Plutarch

Plutarch lived his whole life in the small Greek town of Chaeronea, served for decades as a priest at Delphi, and wrote the most widely read prose of the ancient world. His Parallel Lives pairs a Greek with a Roman and asks not what they did but who they were, because a single jest or gesture can reveal a soul more than a won battle. A Platonist by training and a moralist by temperament, he wrote essays on everything from anger to the silence of the oracles. Shakespeare built three plays on his pages.