part in the matter. Thus he cunningly insinuates into the audience with

his own praises what they will gladly hear, for they rejoice at the

enumeration of their successes,[785] and their joy is succeeded by

admiration and esteem for the person to whom the success was due. So

also Epaminondas, when Meneclidas once jeered at him as thinking more of

himself than Agamemnon ever did, replied, "It is your fault then, men of

Thebes, by whose help alone I put down the power of the Lacedaemonians in

one day."

Sec. X. But since most people very much dislike and object to a man's

praising himself, but if he praises some one else are on the contrary

often glad and readily bear him out, some are in the habit of praising

in season those that have the same pursuits business and characters as

themselves, and so conciliate and move the audience in their own favour;

for the audience know at the moment such a one is speaking that, though

he is speaking about another, yet his own similar virtue is worthy of

their praise.[786] For as one who throws in another's teeth things of

which he is guilty himself must know that he upbraids himself most, so

the good in paying honour to the good remind those who know their

character of themselves, so that their hearers cry out at once, "Are not

you such a one yourself?" Thus Alexander honouring Hercules, and

Androcottus again honouring Alexander, got themselves honoured on the

same grounds. Dionysius on the contrary pulling Gelon to pieces, and

calling him the Gelos[787] of Sicily, was not aware that through his

envy he was weakening the importance and dignity of his own authority.

Sec. XI. These things then a public man must generally know and observe.

But those that are compelled to praise themselves do so less offensively

if they do not ascribe all the honour to themselves, but, being aware

that their glory will be tiresome to others, set it down partly to

fortune, partly to the deity. So Achilles said well,

"Since the gods granted us to kill this hero."[788]

Well also did Timoleon, who erected a temple at Syracuse to the goddess

of Fortune after his success, and dedicated his house to the Good

Genius. Excellently again did Pytho of AEnos, (when he came to Athens

after killing Cotys, and when the demagogues vied with one another in

praising him to the people, and he observed that some were jealous and

displeased,) in coming forward and saying, "Men of Athens, this is the

doing of one of the gods, I only put my hands to the work." Sulla also

forestalled envy by ever praising fortune, and eventually he proclaimed

himself as under the protection of Aphrodite.[789] For men would rather

ascribe their defeat to fortune than the enemy's valour, for in the

former case they consider it an accident, whereas in the latter case

they would have to blame themselves and set it down to their own

shortcomings. So they say the legislation of Zaleucus pleased the

Locrians not least, because he said that Athene visited him from time to

time, and suggested to him and taught him his laws, and that none of

those he promulgated were his own idea and plan.

Sec. XII. Perhaps this kind of remedy by talking people over must be

contrived for those who are altogether crabbed or envious; but for

people of moderation it is not amiss to qualify excessive praise. Thus

if anyone should praise you as learned, or rich, or influential, it

would be well to bid him not talk about you in that strain, but say that

you were good and harmless and useful. For the person that acts so does

not introduce his own praise but transfers it, nor does he seem to

rejoice in people passing encomiums upon him, but rather to be vexed at

their praising him inappropriately and on wrong grounds, and he seems to

hide bad traits by better ones, not wishing to be praised, but showing

how he ought to be praised. Such seems the intent of such words as the

following, "I have not fortified the city with stones or bricks, but if

you wish to see how I have fortified it, you will find arms and horses

and allies."[790] Still more in point are the last words of Pericles.

For as he was dying, and his friends very naturally were weeping and

wailing, and reminded him of his military services and his power, and

the trophies and victories and towns he had won for Athens, and was

leaving as a legacy, he raised himself up a little and blamed them as

praising him for things common to many, and some of them the results of

fortune rather than merit, while they had passed over the best and

greatest of his deeds and one peculiarly his own, that he had never been

the cause of any Athenian's wearing mourning. This gives the orator an

example, if he be a good man, when praised for his eloquence, to

transfer the praise to his life and character, and the general who is

admired for his skill and good fortune in war to speak with confidence

about his gentleness and uprightness. And again, if any very extravagant

praise is uttered, such as many people use in flattery which provokes

envy, one can reply,

"I am no god; why do you liken me

To the immortals?"[791]

If you really know me, praise my integrity, or my sobriety, or my

kindheartedness, or my philanthropy. For even envy is not reluctant to

give moderate praise to one that deprecates excessive praise, and true

panegyric is not lost by people refusing to accept idle and false

praise. So those kings who would not be called gods or the sons of gods,

but only fond of their brothers or mother, or benefactors,[792] or dear

to the gods, did not excite the envy of those that honoured them by

those titles, that were noble but still such as men might claim. Again,

people dislike those writers or speakers who entitle themselves wise,

but they welcome those who content themselves with saying that they are

lovers of philosophy, and have made some progress, or use some such

moderate language about themselves as that, which does not excite envy.

