[254] De Defectu Orac., 419 A.
[255] 419.—Mrs. Browning could hardly have read the De Defectu when she stated that her fine poem “The Dead Pan” was “partly founded on a well-known tradition mentioned in a treatise of Plutarch (‘De Oraculorum Defectu’), according to which, at the hour of the Saviour’s agony, a cry of ‘Great Pan is dead!’ swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners,—and the oracles ceased.” (It was one of the mariners who uttered the cry, “The great Pan is dead!” having been thrice requested by a supernatural voice to do so. But such errors of detail are unimportant in view of the fact that the whole spirit of the story is misunderstood by the poetess.)
[256] So one may conjecture from the description given by Demetrius, who “sailed to the least distant of these lonely islands, which had few inhabitants, and these all held sacred and inviolable by the Britons.” Plutarch’s Demetrius has been identified with “Demetrius the Clerk” who dedicated, “to the gods of the imperial Palace,” a bronze tablet now in the Museum at York.—See King’s translation of the Theosophical Essays in the “Bohn” series, p. 22.
[257] 420 B.
[258] 360 D.
[259] 361 E. We shall see elsewhere that, just as a good Dæmon may be promoted to the rank of a god, so a good man may be lifted to the status of a Dæmon, like Hesiod’s people of the Golden Age. (De Dæmonio Socratis, 593 D. Cf. De Defectu Orac., 415 B.)
[260] 361 F. 364 E.
[261] Cf. Apuleius, De Deo Socratis.—“Neque enim pro majestate Deûm cælestium fuerit, ut eorum quisquam vel Annibali somnium pingat, vel Flaminio hostiam conroget, vel Accio Nævio avem velificet, vel sibyllæ fatiloquia versificet, etc. Non est operæ Diis superis ad hæc descendere. Quad cuncta” (he says elsewhere) “cælestium voluntate et numine et auctoritate, sed Dæmonum obsequio et opera et ministerio fieri arbitrandum est.”
[262] De Ε apud Delphos, 394 A.
[263] De Fato, 572 F, sqq.—Bernardakis “stars” this tract as doubtfully Plutarch’s. But the passage quoted, at any rate, is not discrepant from Plutarch’s views elsewhere, though expressing them more concisely, and with more appearance of system than usual with him. The similarity to Plato’s tripartite division of the heavenly powers in the Timæus is, of course, evident, but the text has a note of sincerity which is lacking in the Platonic passage.