Plutarch sees sexual behaviour as a manifestation of a man's character. For the tyrant or the violent man, sex is an arena for power and the domination of others. Theseus, Demetrius, Sulla, and subsidiary figures like Alexander of Pherae or [the Spartan king] Pausanias express and reveal their viciousness through sexual violence. The ideal statesman instead shows his self-control in the same arena, creating harmony in his household and in his city.

The first three chapters of Plutarch's Demosthenes comprise a prologue that introduces the Demosthenes-Cicero pair. Plutarch begins this prologue with a chreia that raises an ethical question about the right environment for happiness and the development of virtue. Referring to himself in the first person and addressing his dedicatee, Sosius Senecio, by name, he engages his reader directly, first about happiness and virtue, and then about his approach to the Lives that appear in this book and his reasons for pairing them. In the process, he provides personal information about himself, remarking on his fondness for his hometown and his late start in learning Latin. These remarks are typically taken at face value, and have become central to Plutarch's own biography in modern times 1 . Indeed, the prologue as a whole has been read most carefully not for understanding Plutarch's ethics or method in the Demosthenes-Cicero, but to characterize the form and function of his prologues in general 2 . It is also important, however, to consider the prologue's immediate context and its bearing on the book that it introduces. In fact, two central themes of the prologuethat virtue is independent of environment and that self-knowledge is critical to success -are important themes in the Lives that follow. In this essay I present a reading of the prologue that demonstrates how closely connected it is to the contents of the book and how its themes are elaborated in the pair of Lives.An important comparandum for the opening of the Demosthenes-Cicero is the prologue to the Alexander-Caesar, where Plutarch asks his readers not to quibble if he does not narrate all the great deeds of his heroes. In defense of his omissions, he makes his oft-quoted claim that he "is not writing histories, but lives" (Alex. 1,2). Often read as a general methodological statement applying to the composition of all the Parallel

This article argues that the programmatic statements in Nepos' preface to the Lives of Foreign Generals and in some of the Lives themselves help establish that his biographies emphasize the virtues of his subjects and not their res gestae. References to unlearned readers, often taken as an indication of the general ignorance of Nepos' audience, are actually a method for constructing an ideal reader who will be sensitive to cultural differences between Greeks and Romans and will understand the differences between biography and history.

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Basil's Address to Young Men on How to Read Greek Literature is often read as an imitation of Plutarch's How to Study Poetry. Exploring the authors' connections more generally, I suggest that Basil has relied on Plutarch's approach in both the Moralia and the Lives to make the central argument of his essay, which is a justification for the reading of pagan literature in a Christian context. Basil follows Plutarch in his moralizing interpretations of historical anecdotes and in turning to Plato's Republic for philosophical support, but he also adapts Plutarch's approach to fit the social, religious, and political climate of his times.*