[[122]] This man, or somebody very like him, appears as a Christian hermit in Sulpicius Severus, Dial. i, 17; only there he is reported to consort with angels.
[[123]] de def. orac. 21, 421 A-E. Cf. Tert. de Spect. 10. The names of the dead and their images are nothing, but we know qui sub istis nominibus institute simulacris operentur et gaudeant et divinitatem mentiantur, nequam spiritus scilicet, dæmones. He holds the gods to have been men, long deceased, but agrees in believing in dæmonic operations in shrines, etc.
[[124]] de Iside, 70, 71, 379 B-E.
[[125]] de Iside, 76, 382 A.
[[126]] See discussion in Oakesmith, Religion of Plutarch, p. 185. Gréard, de la Morale de Plutarque, p. 269, ranks it with the best works that have come down to us from Antiquity.
[[127]] Tertullian on pagan baptisms—Isis and Mithras, de Baptismo, 5; de Præscr. Hær. 40.
[[128]] Cf. Tert. Apol. 9, on these sacrifices, in Africa, and elsewhere, and see p. 26.
[[129]] Conjug. Præc. 19.
[[130]] Cf. de Iside, 55, 373 C; 18, 358 B; the image of Osiris, 36, 365 B. Origen (c. Cels. v, 39) remarks that Celsus is quite pleased with those who worship crocodiles "in the ancestral way."
[[131]] If the legend is mere fable, he asks, cur rapitur sacerdos Cereris, si non tale Ceres passet est? cur Saturno alieni liberi immolantur ... cur Idæae masculus amputatur? ad Natt. ii, 8.