Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/78

 virtues which, though not unpractised and unknown, are still so far limited in their application that he wishes to draw them from their shy seclusion in some few better homes, and to establish them in the broad and popular light of recognized customs; yet it is clear to every one of the few students of his pages that the virtues he depicts are the common aim of the people he meets in the streets and houses of Chæronea, and that the failings he corrects are the failings of the good people who are not too good to have to struggle against the temptations incident to humanity. The indications conveyed by Plutarch and Dion respecting the moral progress of obscure families and unknown villagers point to the widespread existence through the Empire of that same strenuous longing after goodness, which had already received emphatic expression in the writings of philosophers and poets whose activities had been confined to Rome.

For there can be no doubt that the establishment of the Empire had been accompanied by a strenuous moral earnestness which is in marked contrast to the flippant carelessness of the last days of the Republican Era. The note of despair—despair none the less because its external aspect was gay and debonnaire—so frequently raised by Ovid and Propertius and Tibullus; the reckless cry, ''Interea, dum fata sinunt, jungamus amores; Iam veniet tenebris Mors adoperta caput'', is the