An outstanding new edition of Plutarch, the inventor of biography, focused on five lives that remade the Roman world. With a foreword from Mary Beard.

Major figures in the civil wars that ended the Roman Republic, the names Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, Brutus and Antony haunt us with questions of character and authority. Plutarch s rich, vivid profiles show character-shaping history through grand scale events and intimate details. The creator and master of the biographical form, Plutarch locates character in small gestures such as Brutus's punctilious use of money or Caesar's plainspoken discourse. In this reader s edition, the translation lends a straightforward clarity to the prose and the notes identify people, places and events in the text. The substantial introduction and foreword explore Plutarch as an historical figure and the history of the Republic's fall.


About the Author:

James Romm is the author of Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero and a classicist who teaches at Bard College. Pamela Mensch, acclaimed translator of Herodotus and Arrian, lives in New York City. A professor of classics at Cambridge University, Mary Beard is the author of the best-selling The Fires of Vesuvius and the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated Confronting the Classics. A popular blogger and television personality, Beard gave the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books. She lives in England.