[162] 814 A. [163] _Præcepta Reip. Ger._, 813, et passim:—He insists, however (814 E, F), that subservience must not go too far, and he is also careful to point out such brilliant openings for political ambition as are left by the peculiar conditions of the time (805 A, B). [164] Plutarch states that the aim of his political advice is to enable a man not only to become “a useful citizen,” but also “to order his domestic affairs with safety, honour, and justice” (_De Unius in Repub._, &c., 826 C). [165] _Præcepta Reip._, 824 C. [166] _Præcepta Reip._, 813 F. [167] PROPERTIUS, iv. 11. “Hæc Di condiderant, hæc Di quoque mœnia servant.” Plutarch’s essay reads like an exposition of this text of the Roman poet. [168] “Et hoc verbo monere satis est, Τύχης nomine contineri omnem rerum actionumque efficientiam, quæ a Virtute disjuncta, nec in hominis potestate posita est; sive illa ut casus et temeritas, sive ut divina providentia informetur.”—WYTTENBACH. Schlemm says that this tract and the _De Alexandri sive virtute sive fortuna_ are “meræ exercitationes rhetoricæ in quibus certam quandam philosophiam persequi in animo non habebat.” Yet the rhetoric of the _De Fortuna Romanorum_ is in wonderful harmony with Plutarch’s mature opinion as deliberately expressed in the _De Republica Gerenda_. [169] VIRGIL: _Georgics_, ii. 534; PLUT: _De Fortuna Romanorum_, 316 E. This may be a conscious reminiscence of Virgil’s line. If Plutarch had not read Virgil, he may have heard so famous a verse quoted by his friends at Rome. He himself translates a passage from “the poet Flaccus” in his _Life of Lucullus_ (518 C—HORACE: _Ep._, i. 6, 45). The question of Plutarch’s acquaintance with Latin is very important for investigations into the historical sources of his “Lives;” but it lies beyond our present limits. It is fully dealt with by WEISSENBERGER in his _Die Sprache Plutarchs_ (1895). He exculpates Plutarch from some of the grosser mistakes in Latinity imputed to him by Volkmann. [170] 317 B, C. [171] CICERO: _Quæst. Tusc._, i. 23. [172] _Amatorius_, 762 A. [173] One need scarcely go so far as Professor Lewis Campbell, who says that the main result of the “Ethics” of Plutarch is to show “how difficult it was for a common-sense man of the world to form distinct and reasonable opinions on matters of religion in that strangely complicated time” (_Religion in Greek Literature_, 1898). But Professor Campbell is also of opinion that “the convenient distinction between gods and demons, which he (_i.e._ Plutarch) and others probably owed to their reading of Plato, is worth dwelling on _because it was taken up for apologetic purposes by the early Christian fathers_.” Surely its religious value to an age which did not anticipate the coming of “the early Christian fathers” makes the distinction worth study from a point of view quite different from that represented in Christian apologetics.