Plutarch's Parallel Lives - The Comparisons

The collected ‘Comparisons’ from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives :

In his ‘Comparisons’, Plutarch contrasted the greatest men of Ancient Greece with the greatest men of Ancient Rome, pitting figures like Alcibiades , Pericles and Alexander the Great against homologous ones, the likes of Romulus , Cato and Caesar .

Plutarch’s Lives has served as a source of inspiration to various thinkers and statesmen over the centuries: men like Montaigne , Ben Franklin , Thomas Jefferson , Ralph Waldo Emerson and, perhaps most notably, William Shakespeare , who used Plutarch as “the quarry from which [he] built his Roman plays.”

Napoleon too greatly admired Plutarch’s Lives , reading it first as a child, and later carrying copies in his personal library while on campaign in his eponymous wars.

This book contains the collected ‘Comparisons’ of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives , part of the Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by Bernadotte Perrin (1847-1920), acclaimed American classicist and the Lampson Professor of Greek Literature and History at Yale University. Perrin was also authored three books on Plutarch’s Lives , as well as several books on Greek poetry, history and drama.