Plutarch: How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)

In How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis), Plutarch asks how young readers should approach poetry when its pleasures, myths and morally questionable characters can both educate and mislead. His answer is a practical programme of attentive reading: readers should recognise poetic convention, compare statements, interpret examples critically and use literature as preparation for philosophical reflection.

This Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics edition presents the Greek text with a substantial introduction and commentary by Richard Hunter and Donald Russell. Their notes explain Plutarch’s language, syntax and literary examples while placing his method within ancient education, criticism and philosophy. More than an edition of a single essay, the volume provides a detailed entry into Greek and Roman reading practices and the intellectual culture in which poetry was treated as both a source of pleasure and a serious instrument of moral education.