This chapter presents a new, annotated translation of an unusual treatise, commonly known by the Latin name De fluviis, preserved among the works of Plutarch and probably written between AD 100 and 250. The chapter introduction discusses the work’s date and authorship; notes the author’s preference for stories about Greece and places to the east as far afield as India, as well as his tendency to misidentify his literary sources when he does not actually invent them; and explains the repetitive organization of its 25 sections. These offer mythological explanations (often erotic, homicidal, or suicidal) for changes of names in rivers and mountains, as shaped by the recurrent themes of retribution and vindication of those who suffer injustice. On a factual level, the geography is lamentable, but the author’s examples of stones and plants with miraculous properties—often related to the fates of the individuals in the stories, though sometimes to the intrinsic properties of the rivers they feature—are sometimes confirmed by other sources. Presumably ‘the author knew his audience’.

Chapter 2 is a prelude to the main account of reception but offers some analysis of the first great reference to Plutarch in the post-classical world in John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (c. 1159). Despite the apocryphal nature of John’s Plutarch, the association of Plutarch as tutor to the Emperor Trajan was a trope which provided greater weight to the authority of his writing in the subsequent history of political thought. In the latter part of this chapter, I give a brief synopsis of a few essays (“On Homer” and “On the Education of Children”) which are now deemed apocryphal but which for many early modern scholars formed a legitimate part of Plutarch’s corpus. I discuss how we should consider these texts in the context of a history of Plutarch reception. I also discuss briefly the development of scholarship on Plutarch in early Renaissance Italy.

In this chapter, the author briefly recounts the history of the study of metaphor when it comes to Homer; he begins with the ancient discussions, moving from Aristotle through to Porphyry; these authors considered metaphor primarily a matter of intentional diction that added nobility and vigor to the style of the epics. He then moves on to modern discussions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, arguing that metaphor was somewhat disregarded in favor of Homeric simile. Finally, he demonstrates how recent studies of Homer have become receptive to the new definition of metaphor that has emerged in cognitive linguistics.