With all due respect, he never said it was an easy read. I had a copy that I carried around for over 20 years without ever really getting into it. I carried it because I had read so many times where LL referred to it. But I sold it to a half-price book store about a year ago. But, after reading your post, I thought I would take another look. I skipped over the prefaces and the Life of Plutarch. I started with the Life of Theseus and found myself chuckling in paragraph VIII. Seems that Theseus took on a tough guy named Sinis the Pine-Bender who he killed. Sinis had a beautiful daughter named Perigoune who tried to flee from Theseus and hid in a place of wild asparagus begging the plants to hide her. Theseus called to her pledging to take care of her and do her no harm. She came out and afterwards born him a son. Later, Theseus gave her away in marriage to some other guy. So much for caring and doing no harm.