is speaking on one occasion of the many indications which the shrine gives of resuming its former “wealth, and splendour, and honour,” and he congratulates himself on the zealous and useful part he has taken in aiding the work of this revival.[155] He mentions two friends as co-workers in the sacred task, and appears also to felicitate a certain Roman Governor of Achaia on similar grounds. But he reverently proceeds to make it quite clear that it is the god himself who is the ultimate cause of these returning blessings. “But it is not possible that so great a transformation should have taken place in so short a time through human activity, unless the god were present and continuing to inspire his oracle,” and he concludes by censuring those who, in their inability to discern the motive actuating the divine methods with mankind, “depart condemning the god, instead of blaming us or themselves, that they cannot, by reason, discover the intention of the god.”[156] Plutarch’s attitude of more than tolerance to the “ancient and hereditary Faith,” an attitude which is, of course, not inconsistent with his desire to place that Faith on a rational basis, is partly explicable in the light of his emphatic gratitude to the existing political constitution of the Græco-Roman world. He would have been an admirable co-worker with Mæcenas—πρόθυμος καὶ χρήσιμος[157]—in carrying out the religious reforms of Augustus. He regarded the welfare of Society and the State, of the family and the individual citizen, as bound up with a belief in the gods whose agency was so clearly visible in bringing the world to that state of perfection which it now enjoyed, and which promised to be eternal. No one now even dreamed of doubting the identity of the gods of Rome with those of Greece, and Plutarch carries the identification to the extent of including the gods of almost every people constituting the Roman Empire.[158] These universal powers had the world in their providential care, and Rome was the divinely chosen instrument of their beneficent purposes. The Emperor is the depository of the sacred governing power of the world.[159] When Tiberius shut himself up in Capreæ, this divine potency never left him. And though expressions of this kind may be interpreted as a merely formal recognition of the official dignity of the Head of the World, Plutarch’s many eloquent descriptions of the blessings of the _Pax Romana_ leave us in no doubt respecting the character of his views on this subject. “I welcome and approve,” says Theon, “the present position of affairs, and the subjects about which we now consult the oracle. For there now reigns among us a great peace and calm. War has ceased. Expulsions, seditions, tyrannies, are no more, and many other diseases and disasters which tormented Greece, and demanded powerful remedies, are now healed. Hence the oracle is no longer consulted on matters difficult, secret, and mysterious, but on common questions of everyday life.