The biographies collected in this volume bring together Plutarch's Lives of those great men who established the city of Rome and consolidated its supremacy, and his Comparisons with their notable Greek counterparts. Here he pairs Romulus, mythical founder of Rome, with Theseus, who brought Athens to power, and compares the admirable Numa and Lycurgus for bringing order to their communities, while Titus Flamininus and Philopoemen are portrayed as champions of freedom. As well as providing an illuminating picture of the first century AD, Plutarch depicts complex and nuanced heroes who display the essential virtues of Greek civilization - courage, patriotism, justice, intelligence and reason - that contributed to the rise of Rome. These new and revised translations by W. Jeffrey Tatum and Ian Scott-Kilvert capture Plutarch's elegant prose and narrative flair. This edition also includes a general introduction, individual introductions to each of the Lives and Comparisons, further reading and notes. The "Rise of Rome" is the penultimate title in "Penguin Classics" complete revised Plutarch in six volumes. Other titles include "Rome In Crisis", "On Sparta", "Fall of the Roman Republic", "The Age of Alexander" and "The Rise and Fall of Athens" (forthcoming 2014).

Author Biography

Plutarch (c. AD 45-120), the Greek philosopher, lived at the height of the Roman Empire and is author of one of the largest and collections of writings to have survived from Classical antiquity. His work is traditionally divided into two: the Moralia, which include a vast range of philosophical, scientific, moral and rhetorical works, and the Lives or biographies. Almost fifty such biographies survive, most from his collection of Parallel Lives, in which biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen are arranged in pairs. Ian Scott-Kilvert was Director of English Literature at the British Council and Editor of Writers and the Works. He translated Cassius Dio's The Roman History as well as Plutarch's The Rise and Fall of Athens and Makers of Rome for Penguin Classics. He died in 1989. Jeffrey Tatum is Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (1999), Always I am Caesar (2008), and A Caesar Reader (2012), as well as numerous articles and chapters on Roman history and culture and Latin literature.