In this dialogue Plutarch and his friends answer a sceptic who has just left them, complaining that divine punishment comes too late to deter the guilty. They argue that the gods wait to give the wicked time to reform, that delay itself torments the guilty, and that children may rightly bear the consequences of their fathers’ crimes, closing with a vision of the afterlife.
One of the most moving of Plutarch’s moral essays, in Andrew Peabody’s careful translation. Download the free EPUB.