But rhetorical sophists, who expect to hear "Divine, wonderful, grand,"

at their declamations, are not even welcomed with "Pretty fair, so so."

Sec. XIII. Moreover, as people anxious not to injure those who have weak

eyes, draw a shade over too much light, so some people make their praise

of themselves less glaring and absolute, by pointing out some of their

small defects, or miscarriages, or errors, and so remove all risk of

making people offended or envious. Thus Epeus, who boasts very much of

his skill in boxing, and says very confidently,

"I can your body crush, and break your bones,"[793]

yet says,

"Is't not enough that I'm in fight deficient?"[794]

But Epeus is perhaps a ridiculous instance, excusing his bragging as an

athlete by his confession of timidity and want of manliness. But

agreeable and graceful is that man who mentions his own forgetfulness,

or ignorance, or ambition, or eager desire for knowledge and

conversation. Thus Odysseus of the Sirens,

"My heart to listen to them did incline,

I bade my comrades by a nod to unloose me."[795]

And again of the Cyclops,

"I did not hearken (it had been far better),

I wished to see the Cyclops, and to taste

His hospitality."[796]

And generally speaking the admixture with praise of such faults as are

not altogether base and ignoble stops envy. Thus many have blunted the

point of envy by admitting and introducing, when they have been praised,

their past poverty and straits, aye, and their low origin. So Agathocles

pledging his young men in golden cups beautifully chased, ordered some

earthenware pots to be brought in, and said, "See the fruits of

perseverance, labour, and bravery! Once I produced pots like these, but

now golden cups." For Agathocles it seems was so low-born and poor that

he was brought up in a potter's shop, though afterwards he was king of

almost all Sicily.

Sec. XIV. These are external remedies against self-praise. There are other

internal ones as it were, such as Cato applied, when he said "he was

envied, because he had to neglect his own affairs, and lie awake every

night for the interests of his country." Compare also the following

lines,

"How should I boast? who could with ease have been

Enrolled among the many in the army,

And had a fortune equal to the wisest;"[797]

and,

"I shrink from squandering past labours' grace,

Nor do I now reject all present toil."[797]

For as it is with house and farm, so also is it with glory and

reputation, people for the most part envy those who have got them easily

or for nothing, not those who have bought them at the cost of much toil

and danger.

Sec. XV. Since then we can praise ourselves not only without causing pain

or envy but even usefully and advantageously, let us consider, that we

may not seem to have only that end in view but some other also, if we

might praise ourselves to excite in our hearers emulation and ambition.

For Nestor, by reciting his battles and acts of prowess, stirred up

Patroclus and nine others to single combat with Hector. For the

exhortation that adds deed to word and example and proper emulation is

animating and moving and stimulating, and with its impulse and

resolution inspires hope that the things we aim at are attainable and

not impossible. That is why in the choruses at Lacedaemon the old men

sing,

"We once were young and vigorous and strong,"

and then the boys,

"We shall be stronger far than now we are,"

and then the youths,

"We now are strong, look at us if you like."

In this wise and statesmanlike manner did the legislator exhibit to the

young men the nearest and dearest examples of what they should do in the

persons of those who had done so.

Sec. XVI. Moreover it is not amiss sometimes, to awe and repress and take

down and tame the impudent and bold, to boast and talk a little big

about oneself. As Nestor did, to mention him again,

"For I have mixed ere now with better men

Than both of you, and ne'er did they despise me."[798]

So also Aristotle told Alexander that not only had they that were rulers

over many subjects a right to think highly of themselves, but also those

that had right views about the gods. Useful too against our enemies and

foes is the following line,

"Ill-starred are they whose sons encounter me."[799]

Compare also the remark of Agesilaus about the king of the Persians, who

was called great, "How is he greater than me, if he is not also more

upright?" And that also of Epaminondas to the Lacedaemonians who were

inveighing against the Thebans, "Anyhow we have made you talk at greater

length than usual." But these kind of remarks are fitting for enemies

and foes; but our boasting is also good on occasion for friends and

fellow-citizens, not only to abate their pride and make them more

humble, but also when they are in fear and dejection to raise them up

again and give them confidence. Thus Cyrus talked big in perils and on

battle-fields, though at other times he was no boaster. And the second

Antigonus, though he was on all other occasions modest and far from

vanity, yet in the sea-fight off Cos, when one of his friends said to

him, "See you not how many more ships the enemy have got than we have?"

