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Engraving facing the title page of an 18th-century edition of Plutarch's 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.
Enough copies were written out over the centuries so that a copy of most of the lives has survived to the present day, but there are traces of twelve more Lives that are now lost. [37] Plutarch's general procedure for the Lives was to write the life of a prominent Greek, then cast about for a suitable Roman parallel, and end with a brief ...
In 1559, Plutarch's Parallel Lives were translated into French by Jacques Amyot, whose work was in turn translated into English by Sir Thomas North. William Shakespeare only read Plutarch from North's version, and he was his only source for his plays Julius Caesar (1599), Coriolanus (1605–1608), and Antony and Cleopatra (1607).
His only considerable enterprise in prose was a revision of a 17th-century translation of Plutarch (called the "Dryden Translation," but actually the product of translators other than Dryden) which occupied him from 1852, and was published as Plutarch's Lives (1859). Clough's output is small and much of it appeared posthumously.
Sir Thomas North (28 May 1535 – c. 1604) was an English translator, military officer, lawyer, and justice of the peace. His translation into English of Plutarch's Parallel Lives is notable for being the main source text used by William Shakespeare for his Roman plays.
One of the earliest Roman biographers was Cornelius Nepos, who published his work Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of outstanding generals") in 44 BC. Longer and more extensive biographies were written in Greek by Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives, published about 80 A.D.
Phocion (/ ˈ f oʊ ʃ i ən,-ˌ ɒ n /; Ancient Greek: Φωκίων Φώκου Ἀθηναῖος Phokion; c. 402 – c. 318 BC), nicknamed The Good (ὁ χρηστός, was an Athenian statesman and strategos, and the subject of one of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. Phocion was a successful politician of Athens. He believed that extreme frugality ...
According to Plutarch's Life of Pelopidas (from Plutarch's Parallel Lives in which Pelopidas's life was paired with the life of Marcellus), he lessened his inherited estate by showing constant care for the deserving poor of Thebes, taking pleasure in simple clothing, a sparse diet, and the constant hardships of military life. People said that ...