Ethical education is a crucial theme in Plutarch's work, and X.’s book seeks to offer a comprehensive examination of the public and private spaces that are central to the treatment of this theme by Plutarch. It is to X.’s credit that she takes into account both the Lives and the Moralia, and the book as a whole succeeds in its all-encompassing aim.

Chapter 1 discusses Plutarch's theory of ethical education and argues that in Plutarch's moral programme nurture takes a more central role than nature, thus illustrating the influence of the external environment on character and morality. Chapter 2 considers moral education and parenthood. First, it examines the images of children in the Moralia, which, as X. suggests, become didactic for the adult audience; and, second, it shows that while mothers in the Moralia are presented as being responsible for the birth and emotional care of their children, in the Lives they appear to influence the adult conduct of their sons, especially when the father is absent or financially inferior. In relation to the first point, I am not entirely convinced of how Timoxena junior's ‘love for humanity’ in the Consolation to my wife ‘acts … as a paradigm for idealised adult conduct’ (p. 48). Why should this specific character trait be so attractive to adults (and by implication not her other admirable characteristics)? And how does this reading fit the specific context of the essay where Plutarch's concern is to console (608D) – a way of affecting adult moral response – rather than provide Timoxena junior as a paradigm for emulation?

Chapter 3 investigates early education in the classroom. It stresses that On reading the poets and On listening to lectures work complementarily to prepare the young student for philosophy, while On listening to lectures and On progress in virtue can be read together ‘as a kind of philosophical lesson about progressing through the stages of life’ (p. 18). This idea of taking particular essays together in order to demonstrate the progressive character of Plutarch's ethical education is also developed elsewhere by X., who argues that the Political precepts and the Whether old men should engage in public affairs ‘were written with one another in mind’, with the former work ‘embodying the moralising counsel that the elderly politician in’ the latter ‘should ideally convey’ (p. 143). The rest of Chapter 3 examines two ethical instructors in action, Socrates in Life of Alcibiades and Plato in Life of Dion. An interesting point made concerns Plutarch's handling of focalisation. It is argued that ‘in Alcibiades we mainly get the point of view of the teacher’ (p. 100), and this allows Socrates to emerge as a self-conscious teacher (pp. 103–4). This is true, but in the same section there is much of Alcibiades' perspective too (e.g. Alc. 4.2–4; 6.5: ἡλίκων … μανθάνοντα). With reference to Dion, X. maintains that ‘it is on [sic] the fact that he [i.e. Dion] is deemed to be a more advanced, responsible, and self-aware student that accounts for the focalisation of the narrative being from the point of view of the student himself, who has truly benefited from his teacher's contribution’ (p. 104). There is, however, quite a lot on Plato's perspective too (e.g. Dion 8.4; 17.3; cf. 52.4–5), and, in general, it is better to see Plutarch as dividing his attention between both the teacher Plato and the two pupils Dion and Dionysius, prompting reflection on the potentials as well as the limits of Platonic teaching and learning. It is interesting to ask why Alcibiades, Dionysius and even Dion fail at the end, despite having received training from the best philosophers.

Chapter 4 probes women's education within the marital chamber, stressing that in the Moralia (except in the Virtues of women) men appear to be responsible for the moral guidance of their wives, whereas in the Lives women have a more active didactic role while the men are in a needy position. Chapter 5 examines Plutarch's moral pedagogy in politics and argues that Plutarch's ideal politician assumes an ethically edifying role in a way that reflects the educational practice in the lecture-room of philosophy.

Chapter 6 discusses military leadership. Among X.’s contentions is that Plutarch's reflections on the moral benefits of his biographies in the Aemilius–Timoleon prologue are not casually placed, for ‘the syzygy concentrates on the careers of two well-known generals, whose military activities and decisions are presented in the narrative as intrinsically linked to their moral character’ (p. 150). Not that Aemilius and Timoleon are the only generals with moral characteristics that interact with their generalship. One might think of Plutarch's Nicias or Mark Antony. X. also asserts that given the more elaborate emphasis on the ethics of generalship in the Roman Lives, there would have been different reactions from Plutarch's readers (p. 171). Plutarch's ‘Roman friends would surely [my emphasis] have had more opportunities' to command armies ‘than his Greek friends, so that the function of the moralism accounts for the different forms: for the Romans, the ethical advice is extensive and direct, and they could benefit from reading the moral qualities of Aemilius or Sertorius, adjusting them to their own present-day military experience, if any [my emphasis]; for the Greek audience, however, Plutarch's moralism is expected to operate in a more reflective/abstract way, because the same ethical implications from Aemilius and Sertorius would have to be transposed from the sort of life-engagement that those recipients were unlikely to experience for themselves to the areas of public activities they could expect to take part in’ (p. 171). This is an intriguing suggestion, but is such a ‘transposition of ethical implications' necessary? And what if some of Plutarch's Roman friends did not command any armies themselves? (Cf. the uncertainty in the wording emphasised above). Should we also assume that Plutarch makes such a distinction between ethics in the political and the military fields that different kinds of moralism and different kinds of response from Greeks and Romans could be justified? This sits oddly with Plutarch's general practice of presenting in most of the Lives the political and military fields as inextricably connected as well as X.’s overall emphasis on the connections between the different educational settings. Elsewhere, Plutarch envisions equal reactions across the Greeks and Romans (Dion 1.1). One might accordingly wonder if in these instances Plutarch put the Roman Life before the Greek, because he ‘expected a more advanced stage of ethical reflection from his Greek readers' (p. 171). X. concludes: ‘If his Parallel Lives were his means of bringing Greek philosophy to Rome, then the three reversed pairs were his particular vehicle for hellenising the sphere of action the Romans were most proud of’, i.e. generalship. It is worth noting, however, that the third pair with reversed order is Coriolanus–Alcibiades, where some of the point is that Coriolanus is not Hellenised at all.

Chapter 7 focuses on Plutarch's Table Talk. After discussing Plutarch's prefatory didacticism, X. makes some thoughtful observations about Plutarch's narrative persona shifting between the role of a teacher and that of a student, thus revealing the complexities of the sympotic pedagogical communication.

Overall, the book shows the benefits of a combined reading of the Lives and the Moralia, and students and scholars of Plutarch would profit from a close look at it.