Reading ancient authors can be disconcerting. It's hard to be certain if you're inhabiting the same mental universe as they are. How similar are we to our forebears of two millennia ago, and how much have shifts in time and culture made fundamental changes to our outlook? For instance, my recent reading of some of Plutarch's Lives . Plutarch was a Greek author and philosopher who wrote at the end of the first and beginning of the second century CE. He was a philosopher, trained at the Academy in Athens, and also a priest of Delphi, the famous shrine of Apollo from which Greek and Roman leaders sought oracles before they set out on important ventures. However, he is best known for his "Lives", a series of short biographies of prominent Greek and Roman leaders from various eras. He produced these in pairs - one Greek, one Roman - intended to illustrate different moral and political lessons and to compare and contrast Greek and Roman civilisation. The Peng
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson