Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

eformer.
Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
Indeed, no reform was possible by means
of his didactic method. He does not denounce
vigourously the corruptions of his time. He is far
from employing the drastic speech of his Roman
contemporaries. It is probable that in his secluded
home he did not know or even suspect the moral
degradation of the world around him; it is certain
he had not fathomed it. He knows something of the
Jewish religion, and might have known more, had he
cared to inform himself. He might have heard
Paul s preaching; and Christianity had gained a firm
foothold in Greece before Plutarch s death. But he
was too much of a Greek to take any interest in what
had no relation either to Greek religion or tradition.
The new faith in virtue of its origin, was foolishness
to him. He considered the Hellenic religion good
enough for anybody and everybody. It might indeed
need purification from some of its grosser elements
and exotic excrescences; but more than this was
wholly
unnecessary.
Nothing that Plutarch says
exhibits in a more
striking light the humaneness of his disposition
than his exhortations to the kind treatment of brutes.
He believes that the good man is kind to his beast.
He regards
it a duty to care for the horse and the
dog that have served him well, when they become old
and useless. He seems to think that animals are
not without a measure of reason and that they have
to a limited extent, the power to decide between
right and wrong. Though possessed of only a modi-
125