Why the oracles do not speak (like before): Plutarch and the riddle of second-century religion

Abstract

Plutarch seems far more a man of his times, than one of past times. His nostalgia for the past cannot be separated from his awareness, and perhaps, concern, for the present. In his own way, he sought to provide an apologetic for a Greek culture that no longer existed, but whose cultural construction came sharply into conflict with the realities of second-century Roman transformation. We can admire his efforts to address these transformations with the power of his rhetoric, but at the same time, recognize that his cultural parochialism was giving way to a new imperial, universalist model.