[201] Plutarch on The Delay of the Deity in Punishing the Wicked: revised edition, with notes, by Professors H. B. Hackett and W. S. Tyler. (New York, 1867.)
[202] Sur les Délais de la Justice Divine dans la punition des coupables, par le Comte Joseph de Maistre. (Lyons et Paris, 1856.)—“J’ai pris,” says de Maistre, “j’ai pris quelques libertés dont j’espère que Plutarque n’aura point se plaindre;” and, speaking of the jeunesse surannée of Amyot’s style, he adds: “Son orthographe égare l’œil, l’oreille ne supporte pas ses vers: les dames surtout et les étrangers le goûtent peu.” Another French critic justly remarks on these “liberties” of de Maistre: “C’est trop de licence. Plutarque n’est pas un de ces écrivains qui laissent leurs pensées en bouton” (Gréard, p. 274). Yet it is upon de Maistre’s “paraphrase” that Gréard bases his own analysis!
[203] Wyttenbach: De Sera Numinis Vindicta (Præfatio). It is pleasant to repeat the praise which Christian writers have poured on this tract. “Diese Schrift” says Volkmann, “gehört meines Erachtungs unbedingt mit zu dem schönsten, was aus der gesammten nachclassischen Litteratur der Griechen überhaupt auf uns gekommen ist.” (Volkmann, vol. ii. p. 265.) One may wonder a little, perhaps, at the limitation conveyed in the nach of nachclassischen.—Trench says that some of Plutarch’s arguments “would have gone far to satisfy St. Augustine, and to meet the demands of his theology.”
[204] The Epicurean author of the De Placitis, still inveighing against “that tall talker, Plato,” is bitterly emphatic on this point.—“If there is a God, and human affairs are administered by His Providence, how comes it that bareness prospers, while the refined and good fall into adversity?” And he instances the murder of Agamemnon “at the hands of an adulterer and an adultress,” and the death of Hercules, that benefactor of humanity, “done to death by Dejaniras drugs.” (881 D.)
[205] Symposiacs, 642 C, 700 E.
[206] Symposiacs, 654 C.
[207] Thucyd., iii. 38. Cleon’s famous speech on the Mytilenean question.
[208] “Hujus rei aut omnino Lycisci ne vestigium quidem uspiam reperi.”—Wyttenbach.
[209] In allusion, of course, to the famous verse of an unknown poet:—
Ὀψὲ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτὰ.