Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans Vol. 2


Read by LibriVox Volunteers

(4.4 stars; 35 reviews)

Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single lives.

Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of famous men. The first pair of lives the Epaminondas-Scipio Africanus no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.

His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving secondary or tertiary sources about Alexander the Great and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.

In this copyright expired 11-volume translation from the Loeb Classical library, the order of the paired lives is rearranged to present the Greek lives in chronological order. Vol 2 presents the paired lives of Themistocles and Camillus, Aristides and Cato Major, and Cimon and Lucullus. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Karen Merline.) (8 hr 54 min)

Chapters

Themistocles pt 1 29:01 Read by Leni
Themistocles pt 2 24:52 Read by Leni
Themistocles pt 3 24:27 Read by Leni
Camillus pt 1 28:48 Read by Kristine Bekere
Camillus pt 2 24:59 Read by Kristine Bekere
Camillus pt 3 24:26 Read by Kristine Bekere
Camillus pt 4 30:05 Read by Kristine Bekere
Aristides pt 1 25:41 Read by Graham Redman
Aristides pt 2 23:44 Read by Graham Redman
Aristides pt 3 24:21 Read by Graham Redman
Aristides pt 4 16:32 Read by Sibella Denton
Marcus Cato Major pt 1 24:35 Read by ontheroad
Marcus Cato Major pt 2 23:10 Read by ontheroad
Marcus Cato Major pt 3 25:19 Read by ontheroad
Comparison of Aristides and Cato Major 14:19 Read by ontheroad
Cimon pt 1 26:01 Read by K. Julius
Cimon pt 2 23:15 Read by Sibella Denton
Lucullus pt 1 21:58 Read by Sibella Denton
Lucullus pt 2 24:19 Read by Sibella Denton
Lucullus pt 3 20:35 Read by Sibella Denton
Lucullus pt 4 21:01 Read by Sibella Denton
Lucullus pt 5 25:03 Read by Sibella Denton
Comparison of Cimon and Lucullus 8:21 Read by Sibella Denton

Reviews

what an improvement in Lenis' reading. much clearer. thank you!


(4 stars)

important and great book


(5 stars)

great recordings from all speakers