Volkmann’s work had been preceded in 1854 by an interesting and well-written Thesis, entitled “De Apologetica Plutarchi Chæronensis Theologia.”[15] The author, C. G. Seibert, gives a brief review of Greek Philosophy, with the object of showing the attitude assumed by each of the great schools to the gods of the national tradition. He demonstrates conclusively, and Volkmann follows in his steps, that Plutarch owed something to all the Schools, to Stoics, to Peripatetics, and to Epicureans. Yet he, too, insists that Plutarch’s attitude towards the popular religion was identical with that assumed by Plato—_eadem ratione (qua Plato) Platonis discipuli theologiam tractarunt, e quibus præ cœteris Plutarchus magistri divini vestigia secutus est_. This, indeed, is the orthodox tendency in the appreciation of Plutarch, and it has been carried to the extent of claiming Plutarch as the founder of that special kind of Platonism distinguished by the epithet “New.” “Plutarch,” says Archbishop Trench, “was a Platonist with an oriental tinge, and thus a forerunner of the New Platonists.”—“He might be described with greater truth than Ammonius as the Founder of Neo-Platonism,” wrote Dr. H. W. J. Thiersch, who, however, had not freed himself from the idea (the truth of which even so early a writer as Dacier had doubted, and the legendary character of which M. Gréard has proved beyond a doubt) that Plutarch received consular honours at the hands of Trajan.[16]—“In this essay” (the _De Oraculorum Defectu_), thinks Mr. W. J. Brodribb, “Plutarch largely uses the Neo-Platonic Philosophy.”[17] Even those who do not insist that Plutarch is a Neo-Platonist, or a “forerunner” of Neo-Platonism, are so anxious to label him with some designation, that they will hardly allow him to speak for himself. It may, perhaps, argue presumption on the part of an _homo incognitus nulliusque auctoritatis_ to suggest that Plutarch faces the teaching of his predecessors with an independent mind; that he is _nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri_; that he tries Plato’s teachings, not from Plato’s point of view, but from his own.[18]