Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch wrote these biographies of Greek and Roman leaders around the beginning of the second century AD. The collection places paired lives beside comparisons of their characters and actions, followed by the individual lives of Aratus, Artaxerxes, Galba and Otho.
Get it in Sphinx
Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist to hear when Sphinx opens.
The opening
THESEUS
As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. Yet, after publishing an account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being brought by my history so near to his time. Considering therefore with myself
The whole book is in the Sphinx app.
About this edition
- The words
- The author's text, copied word for word.
- Copied from
Transcription of the English Lives associated with A. H. Clough; no translator or printed edition details are supplied in the reading text.
- Left out
- The source library's header, footer and license, in 2 places
- Kept as written
Its warfare, slavery, sexual violence and suicides are kept as Plutarch wrote them in the supplied translation.