Plutarch

c. 46 – after 119 AD · Greek biographer, essayist & Delphic priest

Plutarch of Chaeronea was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, biographer, and essayist, best known for his Parallel Lives and the sprawling collection of essays known as the Moralia. He served for decades as a priest at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi and wrote extensively on ethics, education, and self-command. The essay quoted here, The Education of Children, has circulated under his name since antiquity but is judged by most modern scholars to be the work of an imitator in his tradition — ‘pseudo-Plutarch.’

Traced to source

4 quotes we’ve traced to Plutarch

“Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech”

Verified

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”

Disputed

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”

Disputed

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled”

Disputed

Not actually Plutarch

Often misattributed to Plutarch

Famous lines widely pinned on Plutarch that we’ve traced to someone else.

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality”

actually Anaïs Nin

Did they really say it?

Thought Plutarch said something else?

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