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I'm a Plutarch admirer and have been putting together notes about his writings on the Isle of Cronus, i.e. where the Titan is imprisoned and slumbering. The island gets mentioned multiple times by Plutarch, always described as being near Britain. haliphron.ink/2026/08/11/f...

haliphron.inkFriendship with the Ancients, Plutarch I: The Isle of CronusThis blog series is a collation of notes for our practice of friendship with the ancients, as developed by the philosopher Helen De Cruz. “Friendship with the ancients is a set of imaginative exerc…

11/8/26, 12:57 am0 reposts0 likes

Scott Maybell

@haliphron.ink

11 Aug

The main scholar I cite is part of a tradition of trying to identity the actual location of the island, based on textual clues (vague enough that looser thinkers have speculated that Plutarch is describing the Americas!), but I would love to find something closer to a reception history of the idea.

Scott Maybell

@haliphron.ink

11 Aug

We've got two thousand years of readers picking up Plutarch's dialogues on Socrates' demon and on the face of the moon, all of them stimulated by the same imaginative spark: Where does the father of Zeus sleep? How people respond to that question in different contexts is infinitely fascinating.