This brilliant translation by noted classical scholar Moses Hadas makes some of Plutarch's warm, humane essays on personal relationships readily available in English for the first time. Love--"Love makes a man acute, though he had been a dullard before--and courageous when he had been timorous, just as men make soft wood tough by passing it through fire." Family-- "Anyone may very easily calculate that new friends and boon companions may be acquired when the old, like worn-out tools and implements, are gone. But for a brother there can be no substitute, just as there cannot be for a hand that has been amputated...." The Good Life-- "No costly mansions, no mass of gold, no pride of race, no grandeur of office, nor charm, or force of eloquence can bestow upon life so clear-skied a serenity as a soul purged of evil."