The religion of Plutarch

THE RELIGION OF
PLUTARCH

A PAGAN CREED OF APOSTOLIC TIMES

AN ESSAY

BY
JOHN OAKESMITH, D.LITT., M.A.

Διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφός τώς ἐστιν.

ARIST., Meta., i. 2.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following pages are practically a reprint of a volume which was issued for private circulation some twelve months ago, under the title “The Religion of Plutarch as expounded in his ‘Ethics.’” The main difference between the present volume and its predecessor consists in the translation or removal of various quotations from Greek and Latin sources which were given in full in the first edition of the book. The references to these sources have, of course, been retained. Verbal corrections have been made here and there, and a few pages of new matter have been introduced into the “Preface.” In other respects the two impressions are substantially the same.

I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude to J. E. Sandys, Esq., Litt.D., Public Orator in the University of Cambridge, and Examiner in Greek at the University of London, who kindly placed at my disposal his own copy of the original essay, in which he had made numerous suggestions on points of style, and on questions of scholarship in general. These suggestions have, for the most part, been adopted in the preparation of the present edition. My thanks are also owing to my colleagues in the Civil Service, especially to those in the General Post Office, London, to whose encouragement it is largely due that this essay, in its present form, is able to see the light.

As the Athenæum, in reviewing the original edition (Athenæum, 2nd of August, 1902), suggested that “the present essay is probably the forerunner of a larger and more elaborate book,” it may be desirable to explain that the following pages do not constitute “the larger and more elaborate book” which the Athenæum is right in forecasting.

JOHN OAKESMITH.

PREFACE

When the student of Plutarch leaves the familiar ground of the “Parallel Lives,” and turns, for the first time, to the less thoroughly explored region of the “Ethics,” he is struck with wonder at the many-sided excellence of the writer whose special gift he has been accustomed to regard as consisting in the composition of biographies more remarkable for the presentation of moral truths than for the accurate narration of historical facts. He learns with surprise that Plutarch has bequeathed to posterity a mine of information respecting the period in which he himself lived, as valuable and as interesting as the view presented in his “Lives” of that higher antiquity in which his classic heroes moved and worked. Even the actual bulk of Plutarch’s contribution to what may be called “general literature” is noteworthy. Apart from the “Lives,” the so-called “Catalogue of Lamprias” contains the titles of nearly two hundred works attributed, ostensibly by his son, to Plutarch,[1] and some fourscore of these have been handed down to our time under the general, but somewhat misleading, title of “Ethica” or “Moralia.”

Among these surviving essays are to be found contributions, of a surprising vitality and freshness, to the discussion of Education, Politics, Art, Literature, Music, Hygiene; serious and studied criticisms and appreciations of the great philosophic schools of Greece and their founders; short sermons on minor morals, illustrated by vivid sketches of character both typical and individual; conversations on Love and Marriage, and on other topics perpetually interesting to civilized societies. The longest work of all, the “Symposiacs,” or “Table Talk,” besides containing a wealth of material used by Plutarch and his friends in the discussion of current problems of scientific, literary, and social interest, gives a picture of Græco-Roman Society in the first Christian century, which, both from its general character and from the multitude of details it contains on matters of fact, is of the utmost importance for the accurate study of the period and its complicated problems. All these various works are interpenetrated with the character of the writer to such a vivid degree of personality that their study, from this point of view alone, would probably cast more light upon Plutarch’s methods as a writer of history than innumerable minute and difficult inquiries into his “sources,” and the manner in which he used them in writing his “Lives.”

Fascinating, however, as is the study of the “Ethics” in these various aspects, it soon becomes evident that the point of paramount importance for a proper appreciation of Plutarch’s attitude towards life and its problems in general, is to be found in the position which he assumed in face of the religious questions which perplexed the thinking men of his time and country. What was Plutarch’s view of that ancient and hereditary faith which was not only the official creed of the Empire, but which was still accepted as a sufficient spiritual satisfaction by many millions of the Empire’s subjects? Was it possible that a man so steeped in the best literature, so keen a student of the greatest philosophies, could be a believer, to any serious extent, in those traditions which appear so crude and impossible in the light of our higher modern ideals? And if he could think them worthy of credit, by what method of interpretation was this consummation facilitated? How could he persuade himself and others to find in them at once the sanction and the inspiration of virtuous conduct? These are some of the questions which are constantly before the mind of the reader as he turns the pages of the “Ethics,” and they are constantly before the mind of the reader because the author is constantly supplying materials for answering them. The most important of Plutarch’s general writings are devoted to the full discussion, from a variety of standpoints, of religious questions, not only those handed down by the popular tradition, or embodied in ceremonial observances and legalized worships, but also those more purely theological conceptions presented in the various systems of Greek Philosophy. Around Plutarch’s Religion revolves his conception of life; his numerous contributions to the discussion of other subjects of human interest unfold their full significance only when regarded in the light supplied by a knowledge of his religious beliefs.

