Why Plutarch Paired Theseus with Romulus

Plutarch paired Theseus with Romulus because each man did the same impossible thing at opposite ends of the ancient world: he took a crowd of scattered, quarreling strangers and turned them into a city. Theseus drew the separate towns of Attica together into one Athens; Romulus built Rome from a hilltop of runaways and shepherds. These are the founders of the two cities the Western world still traces itself back to, and Plutarch placed them first in his Parallel Lives, because founding a people is where everything else begins.

What did the two founders have in common?

The city was never the hard part. The people were. Both men are remembered for walls and monsters, a labyrinth and a she-wolf, but their real work was holding a mob of separate strangers together long enough to become one nation. And both did something genuinely cruel along the way. That is the pattern Plutarch wants a reader to sit with: the same hands that build a wonder can also do a wrong, and the wrong does not cancel the wonder or the other way around.

How were they different?

Theseus founded by drawing people together, and later gave up some of his own power to the city he had made. Romulus founded Rome as its first king, and killed his own twin brother, Remus, over the line of its first wall. One question runs under the whole pair: what is a founder allowed to do in the name of the thing he is building? Plutarch does not hand you the answer. He makes you weigh it.

The part that makes this pair rare: the verdict survived

Plutarch ended most of his pairs with a synkrisis, a short closing chapter that weighs the two men against each other. For his most famous pair, Alexander and Caesar, that chapter was lost. For Theseus and Romulus, the pair that opens the whole book, it survived. So an older reader can do something they almost never can with an ancient book: reach their own verdict on two lives, then open Plutarch's own and argue with the master exactly where his judgment does not hold up.

Meeting them with your kids

Theseus & Romulus is a nüNERD Plutarch pair, built at four reading levels, ages 0 to 14. The toddler and picture books plant the unforgettable scenes: a boy who walks out of the labyrinth on a single thread, a baby saved from the river by a wolf. The chapter book tells both lives in full, falls included, and weighs them the way Plutarch did. And because this pair's comparison survived, the prep book hands an older reader the master's own verdict and the standing to argue back.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Plutarch pair Theseus and Romulus? Both were the legendary founders of a great city, Athens and Rome, and Plutarch placed them first in his Parallel Lives to study what founding a people really takes.

Did Plutarch's comparison of Theseus and Romulus survive? Yes. Unlike the lost comparison of Alexander and Caesar, the closing synkrisis that weighs Theseus against Romulus is still part of the text.

Who were Theseus and Romulus? Theseus is the legendary founder-hero of Athens, famous for the labyrinth and the Minotaur; Romulus is the founder of Rome, saved as a baby by a she-wolf.

What did each founder do wrong? Theseus abandoned Ariadne, the girl whose thread had saved his life, on an island; Romulus killed his own twin brother, Remus, over the founding of Rome.