[138] De Iside et Osiride, and De Superstitione, passim.
[139] Cf. Diog. Laert. vii. 134 (Ritter and Preller, sect. 404).—“God, by transformation of His own essence, makes the world.”—Grant’s Aristotle, Essay vi., “The Ancient Stoics.” Cf. Plut: De Stoic. Repugn. 1053.
[140] De Ε apud Delphos, 388 F.
[141] Quomodo Adulator, 78 E. Cf. Eunapius on Historians of Philosophy. “No one has written any careful account of the lives of philosophers, among whom we count not only Ammonius, teacher of divinest Plutarch, but also Plutarch himself, the darling and delight of all Philosophy.” Eunapius thinks that the Parallel Lives were Plutarch’s finest work, but adds that “all his writings are thickly sown with original thoughts of his own, as well as with the teachings of his Master.”
[142] 393 E.
[143] Plutarch elsewhere comments upon the εὑρησιλογία of the Stoics in finding explanations of the various names of the popular Deities (Quomodo Adolescens, 31 E). Cicero (De Natura Deorum, iii. 24) represents Cotta as charging the Stoics with supporting the crudest superstitions of the popular faith by the skill which they displayed in finding a mysterious significance in the current names and legends:-“Atque hæc quidem et ejusmodi ex vetere Græcia fama collecta sunt; quibus intelligis resistendum esse, ne perturbentur religiones. Vestri autem non modo hæc non repellunt, verum etiam confirmant, interpretando quorsum quidque pertineat.”
[144] Iliad, xv. 362-4.
[145] In another place Plutarch expresses the view that the original Creator of the world bestowed upon the stuff of the phenomenal world a principle of change and movement by which that stuff often dissolves and reshapes itself under the operation of natural causes without the intervention of the original Creator (De Defectu Orac., 435-6).
[146] Plutarch, in this Essay, distinctly places himself in opposition to Plato, whose views, for the purposes of contrast, may be summarized from two well-known passages of the Republic. In 337 B, C, the greater part of the myths current in the popular poets are repudiated. Then, after that famous series of criticisms applied to particular passages taken from Homer and Hesiod and other poets, after his analysis of the various kinds of “narration,” and his implicit inclusion of the great poets of Greece among the masters of that kind of imitative narration which a man will the more indulge in, the more contemptible he is, Plato concludes with that ironical description of the reception which a Homer or a Hesiod would have to meet in a state founded on the Platonic ideal. “We shall pay him reverence as a sacred, admirable, and charming personage; we shall pour perfumed oil upon his head and crown him with woollen fillets; but we shall tell him that our laws exclude such characters as he, and shall send him away to some other city than ours.”—398 A, B (Davies and Vaughan’s translation). Plutarch, however, takes the world as it is. He admits that poetry is a siren, but refuses to stop the ears of the young people who listen to her fascinating strains. Lycurgus was mad in thinking he could cure drunkenness by cutting down the vineyards; he should rather have brought the water-springs nearer to the vines. It is better to utilize the vine of poetry by checking and pruning its “fanciful and theatrical exuberance” than to uproot it altogether. We must mingle the wine with the pure water of philosophy, or, to use another image, poetry and philosophy must be planted in the same soil, just as the mandragora, which moderates the native strength of the wine, is planted in vineyards (Quomodo Adolescens, 15 E).
August Schlemm, in his De fontibus Plutarchi Commentationum De Aud. Poetis et de Fortuna (Göttingen, 1893), subjects the structure of the De Audiendis to a very close and careful analysis, and comes to the conclusion that the main sources of Plutarch’s material are to be found in the writings of Stoic and Peripatetic philosophers. He notes that Plutarch’s examples are taken from the same Homeric, verses as Plato’s, and adds, “Quæ cum ita sint, quomodo hæ Plutarchum inter et Platonem similitudines ortæ sint dubium jam esse non potest. Plutarchus, ut in eis quæ antecedunt, ita etiam hic, usus est libro Peripatetici cujusdam, qui, ut criminationes a Platone poetis factas repelleret, hujus modi fictiones in natura artis poeticæ positas esse demonstravit et commentationi suæ inseruit poetarum versus a Platone vituperatos.” Chrysippus had composed a work on How to study Poetry, Zeno one entitled On Poetical Study, and Cleanthes another, called On the Poet.