Such, at any rate, is the experience of the present writer after a close study of the “Ethics” during several years; and it is with the hope of contributing in some degree to the clearer appreciation of Plutarch’s manifold activities in other directions, that an investigation into his religious views has been made the special object of the following pages.

The text which has been used for the purposes of this essay is that issued at intervals between the years 1888 and 1896 by Mr. G. N. Bernardakis, the director of the Gymnasium at Mytilene.[2] The editor has postponed, for discussion in a subsequent work, many questions bearing upon the authority of his MSS., and the principles which he has applied to them in the choice of his readings; his efforts in the editio minor having been almost wholly confined to presenting the results of his labours in the shape of a complete and coherent text. Although, as Dr. Holden has said, “until the appearance of the promised editio major it is premature to pronounce an opinion on the editor’s qualifications as a textual critic,”[3] yet Mr. Bernardakis has exhibited so much combined accuracy and acumen in the preliminary discussion of various questions connected with his collation of MSS., and has disposed so completely, as Dr. Holden admits, of the charges of inaccuracy brought against him by Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff of Berlin,[4] that the more general student of Classical Literature may, perhaps, feel some amount of confidence that in this edition he sees the actual work of Plutarch himself, and not the ingenious and daring conjectures of some too brilliant critic. This feeling of confidence will not be diminished by the evident anxiety displayed by Mr. W. R. Paton, an English scholar working in the same field, “to induce Mr. Bernardakis to assist and correct” him in editing a text of the “De Cupiditate Divitiarum,”[5] and it will be increased by the discovery that, greatly different as the text of Bernardakis is from that of any other previous edition, the difference frequently consists in the substitution of plain sense for undiluted absurdity, or total want of meaning.

Indebtedness to other sources of criticism and information is, the writer hopes, fully acknowledged in the footnotes as occasion arises. There has yet been published no work in English dealing with Plutarch’s “Ethics” at all similar in scope and character either to Volkmann’s “Leben, Schriften und Philosophie des Plutarch von Chæronea,”[6] or to Gréard’s “La Morale de Plutarque.”[7] Archbishop Trench, who speaks slightingly of Gréard’s interesting study, has himself contributed one or two “Lectures” to some general observations on this sphere of Plutarch’s activity,[8] while the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy has given two chapters to the subject in his “Greek World under Roman Sway.”[9] Chap. xiii., which is headed “Plutarch and His Times—Public Life,” is devoted partly to Apuleius, and partly to Plutarch himself, and exhibits, in continuous form, a number of that author’s best-known and most frequently quoted statements and opinions on the subjects of Politics and Religion, some ten pages being set apart for the presentation and criticism of his views on the latter topic. Chap. xiv. is entitled “Plutarch and His Times—Private Life,” and intersperses with comments a number of extracts from the evidence furnished by Plutarch on various matters appertaining to the social and domestic life of his epoch, giving the gist of passages selected from the “Table Talk,” from various essays on Education, and from several tracts on Minor Morals and other themes of general interest.

Although Professor Mahaffy’s prolonged and extensive researches into every available sphere of Greek life and thought occasionally enable him to help out his author’s descriptions by aptly chosen illustrations from other sources, yet, in dealing with a writer at once so voluminous and so full of interest as Plutarch, the historian is hampered by the necessary limits of his appointed task, no less than by his own diffusive and gossiping style. Mr. Mahaffy’s Clio has always appeared to us in the light of an amiable and cultured hostess presiding at Afternoon Tea, gliding graciously hither and thither among her guests, and introducing topics of conversation which have only a superficial interest, or which she presents only in their superficial aspects; while, perhaps unconsciously, conveying the impression that she reserves for discussion among a few chosen intimates the more profound and sacred issues of human life. These two chapters on Plutarch furnish an excellent example of Professor Mahaffy’s method. They are entertaining in the sense that all well-conducted gossip is entertaining. A trait of character is chosen here; a smart saying, or a foolish one, is selected there; a piquant anecdote is retold elsewhere: but the searchlight is never stationary, and the earnest student who trusts solely to its assistance will vainly attempt to see Plutarch steadily and see him whole.

It is, of course, the fact, as already suggested, that, in these chapters, Professor Mahaffy is dealing with Plutarch only so far as he furnishes material illustrative of the conception which the historian has formed as to the character of the age in which his subject lived. This fact is conspicuously evident in the brief account of Plutarch’s Religion given in the ten pages from page 311 onwards, where Professor Mahaffy accepts the belief of so many of his predecessors, that the age was an age of religious decadence, and not an age of religious revival; and that, moreover, it was blameworthy in Plutarch that “he never took pains to understand” Christianity.[10] Further, it must be added, that the historian’s natural desire to illustrate Plutarch’s times, rather than to display Plutarch himself, has led him to commit serious injustice by his uncritical acceptance of certain spurious tracts as the genuine workmanship of Plutarch.

