nul moins que le sage de Chéronée n'a porté dans ses écrits une pensée systématique."[1] Volkmann, in our opinion, attaches far too much importance both to Plutarch's discipular relation to Plato, and to his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans. Plutarch's opposition to Plato is frequently as strongly marked as his opposition to Stoics and Epicureans; and his indebtedness to Stoics and Epicureans is frequently as strongly marked as his indebtedness to Plato.
Volkmann's work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and well-written Thesis, entitled "De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia."[2] The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch's attitude towards the popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—eadem ratione (qua Plato)
- ↑ Gréard, Preface to Third Edition, p. iii.
- ↑ De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia (Marburg, 1854). Seibert refers to two other authors who had dealt with some aspects of his own subject—Absolute demum opusculo Schreiteri commentationem de doctrina Plutarchi theologica et morali scriptam . . . necnon Nitzchii Kiliensis de Plutarcho theologo et philosopho populari disquisitionem 1849 editam conferre licuit.—We have been unable to see a copy of either of these dissertations, although Trench also alludes to Schreiter's work. They did not, in Seibert's opinion, render his work unnecessary; but he enjoyed the inestimable advantage of the friendship of Zeller, who helped him "libris consilioque."
