Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/180

 by the other speakers, it is clearly Plutarch himself who is modestly represented under this guise. After a warning, characteristic of Plutarch both as regards its purport and the manner in which it is conveyed (by means of a historical reminiscence), that these questions are not to be tested "like a painting by the touch," the writer brings a party of philosophers together at Delphi "shortly before the Pythian games held under Callistratus." Two of these philosophers are already known to us. Like the eagles or swans of the ancient legend they had met at Delphi coming from opposite quarters of the globe; Demetrius, of Tarsus, returning home from Britain, and Cleombrotus, of Lacedæmon, from prolonged journeyings by land and sea, in Egypt and the East. Cleombrotus, being possessed of a competence, employed his means and his leisure in travel, for the purpose of accumulating evidence to form the basis of that branch of philosophy whose end and aim, as he expressed it, was Theology. A preliminary discussion takes place respecting the "everlasting lamp" which Cleombrotus had been shown

Græcis''.)]
 * [Footnote: referred to is, of course, his ''De Hiatu in Oratoribus Atticis et Historicis