nearly 300 years before Plutarch's time, his writing was largely based on manuscripts of uncertain accuracy. Plutarch himself had little faith in the historic truth found in resources from the past. In his life of Pericles, he states:

It is so hard to find out the truth of anything by looking at the record of the past. The process of time obscures the truth of former times, and even contemporaneous writers disguise and twist the truth out of malice or flattery.

Translations

The Lives were circulated

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