The conclusion at which Professor Mahaffy arrives, that Plutarch was “a narrow and bigoted Hellene,”[11] is intelligible enough to those who accept the view which we have endeavoured to combat in Chapter III. of the following essay, a view which is simply a belated survival of the ancient prejudice which consigns to eternal perdition the followers of other Religions, because they are wilfully blind to the light with which our own special Belief has been blessed in such splendour. But the man who, after even the most casual study of Plutarch’s utterances on Religion, can seriously describe him as “narrow and bigoted” will maintain, with equal serenity, that it is the practice of the sun to shine at midnight. Professor Mahaffy, indeed, in using such expressions, is at variance with his own better judgment, inasmuch as he elsewhere concedes that, “had Plutarch been at Athens when St. Paul came there, he would have been the first to give the Apostle a respectful hearing.”[12]

The subject of Plutarch’s “Moralia” has also been touched in a few contributions to the current Literature of the Reviews. The article on “Plutarch” appearing over Paley’s initials in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” and giving a brief statement of the subjects dealt with in the different tracts in the “Moralia,” almost entirely exhausts the short list of English literary contributions to the treatment of this portion of Plutarch’s work. Paley declared in the article in question that the “Moralia” were “practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those who call themselves scholars.” This sweeping assertion is not by any means true to-day, although it is still the case that, so far as the literary presentment of results is concerned, the “Ethics” of Plutarch are a neglected field of research.

Volkmann, in the “Leben und Schriften” part of his work, carefully discusses the authenticity of each tract in the generally recognized list of Plutarch’s writings, while in the volume dealing with the “Philosophie” he gives an exhaustive analysis of the greater portion of them. Recognizing that Plutarch had no special philosophical system of his own, Volkmann endeavours to remedy this deficiency by the application of a systematic method of treatment with regular branches of “synthetic” and “analytic” investigation. The “synthetic” branch of Volkmann’s method is devoted to a discussion of Plutarch’s philosophic standpoint; to an examination of his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans; and to the consideration of his relation to Plato, which Volkmann regards as the foundation of Plutarch’s Philosophy. The function of Volkmann’s “analytic” method is to discover how, on the philosophic basis thus laid down by the “synthetic” method, Plutarch arranges his positive conclusions in a coherent relationship with his negative polemic. It is, according to Volkmann, a natural result of the successful operation of this twofold system, that the circumstances of Plutarch’s life lose their external character, and attain to an essential connexion with his philosophical conceptions. This last assertion is made by way of criticism directed against Gréard’s “natural and simple” method of arranging Plutarch’s philosophical utterances under headings descriptive of the various spheres of life to which they seem appropriate—“la vie domestique,” “la cité,” “le temple,” &c. Volkmann thinks that under this arrangement the sense of internal unity is lost; that Plutarch’s views are presented in it as goodnatured and benevolent, but somewhat rambling, reflections on the separate aspects of human life, instead of being treated as the outcome of a consistent philosophy taking ethical phenomena into systematic consideration.[13] This criticism has considerable force, though it does not detract from the truth and charm of M. Gréard’s book. Volkmann himself undoubtedly errs in the opposite direction. Gréard was quite justified in retorting on his critic, “Il arrive même qu’en voulant établir trop rationellement _la philosophie de Plutarque, M. Volkmann se trouve conduit à lui prêter une sorte de système, bien qu’il sache comme personne que nul moins que le sage de Chéronée n’a porté dans ses écrits une pensée systématique_.”[14] Volkmann, in our opinion, attaches far too much importance both to Plutarch’s discipular relation to Plato, and to his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans. Plutarch’s opposition to Plato is frequently as strongly marked as his opposition to Stoics and Epicureans; and his indebtedness to Stoics and Epicureans is frequently as strongly marked as his indebtedness to Plato.

Volkmann’s work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and well-written Thesis, entitled “De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia.”[15] The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch’s attitude towards the popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—eadem ratione (qua Plato) Platonis discipuli theologiam tractarunt, e quibus præ cœteris Plutarchus magistri divini vestigia secutus est. This, indeed, is the orthodox tendency in the appreciation of Plutarch, and it has been carried to the extent of claiming Plutarch as the founder of that special kind of Platonism distinguished by the epithet “New.” “Plutarch,” says Archbishop Trench, “was a Platonist with an oriental tinge, and thus a forerunner of the New Platonists.”—“He might be described with greater truth than Ammonius as the Founder of Neo-Platonism,” wrote Dr. H. W. J. Thiersch, who, however, had not freed himself from the idea (the truth of which even so early a writer as Dacier had doubted, and the legendary character of which M. Gréard has proved beyond a doubt) that Plutarch received consular honours at the hands of Trajan.[16]—“In this essay” (the De Oraculorum Defectu), thinks Mr. W. J. Brodribb, “Plutarch largely uses the Neo-Platonic Philosophy.”[17] Even those who do not insist that Plutarch is a Neo-Platonist, or a “forerunner” of Neo-Platonism, are so anxious to label him with some designation, that they will hardly allow him to speak for himself. It may, perhaps, argue presumption on the part of an homo incognitus nulliusque auctoritatis to suggest that Plutarch faces the teaching of his predecessors with an independent mind; that he is nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri; that he tries Plato’s teachings, not from Plato’s point of view, but from his own.[18]

