Plutarch's Lives · Ages 0–14

Theseus & Romulus

Theseus made Athens one city and Romulus founded Rome. One was born a prince and had to prove it; the other was a king's grandson who grew up not knowing it.

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Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Toddler Book, for ages 0–4Ages 0–4Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Picture Book, for ages 3–7Ages 3–7Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Chapter Book, for ages 6–10Ages 6–10Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Prep Book, for ages 10–14Ages 10–14
Two cities face each other across a bay at sunset, a temple on a hill on the left and a round arena on the right, with a boat on the water between them, in soft crayon

A page from Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Picture Book

Why we love it

Nowhere else to go.

Once the walls are marked out, Romulus makes his city a place where anyone with nowhere else to go can come and belong, and people arrive from far and wide. In Plutarch the refuge is a temple to a god of sanctuary, and no slave, debtor or runaway who reached it was handed back.

Toddler book, ages 0–4 ↓

Many proud towns.

Theseus goes from town to town asking a hard thing: give up being separate, and join together as one city. Some find it easy and some find it hard, but one by one they come. Plutarch says the Athenians were still keeping a festival of that joining in his own day.

Picture book, ages 3–7 ↓

The bandit's club.

The first robber Theseus beat on the road to Athens fought with a club. Theseus took it and carried it from then on, the way his hero Heracles wore his lion skin. Our chapter book walks that whole road with him.

Chapter book, ages 6–10 ↓

Theseus's ship.

Athens kept the ship Theseus sailed home from Crete for hundreds of years, swapping in new timber as the old planks rotted, until philosophers argued over whether it was still the same ship.

Prep book, ages 10–14 ↓

Which book for your child?

Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Toddler Book, for ages 0–4

Ages 0–4 · Toddler book · Read to them

Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Toddler Book

A clever boy walks into a maze built so no one could ever walk out, beats the monster at its heart, and finds his way back to the light on a single thread. A baby who should have drowned in a river lives instead, saved by a wolf, and grows up to build Rome. One clever, one brave, a difference a toddler can feel long before anyone hands them a date. A picture on every page.

24 pages · about 340 words · cut-paper collage

Good to know
Young people sent across the sea to the maze never come home, until Theseus brings them all back. The second half belongs to Romulus, left beside a river as a baby with his twin brother.
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Theseus, in a blue-green tunic and cape, takes a ball of yellow thread from a princess in a long pink dress at a doorway, in cut-paper collage
A kind princess gave him a ball of thread.
A smiling, white-bearded shepherd holds the swaddled twin babies in his arms, with sheep around him on a green hillside, in cut-paper collage
Then a shepherd found the babies. He took them home, and raised them as his own.
Young Romulus in a red tunic guides a plow pulled by an ox while other men build a wooden fence behind him, in cut-paper collage
He marked out where the walls would go, and he began to build.
Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Picture Book, for ages 3–7

Ages 3–7 · Picture book · Read together

Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Picture Book

Theseus and Romulus grew up an ocean and a few centuries apart, and each did the same astonishing thing: took a crowd of separate, quarreling people and turned them into one great city. Setting the two side by side lets a young child feel the question underneath the swords and the monsters, that the hard part was never building the city, it was holding the people together.

36 pages · about 740 words · soft crayon

Good to know
The Romans take the Sabine women to Rome, and the book calls it wrong and unkind; the women then walk out between the two sides and stop the battle before it starts.
Also inside
Say-it-aloud spellings in the text for Theseus, Ariadne, the Minotaur, Faustulus and Romulus.
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Young Theseus leans his whole body against a huge gray boulder while his mother, in a yellow dress, watches beside him, in soft crayon
When Theseus could move that rock, his mother said, he would be ready to go and find his father. For years he tried.
Theseus in a blue-green tunic meets a young woman in a long red dress on a sunny beach, with a boat pulled up on the shore, in soft crayon
There, a princess named Ariadne (air-ee-AD-nee) wanted to help.
The twin brothers stand in a stone hall beside a man in a gray robe, facing an old white-haired man seated on a bench, in soft crayon
That wicked king had stolen the throne from their grandfather. So Romulus stood up to him and put their grandfather back on the throne.
Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Chapter Book, for ages 6–10

