Parallel Lives was written without an overall plan

Parallel Lives is an immense biographical cycle written by Plutarch during the first quarter of the 2nd century. The absence of a global plan in this work is apparent through the difficulties of classification and the fact that the author discovered certain characters while documenting himself. Having started this work for others, he finally learned to live with his heroes, so that only three volumes include numbering indications like Demosthenes-Cicero for the fifth.