms has a bookcase in a niche in the wall that is completely hidden when the door is open.  You have to be in that room with the door shut to see the bookcase.  The contents of that bookcase were largely the books in use by the person using the bedroom at the time, and their notebooks and journals and so forth.  The room was used by three kids in succession and I was seldom in the room with the door shut and it was just a case of out of sight, out of mind.  None of those three cleared out their notebooks they had stashed on that shelf so it's really an archeaological dig (seriously, a dig, I won't desribe the dust levels on this forgotten shelf).

The following narrations were on undated scraps of paper ripped from a composition book and stashed there.  They are untitled as well.  I know they are from Plutarch, and I know the kid who wrote them the least academic and least motivated.  I think probably this student was around 12 or 13 when these were written, but it could have been any time in the first couple of years in high school. This student often gave the subjects of Plutarch shortened nicknames.

I share them here just to give other parents using Plutarch some idea of what a Plutarch narration could look like. It doesn't have to be a comprehensive thesus.  Ideally, once a week or even every other week, I should have worked with this student, taking one such narration and helping the student turn it into a longer composition, with better spelling and clearer writing.  But when every reading of the day is narrated by hand, this length is acceptable for most of them.  It's a gift, really, terse prose.  At least to me, because I have never attained it.


1.The Achaians used to use foreignors in their military so they could have better leaders. The problem with this is that the generals would often start unnecessary wars to help their own. When 'Phil' redid the entire military, he fixed this problem.

2. This account seems accurate because he has very personal details about the battle with the Firmanians. He also spoke of detailed injuries among the upper ranks. He went out in front of his army and didn't make a big deal about that.

3. "Phil" trained his military much differently than other generals. The first significant change he made was the make-up of his army.  He chose young men and fined them if they refused to join.  Phil made his army do their drills in large, open public places where people could watch.  After trying to turn in areas like that, moving in an open battle field was easy.

4. He put a luxury tax on many unnecessary items that people bought, thereby creating another source of income for the government and also discouraged lavish purchases. It helped reduce the things the people bought, but for some reason, the Roman people loved Cato for making this tax.