Such, however, is the view maintained in the pages of the following essay. It seems to us that, in order to discover the principle which gives coherence and internal unity to Plutarch’s innumerable philosophic utterances, it is not necessary to start with the assumption that he belongs to any particular school. Philosophy is to him one of the recognized sources of Religion and Morality. Tradition is another source, and Law or recognized custom another. Plutarch assumes that these three sources conjointly supply solid sanctions for belief and conduct. 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. Then why call him a Platonist, or a Neo-Pythagorizing Platonist, as Zeller has done? Plutarch’s teaching is too full of logical inconsistencies to be formalized into a system of Philosophy. But the dominating principle of his teaching, the paramount necessity of finding a sanction and an inspiration for conduct in what the wisdom of the past had already discovered, is so strikingly conspicuous in all his writings that his logical inconsistencies appear, and are, unimportant. It is this desire of making the wisdom and traditions of the past available for ethical usefulness which actuates his attempt to reconcile the contradictions, and remove the crudities and inconsistencies, in the three sources of religious knowledge. This is the principle which gives his teaching unity, and not any external circumstances of his life, or his attitude in favour of or in opposition to the tenets of any particular school.

There is no English translation of Plutarch’s “Ethics” which can claim anything approaching the character of an authorized version. Almost every editor of Plutarch has felt it necessary to find fault with his predecessors’ attempts to express Plutarch’s meaning through the medium of another language. Amyot’s translation is, in the opinion of the Comte Joseph de Maistre, repellent to “ladies and foreigners.” Wyttenbach, who makes numerous alterations of Xylander’s Latin version, also says of Ricard’s French translation, that “it skips over the difficulties and corruptions in such a manner as to suggest that the translator was content merely to produce a version which should be intelligible to French readers.”[19] Wyttenbach himself is reprehended in the following terms by the editor of the Didot text of the “Moralia”—“Of the Latin version, in which we have made numerous corrections, it must be admitted that Xylander and Wyttenbach, in dealing with corrupt passages, not infrequently translated conjectures of their own, or suggested by other scholars, which we have been unable to adopt into the Greek Text.” In the preface to his English translation of the “De Iside et Osiride,” the Rev. Samuel Squire, Archdeacon of Bath in 1744, has some excellent critical remarks on the style of previous translators of Plutarch, and he somewhat pathetically describes the difficulties awaiting the author who endeavours to translate that writer—“_To enter into another man’s Soul as it were, who lived several hundred years since, to go along with his thoughts, to trace, pursue, and connect his several ideas, to express them with propriety in a language different from that they were conceived in, and lastly to give the copy the air and spirit of an original, is not so easy a task as it may be perhaps deemed by those who have never made the attempt. The very few good translations of the learned authors into our own language, will sufficiently justify the truth of the observation—but if any one still doubts it, let him take the first section of the book before him, and make the experiment himself._” M. Gréard is briefer but equally emphatic—“Toute traduction est une œuvre délicate, celle de Plutarque plus que toute autre peut-être.”

Whatever may be the cause of the perpetuation of this ungracious tradition of fault-finding, whether the general difficulty specified by Archdeacon Squire, or the more particular obstacle of a corrupt text described by other commentators, we do not feel that we are called upon to make any departure from so long-established a custom. The quaint charm of most of the translations forming the basis of Dr. Goodwin’s revision no one will be inclined to deny, although the reviser’s own remarks make it clear that little dependence is to be placed upon their accuracy in any instance of difficulty.[20] The two volumes contained in the well-known “Bohn” series of translations are utterly misleading, not only as regards the colour which they infuse into Plutarch’s style, but also as regards their conspicuous incorrectness in many particular instances.[21] To other translations of individual tracts reference has been occasionally made in the notes.

In view of the fact that no dependence was to be placed upon the accuracy of any translation yet furnished of that portion of our author’s work with which we were dealing, it was necessary, before undertaking this essay, to make full translations of considerable portions of the “Ethics” from the text of Bernardakis; and these translations, or paraphrases based upon them, are largely employed in the following pages. Mere references to the text in support of positions assumed, or statements made, would have been useless and misleading in the absence of clear indications as to the exact interpretation placed upon the words of the text. The writer cannot hope to have succeeded where, in the opinion of competent judges, there have been so many failures. But he has, at any rate, made a conscientious attempt to understand his author, and to give expression to his view of his author’s meaning, without any prejudice born of the assumption that Plutarch belonged to a particular school, or devoted his great powers of criticism and research to the exposition and illustration of the doctrines of any single philosopher.

JOHN OAKESMITH.

BATTERSEA, September, 1902.

CHAPTER I.

_General character of Modern European Religions: their cardinal appeal to Emotion—Roman Religion: its sanctions chiefly rational: the causes of its failure: its place as a factor in Morality taken by Greek Philosophy—Early Greek Morality based partly on Religion, partly on Reason, which, in the form of Philosophy, eventually supplies the main inspiration to Goodness—Gradual limitation of Philosophy to Ethics_ 1

CHAPTER II.

