Plutarch's
Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called
Parallel Lives or
Plutarch's Lives, is a series of
biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late 1st century. The surviving
Parallel Lives (
Greek: Βίοι Παράλληλοι,
Bíoi Parállēloi) comprises twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one
Greek and one
Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived.