in their desire to conceal these high matters from the common herd, call God's transmutation into fire by two names—Apollo, to express His unity; Phœbus, to describe His clear-shining purity. To denote God's suffering the change of His nature into air and water and earth and stars, and the various species of plants and animals, they figuratively tell of 'tearings asunder' and 'dismemberings,' and in these aspects He is variously called Dionysus, Zagræus, Nyktelius, and Isodaites, and His 'destructions' and 'disappearances,' His 'death' and His 'resurrection,' are inventions, enigmas, and myths, fittingly expressing, for the general ear, the true nature of the changes in God's essence in the formation of the world."[1] Plutarch here represents himself as the speaker; and while Ammonius, who was Plutarch's master,[2] and is always spoken of by him with the greatest reverence, is subsequently introduced as taking a different view of the processes by which God produced the world of phenomena, yet neither does he depart from the rational standpoint in his view of the terms under discussion.[3] In allusion to these
- [Footnote: Grant's Aristotle, Essay vi., "The Ancient Stoics." Cf. Plut: De
Stoic. Repugn. 1053.]apud Delphos, 388 F.]
- ↑ De [Greek: E
- ↑ Quomodo Adulator, 78 E. Cf. Eunapius on Historians of Philosophy. "No one has written any careful account of the lives of philosophers, among whom we count not only Ammonius, teacher of divinest Plutarch, but also Plutarch himself, the darling and delight of all Philosophy." Eunapius thinks that the Parallel Lives were Plutarch's finest work, but adds that "all his writings are thickly sown with original thoughts of his own, as well as with the teachings of his Master."
- ↑ 393 E.
