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Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Parallel Lives, as they are more properly and commonly known, contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals biographized, but also about the times in which they lived.

As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character—good or bad—on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of Lives—the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus—no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.

His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.

[edit] Biographies

Plutarch structured his Lives by alternating lives of famous Greeks ("Grecians") with those of famous Romans. After such a set of two (and one set of four) lives he generally writes out a comparison of the preceding biographies.

In the table below there are links to several on-line versions of Plutarch's Lives^[1]; see also "Other links" section below.

D

Dryden is famous for having lent his name as editor-in-chief to the first complete English translation of Plutarch's Lives. This 17th century translation is available at The MIT Internet Classics Archive. In the table below, the external links marked D deep link to the individual biographies (and comparisons) as provided by that website.

G

Project Gutenberg contains several versions of 19th century translations of these Lives, see: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/authrec?fk_authors=342 and http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14114

The full text version (TXT) of such a translation is available at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/674

As far as HTML editions of these translations are available at the Gutenberg website, the external links marked G in the table below deep link to the relevant section of these Gutenberg webpages.

L

The LacusCurtius website has the Loeb translation (published 1914‑1926) of several works of Plutarch, amongst which the Lives of all Romans (and a few Greeks), see http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/home.html

As far as available these translations are linked with L in the table below.

P

Also the Perseus Project has several of the Lives, see: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html

The Lives available on the Perseus website are in Greek and English according to the Bernadotte Perrin edition; and/or in English according to an abbreviated version of the Thomas North translations^[2]. This last edition concentrates on those of the Lives Shakespeare based his plays upon: Thomas North's translation of most of the Lives, based on a French version published in the 16th century, preceded Dryden's translation mentioned above.

These Perseus editions are marked by P.

Greek Theseus D G P Lycurgus D G Solon D G P Themistocles D G P Pericles D G P Alcibiades[3] D G P Timoleon D G Pelopidas D G Aristides D G P Philopoemen D G L Pyrrhus D G L Lysander D G P Cimon D G P Nicias D G P Eumenes D G Agesilaus D G Alexander the Great D G L P [4] Phocion D G Agis D and Cleomenes D   Demosthenes D Demetrius D Dion D Aratus D and Artaxerxes D

Roman Romulus D G L Numa Pompilius D G L Poplicola DG L Camillus D G L Fabius Maximus D G L Coriolanus D G L P Aemilius Paulus D G L Marcellus D G L Cato D G L Flamininus D G L Gaius Marius D G L Sulla D G L Lucullus D G L Crassus D G L Sertorius D G L Pompey D G L Julius Caesar D G L P1 P2[5] Cato D G L Tiberius Gracchus D L and Gaius Gracchus D L Cicero D L Mark Antony D L P Brutus D L P Galba D L and Otho D L

Comparisons D G D G D G (N/A) D G D G D G D G G D G L (N/A) D G D G D G D G D G (N/A) (N/A) D   D D D (N/A)

Notes

1. ↑  The last line of the table contains the four "unpaired" lives, as mentioned above.
2. ↑  The Perseus project also contains a biography of Caesar Augustus appearing in the North translation, but not coming from Plutarch's Parallel Lives: P
3. ↑  Though the majority of the Parallel Lives were written with the Greek hero (or heroes) placed in the first position followed by the Roman hero, there are three sets of Lives where this order is reversed : Aemilius Paulus-Timoleon, Coriolanus-Alcibiades and Sertorius-Eumenes.
4. ↑  Here pdf it is also available an excerpt of the Penguin edition (section 16, on the Battle of Granicus).
5. ↑  At the time of composing this table there appears some confusion in the internal linking of the Perseus webpages, responsible for this split in two references.

[edit] Other links

• Plutarch's Life of Alexander, Dryden translation (pdf)
• http://www.e-classics.com/

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
Alcibiades and Coriolanus - Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar - Aratus & Artaxerxes and Galba & Otho - Aristides and Cato the Elder
Crassus and Nicias - Demetrius and Antony - Demosthenes and Cicero - Dion and Brutus - Fabius and Pericles - Lucullus and Cimon
Lysander and Sulla - Numa and Lycurgus - Pelopidas and Marcellus - Philopoemen and Flamininus - Phocion and Cato the Younger - Pompey and Agesilaus
Poplicola and Solon - Pyrrhus and Gaius Marius - Romulus and Theseus - Sertorius and Eumenes
Tiberius Gracchus & Gaius Gracchus and Agis & Cleomenes - Timoleon and Aemilius Paullus - Themistocles and Camillus

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