Some floating on the ambient seas,
With which their twinèd arms and brows they wreathe.
Perhaps it would hardly be untrue to say that the whole of Plutarch’s daring speculation owes its origin to the words of Heraclitus, with which the fragment closes, as to the surprises which await man after death.
There is one distinct note of date, in the Sibylline prophecy quoted in c. 22, that the emperor of that day should die in his bed. Vespasian, who was doubtless meant, died in June, A.D. 79, and the great eruption of Vesuvius (by which, however, Puteoli does not appear to have suffered specially) took place in August of the same year. The Dialogue must have been written later than these events. On the whole, if we may venture a conjecture where all is uncertain, we may perhaps suppose it to have followed the Symposiacs at a comparatively short interval, and to have been an early attempt to apply the method of dialogue to elaborate discussion of great themes. It has characteristics of its own which enable us to understand how Erasmus (Adagia)[[200]] felt doubts as to its genuineness, though we have the confident assurance of Wyttenbach that there is Plutarch’s seal upon it.
Readers should consult Mr. Oakesmith’s pages on this work (The Religion of Plutarch, pp. 103 foll.), and, on the myth, Bishop Westcott’s Essay on The Myths of Plato (reprinted in History of Religious Thought in the West), or Professor J. A. Stewart on The Myths of Plato.
ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT
A DIALOGUE
THE SPEAKERS
Patrocleas, Plutarch’s son-in-law.
Plutarch.