_Importance of the ethical tendency in pre-Socratic Philosophy generally under-estimated—Development of this tendency from Thales to the Sophists, and from the Sophists to the Stoics and Epicureans—Special influence of these two Schools, aided by the failure of political interest, in establishing a practicable ideal of PERSONAL virtue—This ideal, conspicuous in Plutarch’s “Ethics,” and inculcated by the philosophers of the early Græco-Roman Empire generally_ 20

CHAPTER III.

_Ethical aspect of Græco-Roman Society in the period of Plutarch: difficulty of obtaining an impartial view of it—Revival of moral earnestness concurrent with the establishment of the Empire: the reforms of Augustus a formal expression of actual tendencies—Evidences of this in philosophical and general literature—The differences between various Schools modified by the importance of the ethical end to which all their efforts were directed—Endeavour made to base morality on sanctions already consecrated by the philosophies and religious traditions of the Past—Plutarch’s “Ethics” the result of such an endeavour_ 43

CHAPTER IV.

_Plutarch’s attitude towards Pagan beliefs marked by a spirit of reverent rationalism—The three recognized sources of Religion: Poetry, Philosophy, and Law or Custom—The contribution of each to be examined by Reason with the object of avoiding both Superstition and Atheism: Reason the “Mystagogue” of Religion—Provisional examples of Plutarch’s method in the three spheres—His reluctance to press rationalism too far—His piety partly explained by his recognition of the divine mission of Rome—Absence of dogmatism in his teaching_ 62

CHAPTER V.

_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_ 87

CHAPTER VI.

_Plutarch’s Dæmonology—Dæmonology as a means of reconciliation between the traditional Polytheism and Philosophic Monotheism—Dæmonlore in Greek philosophers and in the popular faith—Growth of a natural tendency to identify the gods of the polytheistic tradition with the Dæmons—Emphasis thus given to the philosophic conception of the Deity—Dæmons responsible for all the crude and cruel superstitions attaching to the popular gods—Function of the Dæmons as mediators between God and man_ 120

CHAPTER VII.

_Necessity for a Mediator between God and Man partly met by Oracular Inspiration—General failure of Oracles in the age of Plutarch—Plutarch’s “Delphian Essays”—The DE PYTHIÆ ORACULIS: nature of Inspiration: oracles not verbally inspired—The DE DEFECTU ORACULORUM—Various explanations of Inspiration—Plutarch inclines to accept that which assumes an original Divine afflatus placed under the superintendence of Dæmons, whose activities are subject to the operation of natural causes_ 138

CHAPTER VIII.

_Sincerity of Plutarch’s belief in Dæmons—Function of the Dæmons as Mediators not confined to oracular inspiration—Dæmons in their personal relationship with the human soul—The DE DÆMONIO SOCRATIS—This tract not a formal treatise on Dæmonology—Various explanations of the Socratic “Dæmon”—Ethical value of the conception of Dæmons as spiritual guardians of individual men—“Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things”—Dangers of the conception—Superstition: Plutarch’s general attitude towards that Vice_ 163

CHAPTER IX.

_Relation between Superstition and Atheism: Atheism an intellectual error: Superstition an error involving the passions: the DE SUPERSTITIONE—Moral fervour of Plutarch’s attack on Superstition—His comparative tolerance of Atheism—The greatest safeguard against both alike consists in an intellectual appreciation of the Truth—The DE ISIDE ET OSIRIDE—The Unity underlying national differences of religious belief_ 179

CHAPTER X.

_Conclusions respecting the general character of Plutarch’s Religion—Monotheism and Dæmonology both essential parts of his Theodicy—His strong belief in the personality of God—Metaphysical weakness but Moral strength of his Teaching—Close connexion between his Religion and his Ethics—Plutarch not an “Eclectic,” nor a Neo-Platonist—Contrast between Plutarch’s Religion and Philosophy and the Religion and Philosophy of the Neo-Platonists—Christianity and Neo-Platonism—The struggle between them and its probable effect on later religious history—Conclusion_ 201

THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH

CHAPTER I.

