Theseus travels the dangerous overland route to Athens, defeating notorious bandits including the club-wielding Periphetes.

Romulus kills his brother Remus during a quarrel over their new city and founds Rome on the banks of the Tiber.

Lycurgus drafts the Rhetra, a new Spartan constitution establishing a senate, public assemblies, and redistribution of land and wealth.

Solon abolishes debt slavery and cancels all outstanding debts, fundamentally reforming Athenian society and its legal code.

Themistocles tricks the Persian king Xerxes into attacking at Salamis, where the Greeks lure the larger fleet into the narrows and defeat it.

Camillus is appointed dictator and uses underground tunnels to infiltrate and sack the long-besieged Etruscan city of Veii.

Pericles sponsors the construction of the Parthenon and other grand monuments, presiding over Athens's cultural Golden Age.

Alcibiades defects to Sparta after being recalled from the Sicilian Expedition to stand trial for charges of impiety.

Coriolanus is banished from Rome and defects to the Volscians, leading a devastating military campaign against his former city.

Timoleon defeats a vast Carthaginian army at the Crimesus River with a small force, securing peace for Sicily.

Pelopidas and Epaminondas decisively rout the Spartans at Leuctra, ending Sparta's undisputed military supremacy in Greece.

Lysander launches a surprise attack on the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, capturing it entirely and ending the Peloponnesian War.

Sylla marches his legions on Rome, seizes the city, and forces his political rival Marius to flee into hiding.

Nicias refuses to order the Athenian retreat from Sicily after a lunar eclipse is interpreted as an omen to stay.

Crassus suffers a catastrophic defeat against the Parthians at Carrhae and is killed in the fighting alongside his son.

Plutarch's Lives opens with the mythical founders of Athens and Rome — Theseus and Romulus — before moving through centuries of Greek and Roman history to explore how individual leaders shaped their civilizations. Pool 1 captures the most pivotal headline events of the volume: from Solon's sweeping social reforms and Themistocles's naval triumph at Salamis to the rise and fall of generals like Alcibiades, Coriolanus, and Lysander. The sequence follows the full sweep of the volume, from Athens's Golden Age under Pericles to the catastrophic campaigns of Nicias in Sicily and Crassus against Parthia. Across each biography, Plutarch shows that a leader's character — their genius, ambition, or fatal flaw — repeatedly determined the fate of entire civilizations. Together these fifteen events form the backbone of the volume's narrative, tracing history's most consequential turning points from myth to the fall of the Roman Republic.

The defining military victories and political upheavals of history's greatest leaders.

King Aegeus recognizes Theseus just before the young man drinks the poison Medea prepared, and embraces him as his son.

Romulus abducts the Sabine women during a festival to provide wives for his new city, triggering war with the Sabines.

Lycurgus starves himself to death after the Delphic oracle confirms his laws are good, binding the Spartans to the Rhetra forever.

Numa Pompilius establishes Rome's foundational religious institutions, including the Pontifices and the order of the Vestal Virgins.

Poplicola uncovers and swiftly executes a conspiracy to restore Tarquin to power, even though the sons of both consuls are implicated.

A Faliscan schoolteacher attempts to betray his city by delivering pupils as hostages to Camillus, who sends them back unharmed.

Pericles contracts the plague and dies shortly after being stripped of his military command and fined by the Athenians.

Fabius sells his own property to ransom Roman soldiers after the senate refuses to pay their price to Hannibal.

Aemilius Paulus defeats the Macedonian king Perseus at the Battle of Pydna, ending Macedonian military resistance to Rome.

Marcellus repels Hannibal from the city of Nola, scoring the first Roman battlefield victory against him in the Second Punic War.

Aristides returns from exile to lead Athenian forces against the Persians during the Second Persian War.

Philopoemen is captured by the Messenian rebel Dinocrates and forced to drink poison, dying in service of the Achaean League.

