INTRODUCTION.[vii:1]
Plutarch[vii:2] was born, about the middle of the first Christian century, at Cheroneia in Boeotia, where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he probably died. The precise dates of his birth and death are unknown; but he can hardly have been born earlier than A. D. 45, and he must have lived nearly or quite till A. D. 120, as some of his works contain references to events that cannot have taken place earlier than the second decade of the second century. We know little of him from other sources, much from his own writings. There may have been many such men in his time; but antiquity has transmitted to us no record like his. He reminds one of such men as were to be found half a century ago in many of our American country towns. Those potentially like them have now, for the most part, emigrated to the large cities, and have become very unlike their prototypes. Cheroneia, with its great memories, was a small and insignificant town,
and Plutarch was a country gentleman, superior, as in culture so in serviceableness, to all his fellow citizens, holding the foremost place in municipal affairs, liberal, generous, chosen to all local offices of honor, and especially of trust and responsibility, associating on the most pleasant terms with the common people, always ready to give them his advice and aid, and evidently respected and beloved by all. He belonged to an old and distinguished family, and seems always to have possessed a competency for an affluent, though sober, domestic establishment and style of living, and for an unstinted hospitality. He was probably the richest man in his native city; for he assigns as a reason for not leaving it and living at some centre of intellectual activity, that Cheroneia could not afford to lose the property which he would take with him in case of his removal.
He had what corresponds to our university education, at Athens, under the Peripatetic philosopher Ammonius. He also visited Alexandria, then a renowned seat of learning; but how long he stayed there, or whether he extended his Egyptian travel beyond that city, we have no means of knowing. There is no proof of his having been in Rome or in Italy more than once, and that was when he was about forty years of age. He went to Rome on public business, probably in behalf of his native city, and remained there long enough to become acquainted with some eminent men, to make
himself known as a scholar and an ethical philosopher, and to deliver lectures that attracted no little public notice. This visit seems to have been the great event of his life, as a winter spent in Boston or New York used to be in the life of one of our country gentlemen before the time of railways.
He had a wife, who appears to have been of a character kindred to his own; at least five children, of whom two sons, if not more, lived to be themselves substantial citizens and worthy members of society; and two brothers, who seem to have possessed his full confidence and warm affection. He was singularly happy in his relations to a large circle of friends, especially in Athens, for which he had the lifelong love that students in our time acquire for a university town. He was archon, or mayor, of Cheroneia, probably more than once,—the office having doubtless been annual and elective,—and in this capacity he entered, like a veritable country magistrate, into material details of the public service, superintending, as he says, the measuring of tiles and the delivery of stone and mortar for municipal uses. He officiated for many years as priest of Apollo at Delphi, and as such gave several sumptuous entertainments. Indeed, hospitality of this sort appears, so far as we can see, to have been the sole or chief duty of his priestly office. As an adopted citizen of one of the Athenian tribes, he was not infrequently a guest at civic banquets and semi-civic festivals.
As regards Plutarch’s philosophy, it is easier to say to which of the great schools he did not belong than to determine by what name he would have preferred to be called. He probably would have termed himself a Platonist, but not, like Cicero, of the New Academy, which had incorporated Pyrrhonism with the provisional acceptance of the Platonic philosophy. At the same time, he was a closer follower and a more literal interpreter of Plato than were the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, who had not yet become a distinctly recognized sect, and who in many respects were the precursors of the mysticism of the Reformation era. Plutarch, with Plato, recognized two eternities: that of the Divine Being, supremely good and purely spiritual; and that of matter, as, if not intrinsically evil, the cause, condition, and seat of all evil, and as at least opposing such obstacles to its own best ideal manipulation that the Divine Being could not embody his pure and perfect goodness, unalloyed by evil, in any material form. Herein the Platonists were at variance with both the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics regarded matter as virtually an emanation from the Supreme Being, who is not only the universal soul and reason, but the creative fire, which, transformed into air and water,—part of the water becoming earth,—is the source of the material universe, which must at the end of a certain cosmical cycle be re-absorbed into the divine essence, whence will emanate in endless succession