The importance of Plutarch's works in the religious and philosophical discourse of late antiquity has been a hot topic of conversation in recent years. This latest edition on the topic, comprising the papers presented in two consecutive meetings of the Réseau International de recherche Plutarque, which took place under the title ‘Plutarch and the Ancient Religious Landscape’ at the Universities of Groningen (27–29 September 2017) and Bern (28–30 June 2018) respectively, certainly expands the scholarly conversation on the religious philosophy and the philosophical religion inherent in the works of Apollo's priest and Platonist philosopher. The majority of the papers focus on a specific text (and there is an impressive array), which draws attention not only to the breadth of Plutarch's diverse portfolio, but also to the seminal importance of his work in a wide and flexible analysis of the philosophical and religious world of the first centuries ce. The volume's twenty chapters are divided into four sections, each with its own bibliography: Part 1, ‘An Introductory Survey of Plutarch's Religious Landscape’; Part 2, ‘Plutarch's Theology, Notion of Religion, and Ethics’; Part 3, ‘Plutarch's Testimony of Ancient Religion’; and a rather brief Part 4, ‘Some Glimpses of the Reception of Plutarch's Religion’. The conference format consisted of a presentation followed by a critical response and plenary discussion and response, and papers from the first conference were reworked and presented again at the second. The distilled product of this concentrated dialogue is particularly apparent in the papers that make up Part 2, which are coherently linked to the main theme and each other, but less so in the following sections where the papers are more stand-alone and scattered in focus.

The excellent introductory chapter by Hirsch-Luipold offers a brief survey of Plutarch's ‘religious landscape’, which sets the scene for the next section, where five groups of connected chapters explore Plutarch's philosophical theology and ethics. Indeed, Hirsch-Luipold's introduction and I. Kuin's following paper on the Platonic synthesis together form a persuasive baseline: that the philosopher's inclusive approach to disparate religious traditions reflected his belief in a singular deity (what Hirsch-Luipold terms ‘polylactric monotheism’) and that the appropriate form of piety for Plutarch fell between atheism and superstition. The latter argument is interesting – where Hirsch-Luipold focuses on the idea of a singular and personal ‘doctrine of god’ in Plutarch's texts, Kuin astutely acknowledges the middle ground that superstition occupies between faith (pistis) and atheism (atheotes). Within these boundaries, the next two papers explore Plutarch's philosophical approach to religion via his Platonic lens: M. Meeusen on the Platonic synthesis, P. Lötscher on the oneness of the divine, a conception that incorporated Platonic and Pythagorean thought as an inclusive form of monotheism. Both papers tread familiar ground, but add significant context concerning Plutarch's presentation of Plato as a pioneer of a ‘grand reconciliation’ of the apparently contradictory world view of the theologian and physicist. G. Roskam and Roig Lanzillotta both tackle the association between Plutarchan ethics and Christianity. Roskam persuasively argues that Plutarch was able to reconcile his ethical and theological positions within his Platonic framework, noting that the common imagery and terminology found in his work and early Christian thought are merely that and not evidence, as some have argued, of a close association between the two. Roig Lanzillotta expands on this theme, arguing that the similarities between Plutarch, Gnostic and Hermetic texts are simply expressions of what he terms the philosophical-religious continuum of late antiquity. Both chapters embrace of the wider cultural context certainly underlines the primary argument laid out in the introduction – that as both actor and observer Plutarch occupied a privileged position in the religious landscape of his time, which allows us to use his work as a bridge between somewhat compartmentalised studies on ancient testimony.

