a stir of activity towards itself...

from the life of Pericles:

"Since our souls" he wrote, "are by nature possessed of great fondness for learning and fondness for seeing, it is surely reasonable to chide those who abuse this fondness on objects all unworthy either of their eyes or ears, to the neglect of those which are good and serviceable...It is meet, therefore, that he pursue what is best, to the end that he may not merely regard it, but also be edified by regarding it...The good creates a stir of activity towards itself, and implants at once in the spectator an active impulse...it furnishes him with a dominant purpose."

make your own luck...

The very superstitious Romans were not above making their own luck. This of the General Lucullus, about to face an army with a significant numerical advantage...

"As Lucullus was about to cross the river, some of his officers advised him to beware of the day, which was one of the unlucky days — the Romans call them "black days". For on that day Caepio and his army perished in a battle with the Cimbri. But Lucullus answered with these memorable words: "Verily, I will make this day, too, a lucky one for the Romans."

Mithridates mule...

This story from the Life of Lucullus, occurred during the Mithridatic Wars (75-63.) The great enemy of Lucullus, Mithridates, has just been put to route by the Romans...

" Mithridates himself, with no attendant or groom to assist him, fled away from the camp in the midst of the throng, not even provided with one of the royal horses; but at last the eunuch Ptolemaeus, who was mounted, spied him as he was borne along in the torrent of the rout, leaped down from his horse, and gave it to the king. Presently the Romans, who were forcing the pursuit, were hard upon him, and it was for no lack of speed that they did not take him. Indeed, they were very near doing so, but greed, and petty soldier's avarice, snatched from them the quarry which they had so long pursued in many struggles and great dangers, and robbed Lucullus of the victor's prize. For the horse which carried the king was just within reach of his pursuers, when one of the mules which carried the royal gold came between him and them, either of his own accord, or because the king purposely sent him into the path of pursuit. The soldiers fell to plundering and collecting the gold, fought with one another over it, and so were left behind in the chase. Nor was this the only fruit of their greed which Lucullus reaped. He had given orders that Callistratus, who was in charge of the king's private papers, should be brought alive to him, but his conductors, finding that he had five hundred pieces of gold in his girdle, slew him.

set towards virtue...

This on the goal of the "Parallel Lives" in the life of "Cimon"

"... and since we believe that a portrait which reveals character and disposition is far more beautiful than one which merely copies form and feature, we shall incorporate this man's deeds into our parallel lives, andº we shall rehearse them truly. The mere mention of them is sufficient favour to show him; and as a return for his truthful testimony he himself surely would not deign to accept a false and garbled narrative of his career.

We demand of those who would paint fair and graceful features that, in case of any slight imperfection therein, they shall neither wholly omit it nor yet emphasise it, because the one course makes the portrait ugly and the other unlike its original. In 1like manner, since it is difficult, nay rather perhaps impossible, to represent a man's life as stainless and pure, in its fair chapters we must round out the truth into fullest semblance; but those transgressions and follies by which, owing to passion, perhaps, or political compulsion, a man's career is sullied, we must regard rather as shortcomings in some particular excellence than as the vile products of positive baseness, and we must not all too zealously delineate them in our history, and superfluously too, but treat them as though we were tenderly defending human nature for producing no character which is absolutely good and indisputably set towards virtue."

a good husband...

From Plutarch's life of Cato Major...

"He was...a good father, considerate husband, and a household manager of no mean talent, nor did he give only a fitful attention to this, as a matter of little or no importance...he thought it more praiseworthy to be a good husband than a good senator..."

lop off those extravagancies...

Cato's recollection of the great Manius Curius:

" Near his fields was the cottage which had once belonged to Manius Curius, a hero of three triumphs. To this he would often go, and the sight of the small farm and the mean dwelling led him to think of their former owner, who, though he had become the greatest of the Romans, had subdued the most warlike nations, and driven Pyrrhus out of Italy, nevertheless tilled this little patch of ground with his own hands and occupied this cottage, after three triumphs. Here it was that the ambassadors of the Samnites once found him seated at his hearth cooking turnips, and offered him much gold; but he dismissed them, saying that a man whom such a meal satisfied had no need of gold, and for his part he thought that a more honourable thing than the possession of gold was the conquest of its possessors. Cato would go away with his mind full of these things and on viewing again his own house and lands and servants and mode of life, would increase the labours of his hands and lop off his extravagancies."

the dangers of wine...

From the "Life" of Camillus:

"The Gauls were of the Celtic stock, and their numbers were such, as it is said, that they abandoned their own country, which was not able to sustain them all, and set out in quest of another. They were many myriads of young warriors, and they took along with them a still greater number of women and children. Some of them crossed the Rhipaean mountains, streamed off towards the northern ocean, and occupied the remotest parts of Europe; others settled between the Pyrenees and the Alps, near the Senones and the Celtorians, and dwelt there a long time. But at last they got a taste of wine, which was then for the first time brought them from Italy. They admired the drink so much, and were all so beside themselves with the novel pleasure which it gave, that they seized their arms, took along their families, and made off to the Alps, in quest of the land which produced such fruit, considering the rest of the world barren and wild."