Plutarch closes his paired Lives of Romulus and Theseus with a short formal synkrisis, weighing which founder acted from nobler motive and left the better legacy.
This short chapter is Plutarch's synkrisis, or formal comparison, appended to the paired biographies of Theseus, legendary founder-king of Athens, and Romulus, legendary founder-king of Rome. Rather than retelling their careers, Plutarch works through a series of paired judgments: which man acted by free choice versus necessity, whose youthful exploits were harder, how each handled love and marriage, how each treated a doomed male relative, and what each man's city gained or lost from his unions and his death.
The comparison unfolds point by point rather than as a continuous narrative. Plutarch opens by contrasting Theseus, who left a secure inheritance at Troezen to seek out danger, with Romulus, who was driven to greatness by threat of slavery and death at the hands of Amulius. He then measures Theseus's early exploits against the tyrants of the Isthmus against Romulus's killing of Acron, weighs the Cretan tribute story and Ariadne's love against Romulus's wars with the Sabines, and turns to each man's failures as a ruler, his violence toward a family member, and above all the abduction of women -- Romulus's seizure of the Sabines against Theseus's repeated abductions of Ariadne, Antiope, Anaxo, and Helen. The chapter closes by tracing the very different long-term consequences: Rome's marriage alliance produced two centuries of civic harmony, while Athens reaped hatred, war, and the sack of Aphidnae from Theseus's unions.
The piece matters historically as a specimen of Plutarch's core method in the Parallel Lives: moral biography built for direct ethical comparison across cultures, treating legendary Greek and Roman founders as commensurable case studies in character. It shows a first-century writer using half-mythical material self-consciously -- flagging invented episodes (the story of Aegeus's fall, the captivity of Theseus's mother) as likely fictions even while using them to score moral points -- and it demonstrates how Roman and Greek founding legends were read against one another under the Empire as sources of civic and personal instruction.
“These, then, are the things worth knowing that have come down to us about Romulus and Theseus.”
— Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus
“For a ruler must, above all, preserve the rule itself; and it is preserved no less by abstaining from what does not belong to it than by holding fast to what does.”
— Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus
“Romulus, on the other hand, having seized nearly eight hundred women — not taking all of them for himself, but only one, Hersilia, as they say — distributed the rest among the good men of the citizenry”
— Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus
“Thus he mingled and welded the two peoples together, and provided a wellspring of future goodwill and strength for the state.”
— Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus
“For Romulus's deliverance came with the great favor of the gods, whereas the oracle given to Aegeus, to abstain from a woman in a foreign land, seems to show that Theseus's begetting of a child happened against the will of the gods.”
— Comparison Of Romulus With Theseus
A synkrisis is the short formal comparison Plutarch appends after most paired biographies, weighing the two subjects point by point rather than narrating further events. In this chapter he compares Romulus and Theseus on motive, early exploits, treatment of family, marriages, and lasting legacy.
Plutarch does not hand down a single verdict but scores different categories differently. Theseus wins some points, such as his wrath toward his son going no further than words rather than a fatal blow, while Romulus wins others, especially the durable civic good that came from the Sabine marriages.
He argues Romulus's anger arose from deliberation over public policy, making it less excusable as a sudden passion, whereas Theseus's wrath toward his son came from love, jealousy, and a woman's slander -- and unlike Romulus's act, ended in words and a curse rather than a killing.
He judges the acts by their outcomes: Romulus took only one woman for himself and distributed the rest honorably among his citizens, producing two centuries of stable intermarriage between Romans and Sabines, while Theseus's repeated abductions, including of the still-immature Helen, brought Athens hatred, war, and the loss of Aphidnae.
No -- he explicitly flags several episodes as likely inventions, including the story of Aegeus falling from the acropolis and the tale of Theseus's mother being taken captive, judging such details 'a falsehood' even as he uses them to draw moral contrasts.
He offers a general rule that a ruler is undone by relaxing or overextending authority, becoming either a crowd-pleasing populist or a tyrant, and that Romulus and Theseus each erred in one of these opposite directions despite both being naturally suited to statesmanship.
He says the two peoples shared kingship and citizenship because of the marriage alliance, and that across two hundred and thirty years no Roman man abandoned his wife until Spurius Carvilius became the first to divorce his, on a charge of barrenness.
The comparison is the closing move of Plutarch's broader project in the Parallel Lives, pairing a Greek and a Roman figure of similar type so that readers can judge character across cultures using a shared ethical standard rather than treating Greek and Roman history as separate traditions.
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