Jacques Amyot

From an impoverished family in Melun, Amyot studied at the Collège de France in Paris before King Francis I appointed him professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Bourges. Commissioned to translate ancient Greek literature, he traveled to Venice and the Vatican to consult ancient manuscripts.

His translation of Plutarch's Vies des hommes illustres (1559) and Œuvres morales (1572) possessed such luminous, supple French cadence that Michel de Montaigne declared: 'Amyot is our master; without him, we would not know how to speak or write'. Sir Thomas North translated Plutarch into English directly from Amyot's French text.