In the 1380's the Aragonese Juan Fernández de Heredia commissioned a number of Aragonese translations of Greek historians, among them Plutarch's Lives. Eventually the Aragonese Lives were translated into Tuscan. This version is extant in at least 14 manuscripts, in contrast to the one known manuscript of the Aragonese Lives. In 1397 the Byzantine Manuel Chrysoloras accepted the invitation to teach Greek in Florence. Many of his pupils published translations from the Greek, but exclusively into Latin. Plutarch's Lives were among their favourite texts; in fact the Latin translations of the Lives became bestsellers. In this article the author addresses the question of why the reception of the fourteenth-century Aragonese translation became so different from its fifteenth-century Latin successor. The author focuses on differences in method of translation; differing conceptions of the target language; differing notions - and knowledge - of both the source language and the "source language"; the expected readership, and the expectations of the readers.