I would also be curious about later translations (Langhorne or Perrin). I personally need to figure out if I prefer the Dryden translation or the North translation better (I own both). So far, however, I can see why early readers of the 17th-century translation by Dryden or 16th-century translation by North flocked to Plutarch mainly for his moralizing and less for his biographical skills. I expect Vol 2 will be even more interesting as it heads into later "Noble" lives that are both more proximate to Plutarch, more well-known, and where more information is available. Most of these characters, leaders, politicians, thinkers in Vol 1 of 'Lives' I've come across in other classical writings, but Plutarch possessed a lot of information that current historians no longer possess, plus his approach is fairly no nonsense and pragmatic. Plus, he was teaching morals not history. Numa) and less biography, but it appears Plutarch realized that all history and biography NEEDS a beginning, even a vague and foggy genesis, and felt he would do a better job at it than another writer, thinker, biographer. The first two sets are more myth (Theseus v. Vol 1., includes the following micro-biographies and comparisons: Plutarch, one of the great early biographers summarizes the lives of Greek and Roman military and political leaders and compares them to illuminate the virtues and failings of their leadership.
".beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables" Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Vol 1. Theseus, Romulus, Lycurgus, Numa, Solon, Poplicola, Themistocles, Camillus, Pericles, Fabius, Alcibiadas, Coriolanes, Timoleon, Aemilius Paulus, Pelopidas, Marcellus, Aristides, Marcus Cato, Philopoemen, Flaminius, Pyrrhus, Caius Marius, Lysander, Sylla, Cimon, Lucullus, Nicias, Crassus Publisher: Modern Library 2001 Author: Plutarch Translated by: John Dryden Volume: 1 Format: 816 pages, paperback ISBN: 9780375756764 The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also included in this edition. 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. 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. Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D., is a social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time.
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