The various religious revivals which the European world has witnessed during the prolonged course of the Christian era; the great attempts which the modern conscience has made from time to time to bring itself into a more intimate and fruitful relation with the principles that make for goodness of character and righteousness of life: have, in general, taken the form less of reasoned invocations to the cultivated intelligence than of emotional appeals to the natural passions and prepossessions of humanity. The hope of reward, the fear of punishment, a spontaneous love of certain moral qualities, and of certain personalities imagined as embodying these qualities; a heartfelt hatred of certain moral defects, and of certain personalities imagined as embodying these defects:—such are the feelings that have formed the strength of every movement which has in turn agitated the religious life of the Western world from St. Paul to Wesley, from St. Augustine to Cardinal Newman. What is felt to be goodness is loved with a personal adoration which is convinced that nothing in the world is of import compared with the hope of one day touching the mere hem of that garment of holiness, the mystic effluence of which has already power to irradiate life with a strange beauty and meaning. Any sanction which imaginative piety or legendary authority can lend to Virtue is credited, not because it makes Virtue natural, intelligible, and human, but because it places her on a pedestal beyond the reach of unaided mortal effort, and thus compels a still more determined recourse to emotional and supernatural sanctions in order to ensure her fruitful cultivation. Hence Tertullian will glory in the Crucifixion of Christ, because in the eyes of reason it is shameful; and he will proclaim the Resurrection as certain, because reason condemns it as impossible.[22] Hence Augustine will believe first, postponing the grave question whether belief is likely to be supported by proof.[23] Hence that conception of saintliness which the world owes to Catholic Christianity, a type of character which, while maintaining a marvellous purity of life, is devoid of that robust intelligence without which purity runs into asceticism; which carries virtue to such an extravagant pitch that its results may be more disastrous than those of extravagant vice, inasmuch as the latter may serve morality by demonstrating the repulsiveness of iniquity, while the former tends to evil by exhibiting the impossibility of goodness.[24]

This “extravagance du christianisme”[25] is, of course, utterly at variance with the general character of the efforts by which either a Greek or a Roman directed his steps in the ways of goodness. Neither Aristotle nor Horace, neither Plato nor Seneca, would have admitted many of the most lauded virtues of modern ethical systems to be virtues at all. Least of all would they have hailed as a virtue that passionate excess of enthusiasm which makes Virtue independent of Reason, and greets intellectual impossibilities as the trials and tests of the “virtue” of Belief.[26] Speaking in a general sense, and with a tacit recognition of certain exceptions to be noticed in their proper place, it may be premised that Pagan goodness of character found its inspiration, not in any kind of emotional enthusiasm, but in methods of thought and action selected and controlled by the operation of reason and intelligence.[27] Horace’s opinion respecting the viciousness of the man who indulges in a too excessive love of virtue is the opinion, if not of a Greek, at any rate of a Roman who is saturated with Greek philosophy;[28] but the early character of the poet’s countrymen, as evinced not less in their Religion than in their general outlook on life, is as little disposed to extravagance as the strongest advocate of aurea mediocritas could well desire. Roman Religion, influenced to some extent as it was by the gloomy terrors of Etruscan superstition, found its value and its meaning, from the gods of the Indigitamenta downwards, in the fact that it was an appeal to the intelligence of the citizen. That this appeal operated in a narrow sphere of duties and was not unaffected by mean and sordid considerations does not militate against its general character as an address to the reason rather than an invocation to the passions. Ancient critics found for the word “Religio” a derivation which pointed to carefulness and regularity as qualities inherent in its essential meaning;[29] and that avoidance of disordered excess, which tends to compromise, was as conspicuous in early Roman religious practice as it was in the sternest of Greek philosophies when transplanted to Roman soil, and interpenetrated with the Roman character.[30] This spirit of compromise was based upon a recognition that the actual demands of practical life were of greater importance than the maintenance of a rigid conformity to the letter of religious precepts. Virgil, who was a participant in the work of religious reform inaugurated by Augustus, and who everywhere breathes a spirit of the most careful reverence towards the ancient traditions of the national faith, gives emphatic expression to this view of the dominant claims of practical life, and of the tolerant attitude which Religion assumes with regard to them:—

“Quippe etiam festis quædam exercere diebus
Fas et jura sinunt; rivos deducere nulla
Relligio vetuit, segeti prætendere sæpem,
Insidias avibus moliri, incendere vepres,
Balantumque gregem fluvio mersare salubri.”[31]

This recognition of the principle that Duty has claims which even Religion must concede is prominently written on every page of Roman History. It indicates the operation, in one direction, of that influence of Reason on Religion which, in another direction, leads to the admission of a real divinity in the gods adored by foreign peoples. The famous formula of Roman Religion, which appealed to the protecting gods of Carthage and its people to leave that city to its fate, is an early anticipation of that hospitable tolerance, so strange to modern sects, which welcomed Greek and barbarian deities to the Roman Pantheon, and never persecuted from religious motives.[32] This spirit had its apotheosis in the endeavours of the reformers of the age of Plutarch to establish the triumph of Reason in a general recognition of the Unity of God beneath the different names which expressed Him to different peoples.[33]

Although we cannot accept as actual history the particulars given by Dionysius Halicarnassensis respecting the manner in which Romulus established the principles of Roman religious and political administration, considerable value may be conceded to such an account, because it is calculated to explain, from the writer’s point of view, the existence of certain actual characteristics of Roman civic and sacred polity.[34] Romulus is recorded as subjecting Religion to the selective power of reason and good taste. Reason decides what it is becoming for the Divine Nature to be, and everything inconsistent with this salutary notion is rigidly excluded from the State Religion. Romulus teaches the Romans that the gods are good, and that their goodness is the cause of man’s happiness and progress; he instructs them in Temperance and Justice, as the bases of civic concord, and of the advantages resulting therefrom; he inculcates military Fortitude as the best means of securing the undisturbed practice of the other virtues, and the social blessings springing from such practice; and he concludes that Virtue is not a matter of chance, or the result of supernatural inspirations, but the product of reasonable laws when zealously and faithfully carried into practice by the citizens. Reason is here clearly represented as the lawgiver of Religion, and the cause and origin of the practical virtues. Dionysius may, as we have suggested, be endeavouring to explain, by an ex post facto piece of history, the existence of certain characteristics of the Roman constitution as exhibited in its later developments, but these features are not the less evident and essential parts of the system because we cannot accept any particular account of the time and manner in which they were incorporated with it.

