Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/77

 herdsmen on the deserted hills of Eubœa, or linger with Plutarch at some modest gathering of family friends in Athens or the villages of Bœotia, we shall find innumerable examples of that virtue which the Republican poet sarcastically denies to the highest rulers. Even after the long reign of Christianity, vice has been centralized in the great capitals of civilization; and Rome and Alexandria and Antioch are not without their parallels among the cities of Modern Europe. In Alexandria itself, the populace who could listen to discourses like those of Dion must have been endowed with a considerable capacity for virtue; the tone of the orator, indeed, frequently reminds us of those modern preachers who provoke an agreeable sensation of excitement in the minds of their highly respectable audiences, by depicting them as involved in such wickedness as only the most daring of mankind would find courage to perpetrate. We propose to deal elsewhere with the testimony of Plutarch as to the moral character of the age in which he lived, and at present confine our observations to the assertion that his "Ethical" writings are crowded with examples of the purest and most genuine virtue; not such virtue as shows itself on striking and public occasions only, but such also as irradiates the daily life of the common people in their homes and occupations. And although he is, perhaps, in some of his precepts, a little in advance of the general trend of his times, inculcating, in these instances,