Plutarch

Plutarch was born about AD 46 at Chaeronea in central Greece. He studied philosophy in Athens and lectured in Rome, where he made many powerful friends, yet he spent most of his life in his small home town, holding local office, and in later years served for three decades as a priest of Apollo at Delphi. One of the most prolific and best-loved writers of antiquity, he wrote the Parallel Lives and the wide-ranging Moralia. From Montaigne and Shakespeare to Rousseau and the American founders, countless readers came to know the great figures of the ancient world through his books.