answered, "How many do you make me equal to then?" This Homer also seems

to have noticed. For he has represented Odysseus, when his comrades were

dreadfully afraid of the noise and whirlpool of Charybdis, reminding

them of his former cleverness and valour;

"We are in no worse plight than when the Cyclops

By force detained us in his hollow cave;

But even then, thanks to my valour, judgement,

And sense, we did escape."[800]

For such is not the self-praise of a demagogue or sophist, or of one

that asks for clapping or applause, but of one who makes his valour and

experience a pledge of confidence to his friends. For in critical

conjunctures the reputation and credit of one who has experience and

capacity in command plays a great part in insuring safety.

Sec. XVII. As I have said before, to pit oneself against another's praise

and reputation is by no means fitting for a public man: however, in

important matters, where mistaken praise is injurious and detrimental,

it is not amiss to confute it, or rather to divert the hearer to what is

better by showing him the difference between true and false merit.

Anyone would be glad, I suppose, when vice was abused and censured, to

see most people voluntarily keep aloof from it; but if vice should be

well thought of, and honour and reputation come to the person who

promoted its pleasures or desires, no nature is so well constituted or

strong that it would not be mastered by it. So the public man must

oppose the praise not of men but of bad actions, for such praise is

corrupting, and causes people to imitate and emulate what is base as if

it were noble. But it is best refuted by putting it side by side with

the truth: as Theodorus the tragic actor is reported to have said once

to Satyrus the comic actor, "It is not so wonderful to make an audience

laugh as to make them weep and cry." But what if some philosopher had

answered him, "To make an audience weep and cry is not so noble a thing

as to make them forget their sorrows." This kind of self-laudation

benefits the hearer, and changes his opinion. Compare the remark of Zeno

in reference to the number of Theophrastus' scholars, "His is a larger

body, but mine are better taught." And Phocion, when Leosthenes was

still in prosperity, being asked by the orators what benefit he had

conferred on the city, replied, "Only this, that during my period of

office there has been no funeral oration, but all the dead have been

buried in their fathers' sepulchres." Wittily also did Crates parody the

lines,

"Eating and wantonness and love's delights

Are all I value,"

with

"Learning and those grand things the Muses teach one

Are all I value."

Such self-praise is good and useful and teaches people to admire and

love what is valuable and expedient instead of what is vain and

superfluous. Let so much suffice on the question proposed.

Sec. XVIII. It remains to me now to point out, what our subject next

demands and calls for, how everyone may avoid unseasonable self-praise.

For there is a wonderful incentive to talking about oneself in

self-love, which is frequently strongly implanted in those who seem to

have only moderate aspirations for fame. For as it is one of the rules

to preserve good health to avoid altogether places where sickness is, or

to exercise the greatest precaution if one must go there, so talking

about oneself has its slippery times and places that draw it on on any

pretext. For first, when others are praised, as I said before, ambition

makes people talk about themselves, and a certain desire and impulse for

fame which is hard to check bites and tickles that ambition, especially

if the other person is praised for the same things or less important

things than the hearer thinks he is a proficient in. For as hungry

people have their appetite more inflamed and sharpened by seeing others

eat, so the praise of one's neighbours makes those who eagerly desire

fame to blaze out into jealousy.

Sec. XIX. In the second place the narration of things done successfully and

to people's mind entices many unawares to boasting and bragging in their

joy; for falling into conversation about their victories, or success in

state affairs, or their words or deeds commended by great men, they

cannot keep themselves within bounds. With this kind of self-laudation

you may see that soldiers and sailors are most taken. To be in this

state of mind also frequently happens to those who have returned from

important posts and responsible duties, for in their mention of

illustrious men and men of royal rank they insert the encomiums they

have passed on themselves, and do not so much think they are praising

themselves as merely repeating the praises of others about themselves.

