Plutarch (Chaeronea, Boetia [Greece], AD 46 - after 119). Las vidas de ilustres y excellentes varones Griegos y Romanos. Argentina: Augustin Frisio, 1551.
Plutarch was a Greek biographer and author of approximately 227 works, who exerted an enormous influence on European writing from the 16th to the 19th centuries. His most important works are the Parallel Lifes, an account of the deeds of Greek and Roman noble men, and the Moralia or Ethica, essays on ethics, politics, philosophy and literature.
The Spanish 1551 edition of Las vidas de ilustres y excellentes varones ("Lifes of illustrious and excellent men") published by Augustin Frisio in Strasburg (Argentina) has a complex history. It was published with four different title pages. According to Menendez y Pelayo, this was because the translator and editor, Francisco de Encinas, feared being mistaken for a homonymous heresiarch. There was also a 1562 edition by Arnoldo Byrcman, printed in Colonia, which except for the title page, colophon and prologue is identical to that of 1551. It is in fact the same edition, probably bought by Byrcman, who was a booktrader in Antwerp, and then sold as a new edition with these minor changes. (Full description in Palau XIII, 350-51).
The Durand Colection holds two 1551 editions with different title pages.
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