A miscellany of 59 short Q&A entries in which Plutarch explains obscure Greek civic titles, festival customs, place names, and proverbs by tracing them to local legend and history.
The Greek Questions (Quaestiones Graecae) is one of Plutarch's antiquarian works preserved in the Moralia, structured as a rapid sequence of questions and answers. Each entry opens with a puzzle -- what is the meaning of a strange local word, why does a particular city observe a certain ritual, where did a proverb come from -- and then supplies an explanatory story drawn from local history, myth, or etymology. The scope is deliberately scattered across the Greek world: Epidaurus, Cyme, Cnidus, Delphi, Megara, Samos, Crete, Boeotia, Arcadia, Lacedaemon, and many smaller cities each get one or more entries.
The answers range from plain institutional definitions (the 'artynoi,' a council of chosen men at Epidaurus; the 'poletes,' an Epidamnian official who brokered trade with neighboring Illyrians) to full narrative anecdotes explaining a festival or a taboo. The Charila story at Delphi -- a king who strikes a starving orphan girl with his sandal, causing her suicide and a subsequent famine that only a commemorative ritual can lift -- is one of the longer and more vivid tales. Others explain wartime customs (the Aeginetan 'lone-eaters' who quietly welcomed home the few survivors of a disastrous campaign), civic curiosities (why Megarian women wear a robe called 'aphabroma,' named for a beloved queen), and proverbs (the origin of 'to suffer worse things than Sambicus,' about a temple-robber caught and tortured for a year).
Plutarch draws on named sources such as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Callisthenes, and local historians like Ister and Architimus, treating oral tradition and civic archives as evidence worth recording and weighing rather than simply repeating. The work matters less for grand argument than as a documentary snapshot: a catalogue of vanished vocabulary, local rites, and origin-stories that would otherwise be lost, and a window into how much explanatory folklore Greek cities carried about their own institutions well into the Roman period.
“"Who are the koniopodes and artynoi at Epidaurus?" The governing body consisted of one hundred and eighty men; from among these they chose councillors, whom they called "artynoi."”
— Quaestiones Graecae · read this chapter →
“went off out of the way and, loosening her girdle, hanged herself. As the famine grew worse and diseases were added to it, the Pythia gave an oracle to the king that he must propitiate Charila, a maiden who had died by her own hand.”
— Quaestiones Graecae · read this chapter →
“the god told him to found a city wherever he happened to be bitten by a wooden dog, he was crossing to the other sea when he trod on a briar-bush (kynosbatos)”
— Quaestiones Graecae · read this chapter →
“each family privately, at home, welcomed back the survivors with feasting and warm greetings, waiting on their own fathers, kinsmen, brothers, and household themselves, with no outsider allowed in”
— Quaestiones Graecae · read this chapter →
“Immediately after this act of sacrilege he was caught and tortured for a whole year, being interrogated about each of his accomplices, and died in this manner; and the proverb arose from what he suffered.”
— Quaestiones Graecae · read this chapter →
It is a collection of 59 short question-and-answer entries in which Plutarch explains obscure Greek local terms, offices, festivals, and proverbs, usually by narrating the historical or legendary incident behind them. Entries cover cities across the Greek world, from Epidaurus and Delphi to Samos and Crete.
Charila was an orphan girl at Delphi who was struck with a sandal and driven to suicide by a king rationing food during a famine. The famine worsened afterward, and an oracle demanded a commemorative rite, still performed every nine years in Plutarch's telling, in which a king strikes an effigy of Charila and it is buried where she died.
According to Plutarch, they were descendants of Aeginetan families who lost most of their men in the Trojan expedition and its return voyage; survivors were welcomed home privately and quietly rather than with public celebration, a custom later reenacted in a solemn, slave-free feast to Poseidon.
Yes. He regularly names authorities such as Aristotle, Theophrastus, Callisthenes, and local historians including Ister of Alexandria and Architimus, treating civic records and earlier writers as evidence for competing explanations rather than presenting a single unquestioned account.
The Greek Questions preserves antiquarian lore that was already becoming obscure in Plutarch's own time (1st-2nd century CE), documenting local vocabulary, offices, and rites tied to specific cities' myths and histories before they were forgotten.
It refers to Sambicus of Elis, who stole bronze dedications from Olympia and plundered a sanctuary of Artemis, was caught, and was tortured for a year while being interrogated about his accomplices before he died -- Plutarch cites this as the origin of an Elean saying about extreme suffering.
Moralia: Ad Principem Ineruditum · Moralia: Adversus Colotem · Moralia: Amatoriae Narrationes · Moralia: Amatorius · Moralia: An Recte Dictum Sit Latenter Esse Vivendum · Moralia: An Seni Respublica Gerenda Sit · Moralia: An Virtus Doceri Possit · Moralia: An Vitiositas Ad Infelicitatem Sufficia · Moralia: Animine An Corporis Affectiones Sint Piores · Moralia: Apophthegmata Laconica · Moralia: Aquane An Ignis Sit Utilior · Moralia: Bruta Animalia Ratione Uti