Others think their hearers do not detect them at all of self-praise,

when they recount the greeting and welcome and kindness they have

received from kings and emperors, but only imagine them to be

enumerating the courtesy and kindliness of those great personages. So we

must be very much on our guard in praising others to free ourselves from

all suspicion of self-love and self-recommendation, and not to seem to

be really praising ourselves "under pretext of Patroclus."[801]

Sec. XX. Moreover that kind of conversation that mainly consists of

censuring and running down others is dangerous as giving opportunity for

self-laudation to those who pine for fame. A fault into which old men

especially fall, when they are led to scold others and censure their bad

ways and faulty actions, and so extol themselves as being remarkably the

opposite. In old men we must allow all this, especially if to age they

add reputation and merit, for such fault-finding is not without use, and

inspires those who are rebuked with both emulation and love of

honour.[802] But all other persons must especially avoid and fear that

roundabout kind of self-praise. For since generally speaking censuring

one's neighbours is disagreeable and barely tolerable and requires great

wariness, he that mixes up his own praise with blame of another, and

hunts for fame by defaming another, is altogether tiresome and inspires

disgust, for he seems to wish to get credit through trying to prove

others unworthy of credit.

Sec. XXI. Furthermore, as those that are naturally prone and inclined to

laughter must be especially on their guard against tickling and

touching, such as excites that propensity by contact with the smoothest

parts of the body, so those that have a great passion for reputation

ought to be especially advised to abstain from praising themselves when

they are praised by others. For a person ought to blush when praised,

and not to be past blushing from impudence, and ought to check those who

extol him too highly, and not to rebuke them for praising him too

little; though very many people do so, themselves prompting and

reminding their praisers of others of their own acts and virtues, till

by their own praise they spoil the effect of the praise that others give

them. For some tickle and puff themselves up by self-praise, while

others, malignantly holding out the small bait of eulogy, provoke others

to talk about themselves, while others again ask questions and put

inquiries, as was done to the soldier in Menander, merely to poke fun at

him;

"'How did you get this wound?' 'Sir, by a javelin.'

'How in the name of Heaven?' 'I was on

A scaling ladder fastened to a wall.'

I show my wound to them in serious earnest,

But they for their part only mock at me."

Sec. XXII. As regards all these points then we must be on our guard as much

as possible not to launch out into praise of ourselves, or yield to it

in consequence of questions put to us to draw us. And the best caution

and security against this is to pay attention to others who praise

themselves, and to consider how disagreeable and objectionable the

practice is to everybody, and that no other conversation is so offensive

and tiring. For though we cannot say that we suffer any other evil at

the hands of those who praise themselves, yet being naturally bored by

the practice, and avoiding it, we are anxious to get rid of them and

breathe again; insomuch that even the flatterer and parasite and needy

person in his distress finds the rich man or satrap or king praising

himself hard to bear and wellnigh intolerable; and they say that having

to listen to all this is paying a very large shot to their

entertainment, like the fellow in Menander;

"To hear their foolish[803] saws, and soldier talk,

Such as this cursed braggart bellows forth,

Kills me; I get lean even at their feasts."

For as we may use this language not only about soldiers or men who have

newly become rich,[804] who spin us a long yarn of their great and grand

doings, being puffed up with pride and talking big about themselves; if

we remember that the censure of others always follows our self-praise,

and that the end of this vain-glory is a bad repute, and that, as

Demosthenes says,[805] the result will be that we shall only tire our

hearers, and not be thought what we profess ourselves to be, we shall

cease talking about ourselves, unless by so doing we can bestow great

benefit on ourselves or our hearers.

[768] Pindar, "Olymp." ix. 57, 58.

[769] Mentioned by Pausanias, iii. 12; viii. 50.

[770] "Memorabilia," ii. l. 31.

[771] Reading as Wyttenbach suggests, [Greek: malista de

hotan legetai ta allo pepragmena] _sq._

[772] Thucydides, ii. 60.

[773] See Pausanias, ix. 14, 15.

[774] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 405.

[775] Homer, "Iliad," iv. 370, 371.

[776] Diomede.

[777] Sophocles, "Trachiniae," 442.

[778] Homer, "Iliad," xvi. 847, 848. Plutarch only

quotes the first line. I have added the second for the

English reader, as necessary for the sense.

[779] Homer, "Iliad," i. 128, 129.

[780] "Iliad," ix. 328.

[781] "Iliad," xvi. 70, 71. [782] So Wyttenbach.

[783] Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 260.

[784] "De Corona," p. 307.

[785] After Wyttenbach.

[786] After Wyttenbach.

[787] That is, laughing-stock. A play on the word Gelon.

[788] Homer, "Iliad," xxii. 379. He speaks of Hector.

[789] Others take it "as fortune's favourite."

[790] Words of Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 325.

Plutarch condenses them.

