[384] Trench follows Zeller in regarding Plutarch as a forerunner of the Neo-Platonists:—“Plutarch was a Platonist, with an oriental tinge, and thus a forerunner of the new Platonists, who ever regarded him with the highest honour. Their proper founder, indeed, he, more than any other man, deserves to be called, though clear of many of the unhealthy excesses into which, at a later date, many of them ran” (Trench, p. 90). We hope our pages have done something towards putting Plutarch in a different light from that which surrounds him here. As a matter of fact, did the “new Platonists regard him ever with the highest honour?” The testimony of Eunapius we have already quoted (p. 67, note). Himerius is equally laudatory. “Plutarch, who is the source of all the instruction you convey.”—_Eclogæ_, vii. 4. “I weep for one who, I fondly hoped, would be gifted with speech excelling Minucianus in force, Nicagoras in stateliness, Plutarch in sweetness” (_Orat._ xliii. 21—Monody on his son’s death). But this is rather late in the history of Neo-Platonism. What about Plotinus, and Porphyry, and Proclus? Trench gives no references in proof of his statement, and we have been unable to find any. [385] Theodoretus: _De Oraculis_, 951.—“_Plutarch of Chæronea, a man who was not Hebrew, but Greek—Greek by birth and in language, and enslaved to Greek ideas._” Cf. MOMMSEN: _The Provinces, from Cæsar to Diocletian_, Lib. viii. cap. vii.—“In this Chæronean the contrast between the Hellenes and the Hellenized found expression; such a type of Greek life was not possible in Smyrna or in Antioch; it belonged to the soil like the honey of Hymettus. There were men enough of more powerful talents and of deeper natures, but hardly any second author has known how, in so happy a measure, to reconcile himself serenely to necessity, and how to impress upon his writings the stamp of his tranquillity of spirit, and of his blessedness of life.” [386] Dr. Bigg calls him a renegade, as the Church has called Julian an apostate. A comment of M. Martha’s on this uncharitable practice is worthy of frequent repetition:—“Ainsi donc, que l’on donne à Julien tous les noms qu’il plaira, qu’on l’appelle insensé, fanatique, mais qu’on cesse de lui infliger durement ce nom d’apostat, de peur qu’un historien, trop touché de ses malheurs, ne s’avise un jour de prouver que l’apostasie était excusable.” (“_Un chrétien devenu païen._”—_Études Morales_.) [387] See note, p. 45.