Plutarch: Lives

Written in the late first and early second centuries, these Parallel Lives pair notable Greeks with Romans of similar career: lawgivers, generals, orators, and usurpers. Each life follows education, public offices, wars, and private habits, then a short comparison weighs the two men. Typical subjects include Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, Alexander and Julius Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, and Alcibiades and Coriolanus. Plutarch is interested in character under pressure more than in a continuous history of Greece or Rome. Anecdotes, speeches, and moral asides interrupt the narrative. The work is a gallery of political biographies, not a single chronicle.

Bound in red cloth boards with gilt titles and decoration. Dark red four-volume slipcase titled in gold. Two prints accompanied the first thousand copies of the set ordered.