Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D.,
is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the
greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In what is by far his
most famous and influential work, Plutarch reveals the character and
personality of his subjects and how they led ultimately to tragedy or
victory. Richly anecdotal and full of detail, Volume I contains profiles
and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and
Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome.
The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction
with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in 1864 by the poet
and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also
included in this edition.