Plutarch

Plutarch (c. 46–c. 119) was a Greek biographer, essayist and Platonist philosopher from Chaeronea in Boeotia, where he spent most of his life as a local magistrate and, for his last thirty years, a priest at the sanctuary of Delphi. He studied at Athens, visited Rome more than once and had friends among the Roman elite. His Parallel Lives pair Greek and Roman statesmen and soldiers, Alexander with Caesar, Demosthenes with Cicero, as studies in character, and were the source of Shakespeare's Roman plays. The essays and dialogues collected as the Moralia range over ethics, religion, education, marriage and natural science. Montaigne and Emerson counted him among their closest companions.