Plutarch (c. AD 45-120), the Greek philosopher, lived at the height of the Roman Empire and is author of one of the largest and collections of writings to have survived from Classical antiquity. His work is traditionally divided into two: the Moralia, which include a vast range of philosophical, scientific, moral and rhetorical works, and the Lives or biographies. Almost fifty such biographies survive, most from his collection of Parallel Lives, in which biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen are arranged in pairs. Ian Scott-Kilvert was Director of English Literature at the British Council and Editor of Writers and the Works. He translated Cassius Dio's The Roman History as well as Plutarch's The Rise and Fall of Athens and Makers of Rome for Penguin Classics. He died in 1989. Jeffrey Tatum is Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (1999), Always I am Caesar (2008), and A Caesar Reader (2012), as well as numerous articles and chapters on Roman history and culture and Latin literature.
Fabulous selection with excellent notes. --David A. Graf, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Miami