The leader of the Achaean community, one of the last great figures of ancient Greece, and the Roman politician, friend, and benefactor of the Greeks.

Parallel Lives is a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to highlight their shared moral values or failures.

The surviving Lives include 23 pairs of biographies, one Greek and one Roman, as well as four individual biographies. Most of the pairs include a comparison between the two personalities.

As explained in the first paragraph of his work "The Life of Alexander," Plutarch was not solely interested in history but sought to explore the characters and destinies of famous men.

The volume includes the ancient text and a modern Greek translation on facing pages. It also contains commentary.