Parallel Lives

The Parallel Lives (Ancient Greek: Βίοι Παράλληλοι, Bíoi Parállēloi; Latin: Vītae Parallēlae) is a series of 48 biographies of famous men written in Greek by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch, probably at the beginning of the second century. The lives are arranged in pairs to illuminate the common moral virtues or failings of their subjects. The surviving Parallel Lives consists of 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman whose lives Plutarch viewed as similar, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero. There are also four singular Lives, recounting the stories of Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and Otho. Traces of other biographies point to an additional twelve single Lives that are now missing. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived.