 Hence it is wrong to portray Plutarch as an eclectic philosopher (e.g. Ziegler 1951, 940, F. Babbitt, Plutarch's Moralia, Introduction, vol. I, Loeb 1927, xiv, Becchi 1981), who occasionally compromises his Platonism in order to carry out his polemic (Dörrie 1971, Donini 1988b, 131, 1999, 16–19). Rather Plutarch uses philosophers such as Aristotle only instrumentally in order to advance through them what he perceives as Plato's doctrines (Karamanolis 2006, 92–109). Plutarch shares with Antiochus (Cicero, Academica I.17–19, 33–34) the view that Plato's philosophy is subject to articulation and development through his successors in the Platonist tradition, but also to misinterpretation and distortion. On this view, Xenocrates, Polemo and Aristotle developed and articulated Platonic philosophy, though not without faults, while the Stoics and Epicureans were instead guilty of systematic distortion. Plutarch is not a populariser either (Babbitt op. cit.). Rather, Plutarch's work shows great complexity and sophistication and evinces the spirit of a meticulous interpreter, who ventures to advance innovative views, such as on the creation of the soul, on human constitution, as well as on ethics and poetics (see below, sects. 6 and 7). It is also unfair to say of Plutarch that he was “no original thinker” (Ziegler 1951, 938–939). Plutarch lived in an age in which philosophy had taken the form of exegesis of classical philosophical texts, but through this exegetical process philosophers in late antiquity (such as Plotinus and the commentators on Plato and Aristotle) crystallize and voice their own views on crucial philosophical questions. Indeed Plutarch takes some very interesting lines on metaphysics, psychology, and ethics, which became influential in later generations of Platonists, such as Plotinus and Porphyry (see below, sect. 4, 5, 6).