Plutarch

Plutarch, historian, around A.D. 46-120, born at Chaeronea, Boeotia?, in Greece during the Roman Empire. Plutarch travelled widely in the Mediterranean world until he returned to Boeotia, becoming a priest at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. His most important historical work is the Parallel Lives, in which he arranges 46 biographies of leading Greeks and leading Romans in tandem to illuminate their shared moral virtues or failings. This moralizing approach to history makes it difficult to rely on Plutarch for certain kinds of details, though his dates are not usually troublesome.