Flamininus demands the freedom of all Greek city-states as a condition of his peace terms with the Macedonian king Philip.

Caius Marius joins the exiled consul Cinna, marches on Rome, and oversees five days of massacre against political enemies.

Crassus forms an informal political alliance with Pompey and Caesar, known as the First Triumvirate, to advance their mutual interests.

While Pool 1 captures the headline events, Pool 2 illuminates the equally consequential moments that reveal a leader's true character. It begins with personal recognitions and founding provocations — Aegeus saving Theseus from poison and Romulus stealing the Sabine women — before moving through acts of institutional building, such as Lycurgus's self-imposed death and Numa's creation of Rome's religious offices. The pool covers decisive military and moral tests, from Fabius's personal sacrifice to ransom his soldiers and Marcellus's first victory over Hannibal, to Aemilius Paulus's crushing defeat of Perseus at Pydna. It traces the fall of principled figures like Aristides and Philopoemen alongside the ambitions of Flamininus and Marius. Closing with Crassus's fateful alliance with Pompey and Caesar, Pool 2 collectively reveals the complexity beneath each biography's most celebrated figures and the human decisions that shaped Rome's path toward civil war.

The pivotal secondary moments that defined each leader's character and legacy.

Theseus forgets to swap the black sail for white, causing his father Aegeus to believe him dead and die by suicide.

Romulus vanishes at the end of his reign under unexplained circumstances, with some claiming senators murdered him and scattered his remains.

Solon refuses the role of sole ruler of Athens and travels abroad to prevent the Athenians from pressuring him to change his laws.

Themistocles convinces the Athenians to use wealth from newly discovered silver mines to build a powerful war fleet.

Political enemies accuse Camillus of stealing from the spoils of Falerii, and he chooses to go into exile rather than face trial.

Invading Gauls sack Rome while Camillus is in exile, and the desperate Romans recall him and appoint him dictator to drive out the invaders.

Alcibiades flees Sparta and defects to Persia after falling from favor by seducing the Spartan king's wife.

Coriolanus's mother comes to the Volscian camp to plead with her son to spare Rome, and he orders the army to retreat.

Timoleon covers his head and withdraws while his tyrannical brother Timophanes is assassinated for refusing to surrender power over Corinth.

Pelopidas and fellow exiles sneak into Thebes at night and assassinate the pro-Spartan rulers, liberating the city.

Lysander forces the defeated Athenians to tear down their walls, surrender their empire, and submit to a ruling oligarchy of Thirty Tyrants.

Sylla declares himself dictator of Rome and begins proscriptions, publicly listing political enemies to be hunted down and killed.

Cimon is ostracized from Athens after the Spartans expel the Athenian relief force he led, accusing the Athenians of treachery.

Lucullus retires completely from public and military life after being stripped of his eastern command and replaced by Pompey.

Nicias and Demosthenes are condemned to death by the Syracusans, and both take their own lives before the sentence is carried out.

Pool 3 focuses on the critical turning points — moments of decision, revelation, and moral consequence — that altered the course of each subject's life and their city's fate. It begins with Theseus's fatal forgetfulness and Romulus's mysterious disappearance, two endings that shaped the founding myths of Athens and Rome. Moving through the volume, the pool highlights how leaders chose exile over compromise, loyalty over self-interest, or ambition over restraint — from Solon's refusal of tyranny to Camillus's voluntary exile and desperate recall during the Gallic sack of Rome. It captures the moral crises that define Plutarch's most complex subjects: Alcibiades's final flight to Persia, Coriolanus yielding to his mother's pleas, and Timoleon's silent withdrawal as his tyrannical brother is killed. The pool closes with the downfall of Lysander's Athenian order, Sylla's brutal dictatorship, Cimon's humiliating ostracism, and the tragic deaths of Nicias and Demosthenes in Syracuse — tracing the human consequences of ambition, principle, and flawed judgment from Athens's myths to Rome's late republic.