The next two chapters focus on the soul. L. Lesage Gárriga's argument that the categorisation of the soul by life stage and location in the De facie reinforces the importance of ethics in the Plutarchan universe is a stimulating one, where reincarnation is the worst-case scenario for souls that no ethical path could save. I. Muñoz Gallarte, on the other hand, postulates that Plutarch maps the topic of the telos of the soul onto an ethical axis as a way of providing his readership with a lesson on how they should live. Muñoz Gallarte contextualises his approach with related texts such as the Nag Hammadi, the De facie, and Platonic language and imagery, thus demonstrating again how well the two-conference approach has worked to hone this collection. The last three papers in the first section are more loosely attached to the themes and the papers that precede them. D.F. Leão investigates the crime of impiety and the resulting pollution caused by the death of Phocion in his Life as a reflection of the decay of the classical polis. S. Citro offers an analysis of the relationship between men and divine interference in human affairs and the religiosity of strategoi, J. Pinheiro of the value of tolma in the Moralia; fascinating case studies that connect aspects of Plutarch's theology with the wider ethical and educational themes of these texts.

Part 3 is dedicated to Plutarch's testimony on ancient religion, with a wide variety of topics on offer. Where the first section focused on philosophical concepts and intertextuality, the following papers offer a broader, more descriptive approach of Plutarch's religious landscape. F. Tanga's study of ritual and the role of women as initiators of cultural change in the Quaestiones Graecae and C. Alcalde-Martín's discussion on the justification of human sacrifice identify Plutarch's attempt to connect the human and divine through a continuous exchange between religious panorama and everyday life, but neither attempts to link to the earlier discussions on superstition, despite the role that ritual and mythic tradition plays in each analysis. N. López Carrasco's thought-provoking chapter on the conception of Hecate observes that Plutarch was a key authority and innovator of Hecate's literary tradition. However, while this paper delves into Plutarch's criticisms of superstition in the De superstitione, López Carrasco argues that it is not superstition itself that Plutarch criticises but that such beliefs led people to be taken in by conjurers and imposters. Overall, there are no references to either Hirsch-Luipold's or Kuin's foundational discussions regarding Plutarch's views on superstition, which is somewhat frustrating. We turn to Dionysus as the subject matter of three better connected chapters, and, given that Plutarch informs us in the De E apud Delphos that Delphi is the home not just of Apollo but Dionysus as well, these papers are a welcome investigation. P. Volpe's argument that Dionysus represents faith rather than any one ritual or manifestation provides a change of direction from the papers that precede it. S. Planchas Gallarte, on the other hand, argues that Plutarch's invocation of Dionysus as Isodates (the one who divides equitably) refers not just to the distribution of fruits and vegetables in the orphic ritual but also to the god's role of releasing and purifying the soul from the body; an argument that touches (without reference) on the concepts raised in Lesage Gárriga's reincarnation paper. A.I. Jiménez San Cristóbal employs the Epiphany of Dionysius in Elis in the Quaestiones Graecae as Plutarch's way of linking the everyday with the divine through Dionysus’ ability to render wine harmless during ritual. Together, these papers offer much in the way of a literary analysis, but given the terrain already surveyed in the opening section, the lack of connection to the opening salvo is a missed opportunity. Finally, E.G. Simonetti provides an analysis of how divination interconnected with Plutarch's ethical framework in the Life of Cicero. Building on the work by C. Pelling and F. Brenk, this paper is a necessary inclusion in an overwhelmingly Greek centric volume.

Part 4 on the reception of Plutarch's religion provides a short postscript to the volume. C. Harker on the transmission of Plutarch's scientific thought to Islamic astronomers, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, and S. Desmoulins and O. Guerrier on the reception of Plutarch's daimons during the French Renaissance remind us that Plutarch left a strong impression on important thinkers of that time, some of whom fundamentally changed the way in which we see the cosmos. As engaging as these papers are, they are somewhat detached from the core themes explored in the earlier sections. Overall, this collection of articles is a significant contribution to the field and substantially builds on the 2012 volume Plutarch in the Religious and Philosophical Discourse of Late Antiquity (edd. Roig Lanzillotta and Muñoz Gallarte). It is a well-presented volume that is essential reading for those wanting to further their understanding of the relationship between religion and philosophy not just from Plutarch's point of view, but also of the diverse Graeco-Roman world of the early centuries ce.