The Moralia (Latin for "Morals", "Customs" or Mores"; Ancient Greek: Ἠθικά, Ethiká) is a set of essays ascribed to the 1st-century scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea.

Many generations of Europeans have read or imitated them, including Michel de Montaigne, Renaissance Humanists and Enlightenment philosophers.

The Moralia include On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great, an important adjunct to Plutarch's Life of the great general; On the Worship of Isis and Osiris, a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites;[2] and On the Malice of Herodotus (which may, like the orations on Alexander's accomplishments, have been a rhetorical exercise),[3] in which Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Histories of Herodotus;[4] along with more philosophical treatises, such as On the Decline of the Oracles, On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance, On Peace of Mind and lighter fare, such as Odysseus and Gryllus ("Bruta animalia ratione uti"), a humorous dialog between Homer's Odysseus and one of Circe's enchanted pigs.

(Oikonomopoulou 174)[10] The only surviving manuscript containing all seventy-eight of the extant treatises included in Plutarch's Moralia dates to sometime shortly after 1302 AD.

[15] Included in Moralia is a letter addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their two-year-old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother.

[18] In the letter, Plutarch expresses his belief in reincarnation:[19] The soul, being eternal, after death is like a caged bird that has been released.

"[23] Thus, the Spartan egalitarianism and superhuman immunity to pain that have seized the popular imagination are likely myths, and their main architect is Plutarch.

The customs of Romans and Greeks are illuminated in little essays that pose questions such as "Why were patricians not permitted to live on the Capitoline?"

[4] The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity".

[3] According to Barrow (1967), Herodotus' real failing in Plutarch's eyes was to advance any criticism at all of the city-states that saved Greece from Persia.

[32] He and Girolamo Aleandro served as the proofreaders of a Greek edition of the Moralia which was published by the Italian printer Aldus Manutius in March 1509.