Everything about Parallel Lives totally explained
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 (in
Greek:
Bioi parallèloi), as they're 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 wasn't 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.
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.
The table below links to several on-line English translations of Plutarch's
Lives; see also "Other links" section below. The LacusCurtius site has the complete set; the others are incomplete to varying extents.
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
.
These translations are linked with D in the table below; those marked (D) in parentheses are incomplete in the HTML version.
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
These translations are linked with G in the table below.
L
LacusCurtius has the Loeb translation by Bernadotte Perrin (published 1914‑1926) of part of the Moralia and all the Lives; see http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/home.html
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 Loeb edition by Bernadotte Perrin; and/or in English according to an abbreviated version of the Thomas North translations. 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 translations are linked with P in the table below.
There are also four paperbacks published by Penguin Books, two with Greek lives, two Roman, rearranged in chronological order, and containing a total of 36 of the lives.
Notes
The last line of the table contains the four "unpaired" lives, as mentioned above.
The Perseus project also contains a biography of Caesar Augustus appearing in the North translation, but not coming from Plutarch's Parallel Lives: P
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.
At the time of composing this table there appears some confusion in the internal linking of the Perseus project webpages, responsible for this split in two references.
Chronology of the lives (by date of death, birthdate is often uncertain)
All dates are BC except Galba and Otho.
Theseus 1234 – 1204 (myth)
Romulus 771 – 717 (myth)
Numa Pompilius d. 673 (thought to be mythical)
Lycurgus circa 700 – 630 (thought to be mythical)
Solon 638 – 558
Poplicola d. 503
Coriolanus c. 475 (thought to be mythical)
Aristides 430 – 468
Themistocles 524- 459
Cimon 510 – 450
Pericles 495 - 429
Artaxerxes d. 424
Nicias 470 – 413
Alcibiades 450 - 404
Lysander d. 395
Camillus 446 - 365
Pelopidas d. 364
Agesilaus 444 – 360
Dion 408 - 354
Timoleon 411 - 337
Alexander the Great 356 - 323
Demosthenes 384 - 322
Phocion 402 – 318
Eumenes 362 - 316
Demetrius d. 283
Pyrrhus 318 - 272
Agis c. 245
Cleomenes d. 219
Aratus 271 – 213
Marcellus 268 - 208
Fabius Maximus 275 – 203
Philopoemen 253 - 183
Flamininus 228 - 174
Aemilius Paulus 229-160
Cato the Elder 234 – 149
Tiberius Gracchus 163 - 132
Gaius Gracchus 154 - 121
Gaius Marius 157 - 86
Sulla 138 - 78
Sertorius b. c. 123 – d. 72
Lucullus 118 - 56
Crassus 115 - 53
Pompey 106 - 48
Cato the Younger 95 – 46
Julius Caesar 100 or 102 - 44
Cicero 106 – 43
Brutus 85 – 42
Mark Antony 83 - 30
Galba 3 BC – 69 AD
Otho 32 AD – 69 ADFurther Information
Get more info on 'Parallel Lives'.
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