Plutarch

Plutarch informs us of some barbarians, who would have been punished by the Romans for offering human victims to the deity, had they not pleaded the antiquity of the custom, which was admitted as an excuse, though they were strictly enjoined not to follow the same custom in future.

Iam olim Plutarchus πρόφασιν πλεονεξίας fuisse dicit ἡμερω̄σαι τὰ βαρβαριϰὰ, improbam scilicet alieni cupiditatem hoc sibi velum obtendere, quod barbariem mansuefacit.

A well-known story told by Plutarch (‘Pyrrhus,’ 26) of the relations between a brilliant Lacedæmonian officer, Acrotatus, and Chelidonis, the wife of Cleonymus, and of the way in which the old men of Sparta applauded these relations and invoked blessings on the offspring of Chelidonis, does assuredly suggest that, in that old-fashioned and never very delicate society, some institution like that of …

Plutarch (Fluṭarkhus), in his treatise on *Natural Opinions* (*al-Ārāʼ al-Ṭabīʻīyah*), ascribed to him that Plato says that bodies were in the beginning in motion, a motion not ordered, and that the God arranged them in order, since order is better than the absence of order.