A principle for building exercises to control your anxiety or fear.  Favorinus, a philosopher from the time of Plutarch, offers some deft observations about Socrates.

Plutarch offers insight on relating to people above your station

Plato gives some insight in how to undermine your enemies.

How to turn bad luck around.  SPOILER: it's not just more effort.

Stories of Timotheus and Sulla

What happened after Lysander died?  What was his legacy?  What can we learn from his life?  

Lysander returns from his setbacks at Sparta with a revolutionary plan.  He consults the gods about the Spartan Kingship; and some of his own prophecies about Greek geopolitics come true.

In this episode: How should protegés treat mentors?  How do you change a deeply conservative state?  And, as always, what is the cost, for an individual, for a state, of striving for supreme glory?

Characters:
Alexander Hamilton (cameo)
Lysander
Tissaphernes, Satrap of Lydia
The Pythia
Agesilaus
Cyrus the Younger
King Pausanias
Thrasyboulus of Athens

Places:
Sparta
Oracle of Delphi
Oracle of Dodona, in Epirus
Oracle of Zeus Ammon (Amun Ra), Libya
Ephesus
Thebes
Haliartus

Lysander - The Spartan who took down Athens.  In this episode: the dangers of success.

How (and why) Lysander installed the notorious "Thirty" at Athens, and how he came to be worshipped as a god.  Could Sparta contain such a man?

Characters:

Lysander

Socrates

Theramenes
Critias

King Pausanias

King Agis

Thrasyboulus
The Thirty

The Mob

Key Virtues:

Patience

Flexibility

Obedience
Indifference to Money
Resilience

Key Places:

Athens

Sparta

Thebes
Samos
Miletus
Delphi

A Spartan; first Greek honored as a god during his lifetime; destroyer of Athenian naval supremacy.

In this episode: his rise to power, how he pulled off the greatest naval upset in Greek history, and WHY he did it.

Characters:

Lysander

Socrates

Xenophon

Alcibiades

Prince Cyrus the Younger

Agesilaus

King Agis

Kallikratidas

The Mob

Key Virtues:

Patience

Flexibility

Obedience

Key Places:

Athens

Sparta

Ephesus

Dardanelles / Hellespont

A story about how Socrates reacted when he got publicly shamed.

Harry Truman was a great admirer of Plutarch's lives, and recommended them often.  He discusses why.

Quotes taken from Miller's oral biography of Truman, "Plain Speaking."