Plutarch (c.50-c.120 AD) was a writer and thinker born into a wealthy, established family of Chaeronea in central Greece. His voluminous surviving writings are broadly divided into the 'moral' works and the Parallel Lives of outstanding Greek and Roman leaders. The former (Moralia) are a mixture of rhetorical and antiquarian pieces, together with technical and moral philosophy (sometimes in dialogue form). The Lives have been influential from the Renaissance onwards. Robin Seager is a Reader in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Liverpool and the author of a biography of Pompey. Rex Warner (translator) translated widely from Latin and Greek including, for Penguin, Xenophon, Thucydides and Plutarch.