Parallel Lives

Parallel Lives, also known as Plutarch's Lives, Comparative Lives, Lives of Illustrious Men, and the Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a book written by the famous writer, philosopher, and priest Plutarch in ancient Rome. The book is made of pairs of biographies (stories of people's lives) each comparing one Greek man and one Roman man of a similar life. These pairs are set to show moral quality and moral motivation in the people Plutarch writes about. 

There are 23 pairs of stories, and 4 biographies that are unpaired, but that Plutarch still wrote. Some of the pairs include Demosthenes and Cicero, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, and Theseus and Romulus. The surviving biographies mention another dozen. The many biographies are often grouped in many volumes.

 Content 
A pair of Biographies, originally about Epaminondas and either Scipio Africanus or Scipio Aemilianus has been lost to history. Other lives have been shortened and have large lacunae (gaps), and/or have been messed with by writers of later times.

An example of Plutarch's Lives being important is Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great, which is one of the few writings about Alexander the Great, despite being a secondary or tertiary source. It has parts of Alexander's life that no other source has. The same is true of the life of Numa Pompilius, which has unique details on the early ancient Roman calendar. Plutarch has been celebrated for the liveliness and warmth of his Parallel Lives that have attracted many readers throughout its existence.

 Other websites 

 University of Chicago English text of Plutarch's Parallel Lives.


Category:Ancient Greek culture