the adverse criticisms of the philosophers that no one could pretend to ignore its existence.[1] The prevailing tendency of Greek myth was not moral, and it was only after the most careful pruning, such, for example, as that which Plutarch applies to it in his educational essays, that myth became safely available as a factor in ethical progress. The mainsprings of Conduct, of personal and private Morality, are to be found in Philosophy, and so great an importance did Philosophy acquire as the instrument of goodness, that that particular branch of Philosophy which exercised surveillance over the realm of Conduct became eventually recognized as Philosophy par excellence; the overwhelming significance attached by Greek philosophers, from the Sophists onwards, to the practical element in their teaching, led to a restriction of the terms "Philosophy" and "Philosopher" to an almost purely ethical connotation. The argument in the
- ↑ For the influence of the Greek Myths in this direction, cf.
Propertius, Book iii. 32.
"Ipsa Venus, quamvis corrupta libidine Martis,
Nec minus in cælo semper honesta fuit,
Quamvis Ida palam pastorem dicat amasse
Atque inter pecudes accubuisse deam.
Dic mihi, quis potuit lectum servare pudicum,
Quæ dea cum solo vivere sola deo?"St. Augustine's criticism of the famous passage in the Eunuchus of Terence (Act iii. sc. 5), where Chærea is encouraged in his clandestine amour by a picture of Jupiter and Danaë, is, of course, painfully justified by the facts as reported by the dramatist. (Confessiones, lib. i.)
