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Jacques Amyot (; 30 October 15136 February 1593), French Renaissance bishop, scholar, writer and translator, was born of poor parents, at Melun.
Pius V promoted him to the bishopric of Auxerre in 1570,"Amyot, Jacques (1513-93)" in Chambers's Encyclopaedia. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 393. and here he continued to live in comparative quiet, repairing his cathedral and perfecting his translations, for the rest of his days, though troubled towards the close by the insubordination and revolts of his clergy. He was a devout and conscientious churchman, and had the courage to stand by his principles. It is said that he advised the chaplain of Henry III to refuse absolution to the king after the murder of the Guise princes. He was, nevertheless, suspected of approving the crime. His house was plundered, and he was compelled to leave Auxerre for some time. He died bequeathing, it is said, 1200 crowns to the hospital at Orléans for the twelve deniers he received there when "poor and naked" on his way to Paris.
He translated seven books of Diodorus Siculus (1554), the Daphnis and Chloë of Longus (1559) and the Moralia of Plutarch (1572). His vigorous and idiomatic version of Plutarch, Parallel Lives, was published in 1558, later translated into English by Thomas North, and supplied Shakespeare with materials for his Roman plays. Montaigne said of him, "I give the palm to Jacques Amyot over all our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his language in which he surpasses all others, nor for his constancy to so long an undertaking, nor for his profound learning ... but I am grateful to him especially for his wisdom in choosing so valuable a work." However, Dr. Guy Patin commented (translation from French), "It is said that M. de Meziriac had corrected eight thousand mistakes in his Amyot, and that Amyot did not have good copies, or that he had not understood Plutarch's Greek well."
It was indeed to Plutarch that Amyot devoted his attention. His other translations were subsidiary. The version of Diodorus he did not publish, although the manuscript had been discovered by him. Amyot took great pains to find and interpret correctly the best authorities, but the interest of his books today lies in the style. His translation reads like an original work. The personal method of Plutarch appealed to a generation addicted to memoirs and incapable of any general theory of history. Amyot's book, therefore, obtained an immense popularity, and exercised great influence over successive generations of French writers.
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