The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius vs Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4)
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
537words between them — 2 min of it
The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius is longer — 234,192 words against 233,655 for Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4), a difference of 537 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 12.6 against 7.7.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius | Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Persius | Plutarch |
| Words | 234,192 | 233,655 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 15h 37m | 15h 35m |
| Unique words | 28,333 | 13,196 |
| Sentences | 14,655 | 8,109 |
| Average sentence length | 16 words | 28.8 words |
| Reading grade | 7.7 | 12.6 |
| Reading ease | 68.3 | 55.9 |
| Long words | 10.8% | 10.3% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |234,192 − 233,655| = 537 words 537 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius or Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4)?
The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius is longer — 234,192 words against 233,655 for Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4), a difference of 537 words or about 2 min of extra reading. Plutarch's Lives, Volume 3 (of 4) is the harder read, at grade 12.6 against 7.7.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 50657 and no. 14140 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
