In Chapter 4, I continue my study of the reception of Plutarch’s work in the French Renaissance. First, I discuss how Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was introduced to Plutarch’s work at the press of Aldus Manutius in Venice and his subsequent work translating several of Plutarch’s texts into Latin. I demonstrate how the subsequent vernacular translations of Erasmus’s Latin work, including his Education of a Christian Prince, and his translation of Plutarch’s Apophthegmata or Sayings of Kings and Commanders had a different presence in the French and English contexts. I also explore the interesting case of Claude de Seyssel (1450–1520) who drew on the Latin translations of Plutarch by Jean Lascaris of the Lives of Antony and Demetrius to complete his vernacular translations of Appian and Diodorus Siculus. I demonstrate connections between Seyssel’s work on these translations and his later political reflections in his treatise The Monarchy of France while deepening my analysis of the contours of public humanism.

Part II begins with Chapters 3 and 4 offering a study of the first printed vernacular translations of Plutarch’s work in French with special attention to political thought. After an initial discussion of the 1530 translation of Plutarch’s essay “Precepts of Statecraft” by the Royal Printer Geoffroy Tory (c. 1480–1533), a translation which invokes the French term of la chose publique in relation to Plutarch’s idea of politics, I explore Plutarch translations in the French context by scholars who went on to draft important treatises in political theory, namely Claude de Seyssel (1450–1520) and Guillaume Budé (1467–1540). I also explore some of Antoine du Saix’s (c. 1504–1579) translations of Erasmus’s (1466–1536) Latin translations of Plutarch’s Apophthegmata (or Sayings of Kings and Commanders), here shedding light on an important dialogue among these thinkers regarding the specific and unique nature of public life in reference to Plutarch’s work.