Chapter 6 continues an account of the reception of Plutarch’s work in the mid to late sixteenth century in France with reference to the translation work and political reflection of figures such as Georges de Selve (1508–1541) (now famous as one of the figures in Holbein’s famous painting “The Ambassadors”). The latter part of the chapter discusses what is perhaps the best-known moment of Plutarch reception, the French vernacular translations of the Lives (1559–1565) and Moralia (1572) by Jacques Amyot (1513–1593). I discuss how the advent of the Wars of Religion (1562–1598) in France affected the themes through which Plutarch was received and read in Renaissance France, partly through an examination of the para-text of Amyot’s translations in the late sixteenth century. I also explore briefly Jean Bodin’s discussion of ther reliability of Plutarch as a source as noted in his Method for the Easy Comprehension of History.

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.