Further, the Roman administrative authority deliberately repressed the exhibition of religious enthusiasm as dangerous to the stability of the Republic; the State could brook no rival in her affections: the devotion of Regulus[35] and the suppression of the Bacchanalia bear equal witness to a firm insistence on the control of personal emotion as a cardinal principle of Roman administration.[36] The apparently paradoxical and casuistical position assigned in the “De Natura Deorum” to Cotta, who believes in the national religion as a Roman while denying it as a philosopher, is sufficiently lucid and rational when regarded in the light of the religious administration of Rome, which had never claimed to enslave the intelligences of men, so long as that elaborate ritual, with which the safety of the State was involved, received due and reverential attention.[37]

The ancient Roman Religion, revolving round the State in this way, and moulding the life of every individual citizen into rigid external conformity with the official ideal, showed its strength in the production of a type of moral character which was perfect within the iron limits fixed by the civic authority.[38] It was dignified, austere, self-controlled, self-reverent. In the absence of great temptations, such as assail the secret strongholds of the human heart and lie beyond the influence of any external power, the ancient Virtus Romana was equal to all the demands which a somewhat restricted code of ethics made upon it. But, when a wider knowledge of the world brought with it a weakening of the chain which bound the citizen to the central power; when, at the same time, a wider possession of the world and a richer enjoyment of its pleasures increased to an enormous extent the temptations directed against the purity and completeness of the moral character:[39] then it became alarmingly clear to thoughtful men that, unless the moral life was to run to seed in vicious weeds of self-indulgence, it was necessary to invoke the aid of a subtler and stronger influence than that of the State, an influence capable of varying its appeal in accordance with the infinitely varying moral needs of individual men.[40] It was with the hope of finding inspiration of this character that Lucretius and Cicero turned the attention of their countrymen to Greek Philosophy; it was there that they wished to find an ampler and more direct sanction in reason for cultivating a life of virtue. Reason, which had not been devoid of effect in the narrow sphere of Roman Religion, was now to be made the basis of morality in general; but it was reason directed to the purification and enlargement of the springs of personal conduct, and calling into play qualities which had lain dormant, or had been restricted, during the long dominance of the State over the individual citizen. To Regulus, his religion was the State; to Cicero, the State and its demands form but a small fraction of the moral life. A revival of Religion was to Cicero a revival of Philosophy; Reason, the parent of Philosophy, was also to be the parent of Conduct; the first of all virtues is the virtue of Knowledge, of intelligent discrimination between the things that make for morality and happiness and the things that make for immorality and misery.[41] Starting from this standpoint, Cicero, though approaching Greek Philosophy more in the spirit of the student than in that of the religious reformer, though participating, as his Letters show, in that general carelessness on religious matters which marked Roman Society during the later years of the Republic, was, nevertheless, the means of giving a powerful stimulus to that movement in the direction of deliberate personal morality, which became conspicuous in the Græco-Roman world of the Early Empire, and culminated under the fostering care of Trajan and the Antonines. It then became clear that Cicero had not looked in vain to Greek Philosophy to save his countrymen from that moral degradation and disorder which, in his own words, it demanded the most earnest endeavours of every individual citizen to check and restrain.[42]