[791] Homer, "Odyssey," xvi. 187.

[792] Titles of the Ptolemies, Philadelphus Philometor,

Euergetes.

[793] Homer, "Iliad," xxiii. 673.

[794] Ibid. 670.

[795] Homer, "Odyssey," xii. 192-194.

[796] Ibid. ix. 228, 229.

[797] Fragments from the "Philoctetes" of Euripides.

[798] Homer, "Iliad," i. 260, 261.

[799] Homer, "Iliad," vi. 127.

[800] Homer, "Odyssey," xii. 209-212.

[801] An allusion to Homer, "Iliad," xix. 302.

[802] Adopting the reading of Duebner.

[803] Adopting the reading of Salmasius.

[804] _Nouveaux riches, novi homines_.

[805] Demosthenes, "De Corona," p. 270.

ON THOSE WHO ARE PUNISHED BY THE

DEITY LATE.

_A discussion between Patrocleas, Plutarch, Timon, and

Olympicus._

Sec. I. When Epicurus had made these remarks, Quintus, and before any of us

who were at the end of the porch[806] could reply, he went off abruptly.

And we, marvelling somewhat at his rudeness, stood still silently but

looked at one another, and then turned and pursued our walk as before.

And Patrocleas was the first to speak. "Are we," said he, "to leave the

question unanswered, or are we to reply to his argument in his absence

as if he were present?" Then said Timon, "Because he went off the moment

he had thrown his missile at us, it would not be good surely to leave it

sticking in us; for we are told that Brasidas plucked the javelin that

had been thrown at him out of his body, and with it killed the hurler of

it; but there is of course no need for us to avenge ourselves so on

those that have launched on us an absurd or false argument, it will be

enough to dislodge the notion before it gets fixed in us." Then said I,

"Which of his words has moved you most? For the fellow seemed to rampage

about, in his anger and abusive language, with a long disconnected and

rambling rhapsody drawn from all sources, and at the same time inveighed

against Providence."

Sec. II. Then said Patrocleas, "The slowness and delay of the deity in

punishing the wicked used to seem[807] to me a very dreadful thing, but

now in consequence of his speech I come as it were new and fresh to the

notion. Yet long ago I was vexed when I heard that line of Euripides,

"He does delay, such is the Deity

In nature."[808]

For indeed it is not fitting that the deity should be slow in anything,

and least of all in the punishment of the wicked, seeing that they are

not slow or sluggish in doing evil, but are hurried by their passions

into crime at headlong speed. Moreover, as Thucydides[809] says, when

punishment follows as closely as possible upon wrong-doing, it blocks up

the road at once for those who would follow up their villainy if it were

successful. For no debt so much as that of justice paid behind time

damps the hopes and dejects the mind of the wronged person, and

aggravates the audacity and daring of the wrong-doer; whereas the

punishment that follows crime immediately not only checks future

outbreaks but is also the greatest possible comfort to the injured. And

so I am often troubled when I consider that remark of Bias, who told, it

seems, a bad man that he was not afraid that he would escape punishment,

but that he would not live to see it. For how did the Messenians who

were killed long before derive any benefit from the punishment of

Aristocrates? For he had been guilty of treason at the battle of _The

Great Trench_, but had reigned over the Arcadians for more than twenty

years without being found out, but afterwards was detected and paid the

penalty, but they were no longer alive.[810] Or what consolation was

brought to the people of Orchomenus, who lost their sons and friends and

relatives in consequence of the treason of Lyciscus, by the disease

which settled upon him long afterwards and spread all over his body? For

he used to go and dip and soak his feet in the river, and uttered

imprecations and prayed that they might rot off if he was guilty of

treason or crime. Nor was it permitted to the children's children of

those that were slain to see at Athens the tearing out of their graves

the bodies of those atrocious criminals that had killed them, and the

carrying them beyond their borders. And so it seems strange in Euripides

using the following argument to deter people from vice:

"Fear not, for vengeance will not strike at once

Your heart, or that of any guilty wretch,

But silently and with slow foot it moves,[811]

And when their time's come will the wicked reach."

This is no doubt the very reason why the wicked incite and cheer

themselves on to commit lawless acts, for crime shows them a fruit

visible and ripe at once, but a punishment late, and long subsequent to

the enjoyment."

