This essay is all the more valuable because not written by a Christian. It shows that the intense stress laid by Christian teaching on a righteous retribution lasting on beyond the death-change is not a mere dogma of the sacred records of our religion, but equally the postulate of the unsophisticated reason and conscience of developed humanity. * * * * * My translation is not literal, in the common meaning of that term. If it were so, it would be unintelligible; for Plutarch’s style lacks simplicity, and his sentences, though seldom obscure, are often involved and intricate, sometimes elliptical. I have, however, given a faithful transcript in English of what I understand Plutarch to have written, omitting no thought or shade of thought that I suppose to be his, and inserting none of my own. * * * * * I have used Wyttenbach’s edition of the Moralia, departing from his text in but a single instance, and that, one in which he pronounces the reading in the text impossible, and suggests a conjectural reading as necessary to the sense of the passage. I have also made constant reference to the late Professor Hackett’s edition of this treatise, which it is superfluous to commend where he was known; for not only was he confessedly among the foremost scholars of his time, but his exacting conscientiousness would not suffer him to put less than his best and most thorough work into whatever came from his hands. FOOTNOTES: [vii:1] A large part of this Introduction is reprinted, by permission of the editors, from an article of mine on “Plutarch and his Times,” in the Andover Review, November, 1884. [vii:2] Πλούταρχος. [xx:1] Τὰ ἠθικά. [xxv:1] Ἀποφθέγματα. [xxv:2] The genuineness of this series has been called in question; but the internal evidence seems decisive in its favor. It is, throughout, so entirely in Plutarch’s vein, that one is tempted to ask, Who else could have written it? [xxvi:1] Περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεῖου βραδέως τιμορουμένων. PLUTARCH ON THE DELAY OF THE DIVINE JUSTICE. 1. EPICURUS,[1:1] having said such things, O Cinius,[1:2] before any one could reply, while we were at the farther end of the porch, went hastily away. But we, somewhat amazed at the man’s rudeness, stood still, looking at one another without speaking, and then turned and resumed our walk. Then PATROCLEAS[2:1] commenced the conversation, saying,—What then? Do you see fit to drop the discussion? or will you answer his argument as if he were present, though he has taken himself away?