In Greece, Religion and Philosophy had early enjoyed mutual relations of an intimate character. The force of the weighty invocations which the poet of the “Works and Days”[43] addresses to his dishonourable brother Perses lies less in the conventional theology which alludes to the wrath of “broad-sighted Zeus” as tracking the footsteps of the wicked, than in the reasoned choice which the sinner is invited to make between Injustice as leading inevitably to ruin, and Virtue leading as inevitably to prosperity;[44] and the claims of individual judgment, the right of every man to subject everything to the test of his own intelligence, never found finer expression than in the verse which assigns the palm of moral perfection to him who has the courage to think for himself.[45] Pindar, the most religious poet of antiquity, applies the test of reason to the established myths of Hellas when he refuses to credit such legends as depict the gods in unseemly situations, or under the influence of degrading passions.[46] Xenophanes thought that the claims of Religion and Morality could be best advanced by cleansing the moral atmosphere of the gods whose recorded lives were so flagrantly in opposition to the dictates of purity, reason, and honour; a strain of criticism which found its most striking and notorious expression in the famous Second and Third Books of Plato’s “Republic,” but which had not been without its exponents among more whole-hearted adherents of the national Religion. But, meanwhile, the national Religion, as embodied, at least, in the national liturgy, had been coming to terms with the growing strength of Philosophy, and the vestibules of the Temple at Delphi were inscribed with those famous philosophical apophthegms, whose presence there subsequently enabled Plutarch to claim that Apollo was not only a God and a Seer, but a Philosopher.[47] The popular morality of the days of Socrates, which supplied his cross-examinees with ready-made answers to questions on the nature of Vice and Virtue, and of the vices and the virtues, was composed as much of Philosophy as of Religion in the narrower sense of the term.[48] The Theogonies of Homer and Hesiod furnished the external machinery of the supernatural world, but the moral utterances of these two poets, and not of these only, but of Simonides and Solon, of Theognis and the “Seven Sages,” contained many striking lessons, and many emphatic warnings, touching the necessity and advantages of a life of virtue. It became, in fact, quite evident, though not, of course, explicitly asserted, or perhaps even consciously admitted, that the gods, as represented in the Homeric poems and as existing in the popular imagination, were quite impossible as a foundation for Morality, though surpassingly splendid as the material of Art. It is hardly too much to say that, after the establishment of the great philosophic schools in the fourth century, all the conscious inspiration to a life of Virtue, and all the consolations which it is the more usual function of Religion to administer, were supplied by Philosophy. Sudden conversions from Vice to Philosophy mark the history of the philosophic movement in Greece as religious movements have been marked among other peoples and in other periods. An edifying discourse under a Stoic Portico, or in an Academic School, has been as effective in its practical results as a religious oration by Bossuet, or a village preaching by Whitfield.[49] Religion and Philosophy are identified, because both are identical with Morality; the lives of some Greek Philosophers furnish the nearest parallel attained in antiquity to the modern ideal of saintliness.

This application of Philosophy to the spiritual requirements of the individual man, this independence of supernatural sanctions for goodness, was aided by the almost purely liturgical character of the Greek Religion. Greek Religion made no special appeal to the individual conscience with a view to awakening that sense of personal responsibility for every part of one’s life and conduct which is the very soul and centre of Religion as understood in modern days. To attend the traditional religious festivals; to fulfil the rites prescribed for certain occasions by the sacerdotal laymen who represented the State on its religious side; to hold a vague conventional notion respecting the existence of the gods and of their separate personalities; to listen quietly, and respond reverently, while the purple-robed, myrtle-crowned, altar-ministrant intoned with solemn resonance the ancient formulæ embalming the sacred legends of some deity whose “Mysteries” were specially fostered and honoured by the State; to aid in giving effect to the dreadful imprecations pronounced against those guilty of sacrilege or parricide; to respond, in a word, to all the external demands of the national faith as a political institution: represented the religious duty of a good and patriotic citizen. A beautiful and impressive liturgy is, indeed, not without effect in surrounding with a quiet atmosphere of goodness a class of minds whose temptations are mercifully proportioned to their weakness; but real moral worth must spring from internal sources, and these internal sources were not to be found in the Greek national Religion. Hence a wider field for Philosophy in the lives of a people whose eagerness in the pursuit of virtue was as marked, if not so successful, as their aspirations after perfection of art and profundity of knowledge.

We do not ignore, in attributing this importance to Philosophy as the inspiration of goodness, either that fortunate class of people who, in Plato’s beautiful expression, are “good by the divine inspiration of their own nature,”[50] or that more numerous section of society who were directed into a certain common conventional goodness by the moral influence of the purer myths, and who were taught, like the youth in Browning’s poem, “whose Father was a scholar and knew Greek,” that

“Their aim should be to loathe, like Peleus’ son, A lie as Hell’s Gate, love their wedded wife, Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.”[51]

But there was another side to the myths, a side less favourable to the development of morals, and one which had been brought forward so conspicuously in the adverse criticisms of the philosophers that no one could pretend to ignore its existence.[52] The prevailing tendency of Greek myth was not moral, and it was only after the most careful pruning, such, for example, as that which Plutarch applies to it in his educational essays, that myth became safely available as a factor in ethical progress. The mainsprings of Conduct, of personal and private Morality, are to be found in Philosophy, and so great an importance did Philosophy acquire as the instrument of goodness, that that particular branch of Philosophy which exercised surveillance over the realm of Conduct became eventually recognized as Philosophy par excellence; the overwhelming significance attached by Greek philosophers, from the Sophists onwards, to the practical element in their teaching, led to a restriction of the terms “Philosophy” and “Philosopher” to an almost purely ethical connotation. The argument in the “Phædo” that, without Philosophy, Virtue is nothing more than a mere rough sketch, is so strongly emphasized in other quarters that there is formed a general conviction that the sole sphere of Philosophy is the sphere of human conduct.[53]

THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH

AN ESSAY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

JOHN OAKESMITH.

PREFACE

JOHN OAKESMITH.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

THE RELIGION OF PLUTARCH

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.