The first century AD gave birth to Plutarch of Chaeronea. He was born into the Greco-Roman world during the Pax Romana, a time of peace that which had not been seen in all of the country's history. Plutarch, coming from an upper-class family, was able to get a good education and find a purpose to his life1. Philosophy was his calling and he was brilliant in his work. An aficionado of the works of his forefathers in thought (from Zeno to Plato), Plutarch used their systems to take his knack for observing the behavior of men and formulating the proper way to live. His essays, On Being Aware of Moral Progress, On Listening, and How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, came at a time when the city-states of Greece were in moral as well as material turmoil, and he was providing the way out. Regardless of...