Discussion on the difficult issue of the relationship between the Persian material within the Regum et Imperatorum Apophthegmata (The Sayings of Kings and Commanders) and the Persica works has been postponed to this point and relegated to a mere appendix for the simple reason that we are not certain whether this work is indeed Plutarch's own and whether the material in it comes exclusively from Plutarch. Yet this question cannot be ignored completely, despite the fact that full justice to this issue could not be done in this brief analysis, focusing on its Persian section.

The work itself is listed as no. 108 in the Lamprias Catalogue (ἀποφθέγματα ἡγϵμονικά, στρατηγικά, τυραννικά, cf. no. 125: ἀπομνημονϵύματα), and was evidently attributed to Plutarch already in late antiquity. It has the character of a facta/acta et dicta (words and deeds) collection, used by orators and rhetorically inclined historians. There would seem to be three available options concerning this work:

• (1) Plutarch composed this work and intended it to be circulated more or less in its present format, with its introduction.

• (2) Plutarch prepared the material which ended up in this work during his lifetime, presumably with the purpose of incorporating it in other works. The task of the arrangement and presentation of this material as a work encompassing ‘sayings’ of notable persons was taken by a later hand. In this sense, the work is a posthumous treatise of Plutarch.

• (3) Plutarch did not prepare any of the material found in this work. The treatise was composed after Plutarch's death by culling passages from his works and from other volumes, most likely collections of anecdotes bearing the same character as this very work.

Of these options, (2) and (3) – with some variation – can peacefully coexist side by side with each other. There is no contradiction in the hypothesis that even though Plutarch prepared some of the material found in the work, another part came from a different source after his death. By contrast, (1) and (2) both postulate that Plutarch prepared material which he deliberately did not intend to use in his biographies, and preferred either to leave it out or include it in another work.