Video chat: Jeff Beneker on Plutarch and leadership

Episode 7 of "Meet the Greco-Romans"

Welcome to the seventh of an occasional series of video chats with authors and translators who have written about the philosophy, culture, and history of the Greco-Roman tradition.

In this episode I talk to Jeff Beneker, a classicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jeff’s primary research interest is in Greco-Roman biography and historiography. He has written a book on Plutarch’s biographical method, The Passionate Statesman: Eros and Politics in Plutarch’s Lives (Oxford University Press 2012). Jeff is co-editor with Georgia Tsouvala (Illinois State University) of The Discourse of Marriage in the Greco-Roman World (University of Wisconsin Press 2020). He is currently writing a biography of Pompey the Great (for Princeton University Press). In addition to teaching courses in Greek language and literature, he teaches lecture courses on Classical Mythology, Greco-Roman religion, and Greek civilization.

Our conversation focuses on Jeff’s How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership, about which I have written here at Figs in Winter.