Plutarch's lives ebook Collection Translated by Bernadotte Perrin
Plutarch structured his Lives by pairing lives of famous Greeks with those of famous Romans.
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of 48 biographies of famous men, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD.
(wikipeida)
Publication date 1914-1926
Excerpt from the Introduction:
Plutarch was born at Chaeroneia, a small town on the northern confines of Boeotia, about the middle of the first century of our era, and toward the close of the reign of the emperor Claudius. He belonged to a family of ample means and generous culture, and was liberally educated. He studied at Athens, the most attractive university town in his day for both Greeks and Romans, and was a disciple of Ammonius of Lamptrae, a Peripatetic philosopher deeply versed in religious lore. Returning to his native town, he was soon called upon to represent it as deputy to the Roman governor of the province of Greece.
That he travelled extensively over Greece, visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, and resided much at Rome, may be inferred from his writings, as most that is known about him must be inferred. At Rome, he was in charge of certain public business, so that he had not time to learn thoroughly the Latin language, as he himself confesses in the introduction to his Demosthenes. But Greek was the language of literary and polite 1911.
society at Rome, and cultivated Greeks, especially philosophers, were welcome there. As a Greek philosopher, and a populariser of Platonism, Plutarch read and lectured at Rome, much as he did in the small but select circle of his intimates and friends at home. He made and retained a large acquaintance with the prominent Romans of his day, and was familiar with the questions which most occupied the minds of men at the political centre of the world.
Then, after Athenian education, generous travels, diplomatic missions, modest literary celebrity, and considerable residence at Rome, he seems to have retired to his little country home, with his books, notes, lectures, essays, and gentle philosophy, and there, in a leisure not all too much encroached upon by local magistracies and certain religious offices at neighbouring Delphi, to have elaborated the sketches of his lectures and essays, which have come down to us under the collective name of Morals, and to have composed the work on which his fame chiefly rests, the Parallel Lives ofy Greeks and Romans. He lived through the reigns Nero, Domitian, and Trajan, and, leaving the world as he did about 120 A.D., must have rejoiced at the accession of Hadrian to the imperial throne. His world had grown steadily better while he lived, and was now to enjoy its second golden age.
Greece, after passing under Roman sway, lost sight gradually of her great men of action, and contented herself with the glories of her men of thought. Here surely the dominant Romans could not vie with her. It was to prove that the more remote past of Greece could show its lawgivers, commanders, statesmen, patriots, and orators, as well as the nearer and therefore more impressive past of Rome, that the Parallel Lives were written.
With Scipio Africanus the Elder, the greatest man of Rome, Plutarch matched Epaminondas, the greatest man of Greece. This pair, or "book," of Lives is unfortunately lost. With Camillus, who saved Rome from the Gauls, he matched Themistocles, who saved Athens from the Persians.
Contents :
v. 1. Theseus and Romulus. Lycurgus and Numa. Solon and Publicola -- v. 2. Themistocles and Camillus. Aristides and Cato Major. Cimon and Lucullus -- v. 3. Pericles and Fabius Maximus. Nicias and Crassus -- v. 4. Alcibiades and Coriolanus. Lysander and Sulla -- v. 5. Agesilaus and Pompey. Pelopidas and Marcellus -- v. 6. dion and Brutus. Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus -- v. 7. Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar -- v. 8. Sertorios and Eumenes. Phocion and Cato the Younger -- v. 9. Demetrius and Antony. Pyrrhus and Caius Marius -- v. 10. Agis and Cleomenes, and Tiberius and Caius Gracchus. Philopoemen and Flaminus -- v. 11. Aratus, Artaxerxes, Galba and Otho. Index to all the lives
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