Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/76

 furnish material for correcting this one-sided impression have been less known to the multitude and less consulted by the learned. Even were the worst true that Juvenal, and Tacitus, and Martial, and Suetonius, and Petronius have said about Roman courts and Roman society; even were it not possible to supply a corrective colouring to the picture from the pages of Seneca, and Lucan, and Pliny, and Persius, and even Juvenal himself: yet it should be easy to remember that, just as the Palace of the Cæsars was not the City, so the City was not the Empire. Exeat aula qui volet esse pius is a maxim that could with advantage be applied to the sphere of historical criticism as well as to that of practical Ethics; and if we leave the factions and scandals of the Court and the City under the worst of the Emperors, and follow Dion into the huts of lonely

I do not know whether to attribute to his sense of fairness, or even to actual favour, or whether to regard it as an indication of mere neglect and contempt." That Brucker is inclined to the alternative of contempt is shown by a comment in a footnote on Tillemont's assertion (Histoire des Empereurs), that Plutarch ignored the Christians, "not daring to speak well, not wishing to speak ill." "It appears to me," says Brucker, "that the real reason was contempt for the Christians, who were looked upon as illiterate."
 * [Footnote: Plutarch, in his numerous writings, nowhere alludes to the Christians,

Of modern examples of this tendency one may be sufficient. In the introduction to an American translation of the ''De Sera Numinis Vindicta'', the editor, after enumerating the arguments against any connexion between Plutarch and Christianity, concludes:—"Yet I cannot doubt that an infusion of Christianity had somehow infiltrated itself into Plutarch's ethical opinions and sentiment, as into those of Seneca." ("Plutarch on the Delay of the Divine Justice," translated, with an introduction and notes, by, Boston, 1885.)]