Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
biographies.
In the nature of the case their value ag
truthful records is greatly impaired by
the stand
point from which they were written; but it is this
fact that has given them an attractiveness and a
rency
cur
such as no other works of their kind have
equalled. Plutarch s Lives have for centuries been
the monitors of youth and the solace of the aged.
have been read and admired wherever men have
They
honored courage, fortitude, intrepidity, self-control,
patriotism, humaneness in short, every
character that can be classed among
Greeks and Romans, ancients and moderns,
trait of
the virtues.
learned
and illiterate, rich and poor, have been fascinated by
them, and it is on them that their author s fame
chiefly rests. To many persons, in fact to the great
majority of readers, Plutarch is known only as the
writer of charming biographies; yet these constitute
a good deal less than half his extant works.
Plutarch holds that men find the patli of virtue
and continue to walk in it, by reflection, deliberation,
introspection; by a systematic, rigid and continued
self-examination in other words, by a practical ap
plication of the methods that philosophy points out.
Man is sane and sound only so long as he puts into
practice the principles of virtue. So long
the slave of his passions he is in need of
as he is
a physician.
Philosophy is the sanitation of the soul; the genuine
philosopher is the real physician of the soul. In
pursuance of his chosen vocation, Plutarch wrote a
number of essays for the purpose of giving instruction