[304] 431 B.
[305] 436 F.
[306] 437 F.
[307] De Pythiæ Orac., 398 B.
[308] De Defectu Orac., 418 E.
[309] De Defectu Orac., 438 D.
[310] Plutarch, in reply to Boethus the Epicurean, uses an interesting example to illustrate the two opposite views maintained on this point. “Even you yourself here are beneficially influenced, it would seem, by what Epicurus wrote and spoke three centuries ago; and yet you are of opinion that God could not supply a Principle of Motion or a Cause of Feeling, unless He took and shut Himself up in each individual thing and became an intermingled portion of its essence” (398 B, C).
[311] “As to Plutarch’s theology, he was certainly a monotheist. He probably had some vague belief in inferior deities (demons he would have called them) as holding a place like that filled by angels and evil spirits in the creed of most Christians; yet it is entirely conceivable that his occasional references to these deities are due merely to the conventional rhetoric of his age” (Andrew P. Peabody: Introduction to a translation—already referred to—of the De Sera Numinis Vindicta). It is a little difficult to be patient with the ignorance displayed in the italicized part of this citation. That Plutarch’s “references to these deities” are not “occasional” is a matter of fact; that they are not “due merely to conventional rhetoric” it is hoped that the analysis in the text—incomplete as it may be in other respects—has at least made sufficiently clear. It is, however, gratifying to find that this American translator, unlike Dr. Super, of Chicago, recognizes that Plutarch “was certainly a monotheist.”
[312] Plutarch found the existence of the Dæmons recognized in each of the three spheres which contributed to the formation of religious beliefs—in philosophy, in popular tradition, and in law. Stobæus: Tit. 44, 20 (“On Laws and Customs”—Tauchnitz edition of 1838, vol. ii. p. 164) has an interesting quotation, headed “Preamble of the Laws of Zaleucus,” in which the following passage occurs:—“If an Evil Dæmon come to any man, tempting him to Vice, let him spend his time near temples, and altars, and sacred shrines, fleeing from Vice as from an impious and cruel mistress, and let him pray the gods to deliver him from her power.” Zaleucus may, of course, have been embodying the teaching of his Pythagorean colleagues, but the fact remains that the belief in the influence of Dæmons on human life received the authority of a celebrated system of law, unless we are to be more incredulous than Cicero himself—Quis Zaleucum leges scripsisse non dixit? (Ad Atticum, vi. 1).—(“His code is stated to have been the first collection of written laws that the Greeks possessed.”—Smaller Classical Dictionary, Smith and Marindin, 1898.)
[313] Adversus Coloten, 1124 D. The religious value of the belief in Dæmonology is indicated in an interesting passage in the “De Iside et Osiride” in which Isis, by her sufferings, is described as “having given a sacred lesson of consolation to men and women involved in similar sorrows.” 361 E. (In the next sentence she and Osiris are raised from the dæmonic rank to the divine.)