Plutarch

“ Even in the age of Plutarch there were discerning men who rejected the popular account of the foundation of Rome, because that account appeared to them to have the air, not of a history, but of a romance or a drama. Plutarch, who was displeased at their incredulity, had nothing better to say in reply to their arguments than that chance sometimes turns poet, and produces trains of events not to be distinguished from the most elaborate plots which are constructed by art. ”

“ Plutarch had been content to state the Unity, Eternity, Absoluteness of God. He needed such a conception to make the world intelligible; but he defined his conception with a rare simplicity which satisfies the practical mind as well as meets the essential requirements of Philosophy. But the Neo-Platonist theology refines and subdivides and abstracts to an extent which puzzles and bewilders its most earnest students, and removes God infinitely further from mankind than even the Ideas of Plato are removed. “According to Plotinus, God is Goodness without Love. ”

“ Plutarch’s Theology—His conception of God not a pure metaphysical abstraction, his presentment of it not dogmatic—General acceptance of the attributes recognized by Greek philosophy as essential to the idea of God—God as Unity, Absolute Being, Eternity—God as Intelligence: Personality of Plutarch’s God intimately associated with his Intelligence—God’s Intelligence brings him into contact with humanity: by it he knows the events of the Future and the secrets of the human heart—From his knowledge springs his Providence—God as Father and Judge—the De Sera Numinis Vindicta—Immortality of the Soul. ”

“ It is true that there was one gain for Philosophy which, in Plutarch’s mind, would compensate for even greater sacrifices than it was actually called upon to make: the gain, namely, that each concession to the belief in Dæmons would bring into greater prominence the pure splendour and naked simplicity of the idea of God. ”

“ Furthermore, Plutarch, having lived alwaies honourably even to old age, he died quietly among his children and friends in the city of Chaeronea, leaving his writings, an immortal savour of his name, unto posterity. Besides the honour his citizens did him, there was a statue set up for him by ordinance of the people of Rome, in memory of his virtues. Now furthermore, though time hath devoured some part of the writings of this great man, and minished some other: neverthelesse those which remaine, being a great number, have excellent use to this day among us. ”

“ The lively portraitures of men drawn in Plutarch's Lives have made them favourite reading in all ages. Whether Plutarch has succeeded in drawing the portraits true, we cannot always determine, because the materials for such a judgment are sometimes wanting. But when we can compare his Lives with other extant authorities, we must admit, that though he is by no means free from error as to his facts, he has generally selected those events in a man's life which most clearly show his temper, and that on the whole, if we judge of a man by Plutarch's measure, we shall form a just estimate of him. ”

“ Plutarch’s notion of History as contrasted with Biography appears pretty plainly from the first chapter of his Life of Alexander. A complete view of the events in the Lives of Alexander and Caius Julius Cæsar would have formed, according to his notion, a History; but he does not aim at this completeness: he selects out of the events of their lives such as best show the character of the men, whether the events be of great political importance or of none at all, and this method of treating the subject he calls a Life. ”

“ In his peculiar class, Plutarch still stands alone, at least no author in any of the living languages appears to be yet truly sensible of the secret cause by which his sketches give that direct impulse to the elements of genius, by which the vague and wandering feelings of unappropriated strength are converted into an uniform energy, endowed with productive action. Plutarch, like the sculptors of antiquity, has selected only the great and elegant traits of character ”

“ Absolute being
Philosophy, poetry, tradition, oracles and mysteries [63] bring Plutarch to belief in gods. "There are not Greek gods and barbarian, southern or northern; but just as sun, moon, sky, earth and sea are common to all men and have many names, so likewise it is one Reason that makes all these things a cosmos; it is one Providence that cares for them, with ancillary powers appointed to all things; while in different people, different honours and names are given to them as customs vary. ”

“ Philosophy and Religion have displayed to Plutarch the Purity, the Unity, the Benevolence of God; it is a question of Ethics to expose and destroy practices which are repellent to this conception of the Divine Nature. ”

“ To Plutarch, theology is the crown of all philosophy.2194 To form true and worthy conceptions of the Divine Being is not less important than to pay Him pious worship. Plutarch’s lofty conception of the Infinite and Supreme, like that of Maximus of Tyre, dominates all his system. In a curious [pg 418] treatise on Isis and Osiris, he reviews many a device of scholastic subtlety, many a crude guess of embryonic science, many a dream of Pythagorean mysticism, to find an inner meaning in the Egyptian myth. ”

“ Plutarch is aware of these clangers. He knows that Dæmonology, and even Theology, may involve Superstition, and he takes pains to close those avenues to its approach, which a misunderstanding of the subject, a mistaken mental attitude towards it, may easily throw widely open. He seldom misses an opportunity of inculcating the proper attitude of mind to assume in face of questions of Religion, or of placing such questions in an atmosphere of clear and rational daylight, which is equally unlike the dim gloom of Superstition, and the blinding glare of Atheism. ”

“ Plutarch, with his firmly pious belief in the justice and goodness of God, feels driven to assert that the balance must be redressed somewhere, and he invokes the aid of Myth to carry him, in this case, whither Reason refuses to go; and taking the myth as a whole, and in relation to the tract in which it is embodied, we cannot doubt that its object is to enforce that doctrine of rewards and punishments in the Hereafter, from which Plutarch, as we have seen, shrinks when an occasion arises for pressing it from the standpoint of Reason. ”

“ And, alluding to his own functions as priest of Apollo at Delphi, "You know," he adds in another place, "that I have served the Pythian God for many pythiads [5] past, yet you would not now tell me, you have taken part enough in the sacrifices, processions, and dances, and it is high time, Plutarch, now you are an old man, to lay aside your garland, and retire as superannuated from the oracle." ”

