Selected Lives and Essays

"In the eleventh century of our era a bishop of the Byzantine Church made a prayer: 'If, Lord, thou art willing in thy grace to save any Pagans from the wrath of god, I pray thee humbly to save Plato and Plutarch.' Such truly good men, he said, and he gave the Lord to understand that he cared so much for them, he could not bear to have them lost forever. That was some nine hundred years after Plutarch's death, and in the nine hundred years since, the bishop's opinion has never been challenged, only endorsed many times over down the ages.."