The book Vidas Apócrifas, by Amadeu Lopes Sabino, comprises five novels which, in common,
describe the tragic destiny of characters who, confronted with the search for a meaning for their
multiple lives, are protagonists in more or less fabulous adventures taking place in distant and
sometimes exotic countries. In the novels O Silêncio and A Sibila de Badajoz, the scenarios of
war set the tone of these adventures, which evokes elements of classical culture to compound
them and compare them. Furthermore, in Os tesouros de Alexandre, a kind of postscript, the life of
Alexander, whose biography is told in Parallel Lives, by Plutarch (to whom the narrator owes the
leitmotif that links the various Vidas Apócrifas), is joining the common lives of the characters of
these novels. Therefore, the purpose of this text is to point out some imagined parallels between
the classical and contemporary worlds in these first two novels.