“ I for my part would much rather have men say of me that there never was a Plutarch at all, nor is now, than to say that Plutarch is a man inconstant, fickle, easily moved to anger, revengeful for trifling provocations, vexed at small things. ”

“ Plutarch's way, by how much it is
more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
assured and more regular motions. The one more sharp, pricks and makes
us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,
forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding. ”

“ These mediating spirits were also made in Plutarch’s theology to furnish an explanation of oracles and all forms of prophecy, of the inspired enthusiasm of artist, sage, and poet. Finally, the theory, with the aid of mythic fancy, cast a light on the fate of souls beyond the grave, and vindicated the Divine justice by a vision of a judgment to come.
Plutarch’s daemonology, as he admits himself, is an inheritance from the past. The daemons are beings half divine, half human; they are godlike in power and intelligence, they are human in liability to the passions engendered by the flesh. ”

“ Plutarch’s Philosophy, his Religion, here touch the vital interests of life, and come to close combat with a gigantic moral evil. What is lost in philosophic detachment is gained in moral fervour, a change of balance which gives quite other than a theoretical interest to those many short sermons in which Plutarch is aux prises with the sins and vices and follies of his day. ”

“ But that Plutarch had a serious, earnest, and efficient faith in the one Supreme God, in the wise and eternal Providence, and in the Divine wisdom, purity, and holiness, we have in his writings an absolute certainty. Nor can we find, even in Christian literature, the record of a firmer belief than his in human immortality, and in a righteous retribution beginning in this world and reaching on into the world beyond death. ”

“ They are the three great records of human experience, and Plutarch will examine all their contributions to the criticism of life with a view to selecting those parts from each which will best aid him and his fellow citizens to lead lives of virtue and happiness. The great philosophical schools of Greece are regarded from this point of view—from the point of view of a moralist and a philosopher, not from the point of view of a Platonist, an anti-Stoic, or an anti-Epicurean. Plutarch is indebted, as even Volkmann himself shows, to all the Schools alike. ”

“ When Plutarch has sufficiently established ‘to demonstration’ the ‘probability’ of his position, he adds, at the urgent desire of the company, a myth, which he had already offered to produce. The ‘myth’ is a device of which Plato has many examples, intended to give symmetry to the Dialogue, ‘that it may not go about without a head’. But it is more than a literary device; it is a satisfaction of the desire for something poetical and constructive which mere Dialectic can never feed. ”

“ Plutarch. Greek philosopher and historian, b. Cheronæa in Bœtia, about A.D. 50. He visited Delphi and Rome, where he lived in the reign of Trajan. His Parallel Lives of forty-six Greeks and Romans have made him immortal. He wrote numerous other anecdotal and ethical works, including a [260] treatise on Superstition. He condemned the vulgar notions of Deity, and remarked, in connection with the deeds popularly ascribed to the gods, that he would rather men said there was no Plutarch than traduce his character. In other words, superstition is more impious than Atheism. ”

“ These men avoided extravagance in Religion, as they avoided it in their philosophical studies and in the practical affairs of life. They are the last legitimate outcome of the Greek spirit in Pagan times. Plutarch collected the wisdom, and fixed the emotions, of Antiquity, in a manner which the best men of many Christian ages have found efficacious for goodness. In his own more immediate age his spirit predominated for a century, and was then absorbed to form a thin vein of common sense in that mingled mass of Oriental mystery and Hellenic metaphysics which was known as Neo-Platonism. ”

“ In answer to the objection, Plutarch first adduces as a precisely parallel order of things, with which no one finds fault, that by which children or posterity derive enduring benefit and honor from a parent’s or ancestor’s virtues and services.
14. There are alike in outward and in human nature occult and subtle transmissions of qualities and properties, both in time and in space. Those in space are so familiar that they excite no wonder; those in time, though less liable to attract notice, are no more wonderful. ”

“ In one respect Plutarch transcends Plato, and, so far as I know, all pre-Christian philosophers. Plato’s theism bears a close kindred to pantheism. His God, if I may be permitted the phrase, is only semi-detached. He becomes the creator rather by blending his essence with eternal matter, than by shaping that matter to his will. He is rather in all things than above all things, rather the Soul of the universe than its sovereign Lord. But in Plutarch’s writings the Supreme Being is regarded as existing independently of material things ”

“ Plutarch himself is the speaker, though he represents his interlocutors as addressing him by the name of Lamprias. [179] He is inclined to agree that there may be more worlds than one, though repudiating an infinity of worlds. “It is more consonant with reason to assert that God has made more than one world. For He is perfectly good, and deficient in no virtue whatsoever, least of all in those virtues that are associated with Justice and Friendship, which are the fairest of all virtues, and those most appropriate to the divine nature. ”

“ Plutarch was versed in all the theurgic traditions of the school, and believed in the possibility of attaining to communion with the Deity by the medium of the theurgic rites. Unlike the Alexandrists and the early Renaissance writers, he maintained that the soul which is bound up in the body by the ties of imagination and sensation does not perish with the corporeal media of sensation. ”

“ Plutarch, however, though adhering to Rationalism to the extent of insisting on the operation of secondary causes, saves his piety by explicitly placing them under the superintendence of the Dæmons. “There are two causes of generation: the Zeus of the ancient poets and theologians, and the physical causes of the natural philosophers. ”

“ In this interesting passage Plutarch expresses his belief that the worship of the fruits of the earth was the result of a verbal misapprehension or disease of language, as it has been called by a modern school of mythologists, who explain the origin of myths in general on the same easy principle of metaphors misunderstood. Primitive man, on Plutarch's theory, firmly believed that the fruits of the earth on which he subsisted were not themselves gods but merely the gifts of the gods, who were the real givers of all good things. ”