Theseus seemed to me to resemble Romulus in many particulars.

In any case, however, where it shall be found contumaciously slighting credibility, and refusing to be reduced to anything like probable fact, we shall beg that we may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indulgence the stories of antiquity. Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of exact history. (as Aeschylus expresses it), I found none so fit as him that peopled the beautiful and far-famed city of Athens, to be set in opposition with the father of the invincible and renowned city of Rome. Whom shall I set so great a man to face? Or whom oppose? who’s equal to the place? Yet, after publishing an account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being brought by my history so near to his time. Tom geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables there is no credit, or certainty any farther.

PHILOPOEMENĬOMPARISON OF PHILOPOEMEN WITH FLAMININUS PYRRHUSĬOMPARISON OF SERTORIUS WITH EUMENES AGESILAUSĬOMPARISON OF TIBERIUS AND CAIUS GRACCHUS WITH AGIS AND CLEOMENES DEMOSTHENESĬOMPARISON OF DEMOSTHENES AND CICERO DEMETRIUS

COMPARISON OF ALCIBIADES WITH CORIOLANUS TIMOLEONĬOMPARISON OF TIMOLEON WITH AEMILIUS PAULUS PELOPIDASĬOMPARISION OF PELOPIDAS WITH MARCELLUS ARISTIDESĬOMPARISON OF ARISTIDES WITH MARCUS CATO.

Plutarchs lives