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Wellsprings

Chaeronea

Boeotia (Greece)

A small town in Boeotia famous twice over—as the battlefield where Philip II of Macedon crushed Greek liberty in 338 BCE, and as the lifelong home of the biographer and Platonist priest Plutarch.

12 most-discussed ideas

Chaeronea through the eras

Classical Age

Chaeronea entered history at the western edge of Boeotia in 338 BCE, when Philip II of Macedon and his young son Alexander decisively defeated the combined armies of Athens and Thebes—among them the celebrated Theban Sacred Band, who fell where the great stone Lion of Chaeronea would one day rise over their grave. This single battle ended the era of fully independent Greek city-states and brought all of Greece under Macedonian hegemony.

Roman Era

Under Roman rule Chaeronea was a quiet provincial town, yet it won lasting fame as the home of Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE), who chose to live out his life there rather than in Rome or Athens—lest, as he put it, his small city grow smaller still. A Platonist philosopher and for decades a priest at nearby Delphi, Plutarch wrote his 'Parallel Lives,' pairing famous Greeks and Romans, and the essays of the 'Moralia' from this Boeotian home, making Chaeronea a wellspring of moral biography and ethical reflection for all later ages.

Teachers who lived here

Works composed here

Ideas shaped here

Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Chaeronea. Click any to trace the idea across time and place.

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