Plutarch's Greeks and Romans Podcast

Theseus arrives in a crisis-stricken Athens; the monster-slaying, serial-womanizing hero must take his rightful place and set the city on the path to greatness.

Lycurgus gives Sparta its laws, transforming the polis into a warrior society that would go on to produce the most fearsome soldiers of the ancient world.

Solon, Athens's original wise man, offers prudent laws meant to keep the city from disintegrating into civil conflict, picking up the story after Theseus.

Athens faces destruction as the Persians advance, and it falls to the bold, clever Themistocles and his honorable rival Aristides to find a way to stop them.

Themistocles and Aristides come of age as tyranny in Athens gives way to the world's first democracy, a brave new world that would require brave new leaders.

Xenophon, a soldier, historian and student of Socrates, leads the stranded Greek army known as the Ten Thousand through hostile territory, a march he recorded in his Anabasis.

Agesilaus, the disciplined Spartan king, is paired against Pelopidas, the fiery Theban who defied tyranny and shaped the rise of Thebes through bold action and sacrifice, through Plutarch's lens.

Having narrowly survived the invasion of Xerxes's massive Persian army, Athens leans on Cimon's leadership to build a new alliance and a powerful navy in the Aegean Sea.

Lysander is appointed admiral of the Spartan fleet at Ephesus in 407 BC, and resolves to make it a match for the Athenian navy, resurgent since Alcibiades's return.

After a disastrous setback in Sicily, Athens fights on in the Peloponnesian War, with Alcibiades playing a key role in each new turning point of the conflict.

The ambitious Alcibiades and the cautious Nicias, two polar opposites, clash over Athenian foreign policy toward Sparta, each urging a different course on the city.

With Cimon out of the picture, Pericles becomes the most prominent voice in the Ecclesia, establishing a legacy as arguably the greatest statesman in Athens's history and opening its Golden Age.

Pericles reaches heights of political power never before achieved in democratic Athens, even as the threat of war looms over the city and Greece as a whole.

Picking up after a plague claimed Pericles, who had kept Athens behind its walls against Sparta, the unfinished war forces the city to find new leadership.