
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
Plutarch pairs each famous Greek with a Roman, Alexander with Caesar, and judges them, holding that a jest can reveal a man better than a battle. Shakespeare took three plays out of it.

Plutarch pairs each famous Greek with a Roman, Alexander with Caesar, and judges them, holding that a jest can reveal a man better than a battle. Shakespeare took three plays out of it.

Bread and circuses came from here, and so did the line about guarding the guards. Juvenal turns sixteen poems of fury on imperial Rome, where an honest man cannot afford to live.