Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
our pursuit we shall long to return to it. The aim
and purpose of our philosophy must be practical, and
it is chiefly in our activity as a citizen and a man in
all the multiplex relations of life, that we may test
our love for it. Yet, the true philosopher is not
ostentatious, and it makes little difference to him
whether the world recognizes him as such or not.
He ought to seek internal satisfaction, not public
acknowledgement. Herein Plutarch takes his stand
in opposition to many of his countrymen who aspired
to the name and title of philosophers, but did little
to deserve them. How men of sense regarded them
has been pointed out elsewhere.
We may also measure our progress in philosophy,
that is, in virtue, by our love of the beautiful and the
good; by our attitude towards praise and blame.
We ought neither to seek the one nor avoid the
other. If we really desire to correct our faults and
shortcomings, we will be ready at all times to listen
to advice and to heed criticism; nor will we conceal
any part of our nature or cover up any of our acts in
order to seem what we are not. Nevertheless, when
we are firmly convinced that we are in the right, it
our duty to go forward in the course we have marked
out for ourselves, no matter what others may think
or say.
There is no stronger incentive to noble deeds and
an upright life than the lives of the great and the
good of all ages. It was mainly under the impulse
of this belief that Plutarch compiled his parallel
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