Ages 6–10 · Chapter book · They start reading alone

Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Chapter Book

Both lives in full, the founder of Athens and the founder of Rome, including the falls the younger books leave out: the girl abandoned on the beach, the brother killed over a wall. Your child meets the hardest truth in either story, that greatness is not the same as goodness and every wrong leaves a debt, and learns to weigh a life instead of just cheering it. Vintage black-and-white illustrations throughout.

80 pages · about 7,800 words · 23 black-and-white drawings

Good to know
Theseus's father falls from the cliffs and drowns when Theseus forgets to change the black sails, and Theseus himself dies an exile on Scyros, perhaps pushed from a cliff.
Also inside
An opening chapter introduces Plutarch and his promise to test old fables against reason. The last pages point to Plutarch's own Lives and the first book of Livy as the next things to read.
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Theseus stands in a stone room beside a wooden bed while a man in a tunic gestures toward it, in black-and-white line art
He gave Procrustes the very bed Procrustes had given to everyone else, and the cruelest man on the road never harmed another traveler.
Two young men stand on two separate hilltops, one pointing up at a flock of birds crossing the sky, in black-and-white line art
Remus, standing on one hill, saw six great birds. Then Romulus, on the other hill, saw twelve.
Romulus sits in a chair raised on a platform, carried by men above a crowd of bearded elders, in black-and-white line art
Romulus began to dress in scarlet and to be carried about in state.
Cover of Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Prep Book, for ages 10–14

Ages 10–14 · Prep book · Ready for Plutarch

Theseus & Romulus: A Plutarch Prep Book

Plutarch ended each pair of lives with a verdict, but for four of his pairs that final chapter was lost, the famous Alexander and Caesar among them. For Theseus and Romulus, the pair that opens his Lives, it survived. The prep book teaches a ten- to fourteen-year-old to weigh two lives the way a historian does, handle sources that flatly disagree, and then do the bravest thing a reader of a great book can do: reach a verdict, open the master's own, and argue back where his calls do not hold up. It is also the fastest primer for a parent who wants to teach or discuss Plutarch: what the two lives cover, the questions the comparison turns on, and where Plutarch's own surviving verdict lands.

96 pages · about 8,900 words · 17 black-and-white woodcuts

Good to know
Its chapters go question by question: who was braver, who treated women worse, who failed as a king. Along the way it covers Theseus carrying off the young Helen, his son Hippolytus dying under his curse, and a rumor that Roman senators cut Romulus to pieces.
Also inside
A chapter on how legends grow, with the plainer guesses the ancient writers offered: that the wolf may have been a nickname for the shepherd's wife, and the Minotaur a cruel man called Taurus.
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Young Theseus in a cloak stands on a rough path winding through rocky hills, with a ship on the sea behind him, in black-and-white woodcut
Theseus knew all this. He chose the road anyway.
Two bearded men sit side by side on a stone bench in a dark, rocky chamber, in black-and-white woodcut
Theseus remained imprisoned until Hercules obtained his release. By the time he came back to daylight, Athens had changed.
An old bearded writer sits at a desk by lamplight, writing in an open book beside a scroll, in black-and-white woodcut
He does not simply add points. He does not say, "Theseus wins four to three," or "Romulus wins the match." He weighs each kind of excellence separately.

The original

The real Theseus & Romulus

  • Plutarch, a Greek writer
  • Written around AD 100
  • First pair of the Parallel Lives

His Parallel Lives set famous Greeks beside famous Romans to show character through what each man did. Theseus and Romulus reach back the furthest of anyone in the collection.

When you want more

From the blog

Why Plutarch Paired Theseus with Romulus

Theseus and Romulus each gathered scattered people into one city, Athens and Rome, and Plutarch's closing comparison of the two founders survives.

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