Sec. III. When Patrocleas had said thus much, Olympicus interfered, "There

is another consideration, Patrocleas, the great absurdity involved in

these delays and long-suffering of the deity. For the slowness of

punishment takes away belief in providence, and the wicked, observing

that no evil follows each crime except long afterwards, attribute it

when it comes to mischance, and look upon it in the light more of

accident than punishment, and so receive no benefit from it, being

grieved indeed when the misfortune comes, but feeling no remorse for

what they have done amiss. For, as in the case of a horse, the whipping

or spurring that immediately follows upon a stumble or some other fault

is a corrective and brings him to his duty, but pulling and backing him

with the bit and shouting at him long afterwards seems to come from some

other motive than a desire to teach him, for he is put to pain without

being shown his fault; so the vice which each time it stumbles or

offends is at once punished and checked by correction is most

likely[812] to come to itself and be humble and stand in awe of the

deity, as one that beholds men's acts and passions and does not punish

behind time; whereas that justice that, according to Euripides, "steals

on silently and with slow foot," and falls upon the wicked some time or

other, seems to resemble more chance than providence by reason, of its

uncertainty, delay, and irregularity. So that I do not see what benefit

there is in those mills of the gods that are said to grind late,[813]

since they obscure the punishment, and obliterate the fear, of

evil-doing."

Sec. IV. When Olympicus had done speaking, and I was musing with myself on

the matter, Timon said, "Am I to put the finishing touch of difficulty

on our subject, or am I to let him first contend earnestly against these

views?" Then said I, "Why should we bring up the third wave[814] and

drown the argument, if he is not able to refute or evade the charges

already brought? To begin then with the domestic hearth, as the saying

is,[815] let us imitate that cautious manner of speaking about the deity

in vogue among the Academic philosophers, and decline to speak about

these things as if we thoroughly understood them. For it is worse in us

mortals than for people ignorant of music to discuss music, or for

people ignorant of military matters to discuss the art of war, to

examine too closely into the nature of the gods and demons, like people

with no knowledge of art trying to get at the intention of artists from

opinion and fancy and probabilities. For if[816] it is no easy matter

for anyone not a professional to conjecture why the surgeon performed an

operation later rather than sooner, or why he ordered his patient to

take a bath to-day rather than yesterday, how is it easy or safe for a

mortal to say anything else about the deity than that he knows best the

time to cure vice, and applies to each his punishment as the doctor

administers a drug, and that a punishment not of the same magnitude, or

applied at the same time, in all cases. For that the cure of the soul,

which is called justice, is the greatest of all arts is testified by

Pindar as well as by ten thousand others, for he calls God, the ruler

and lord of all things, the greatest artificer as the creator of

justice, whose function it is to determine when, and how, and how far,

each bad man is to be punished. And Plato says that Minos, the son of

Zeus, was his father's pupil in this art, not thinking it possible that

any one could succeed in justice, or understand how to succeed in it,

without he had learned or somehow got that science. For the laws which

men make are not always merely reasonable, nor is their meaning always

apparent, but some injunctions seem quite ridiculous, for example, the

Ephors at Lacedaemon make proclamation, directly they take office, that

no one is to let his moustache grow, but that all are to obey the laws,

that they be not grievous to them. And the Romans lay a light rod on the

bodies of those they make freemen, and when they make their wills, they

nominate some as their heirs, while to others they sell the property,

which, seems strange. But strangest of all is that ordinance of Solon,

that the citizen who, when his city is in faction, will not side with

either party is to lose his civic rights. And generally one might

mention many absurdities in laws, if one did not know the mind of the

legislator, or understand the reason for each particular piece of

legislation. How is it wonderful then, if human affairs are so difficult

to comprehend, that it is no easy task to say in connection with the

gods, why they punish some offenders early, and others late?

Sec. V. This is not a pretext for evading the subject, but merely a request

for lenient judgement, that our discourse, looking as it were for a

haven and place of refuge, may rise to the difficulty with greater

confidence basing itself on probability. Consider then first that,

according to Plato, god, making himself openly a pattern of all things

good, concedes human virtue, which is in some sort a resemblance to

himself, to those who are able to follow him. For all nature, being in

disorder, got the principle of change and became order[817] by a

resemblance to and participation in the nature and virtue of the deity.

The same Plato also tells us that nature put eyesight into us, in order

that the soul by beholding and admiring the heavenly bodies might

accustom itself to welcome and love harmony and order, and might hate

disorderly and roving propensities, and avoid aimless reliance on

chance, as the parent of all vice and error. For man can enjoy no

greater blessing from god than to attain to virtue by the earnest

imitation of the noblest qualities of the divine nature. And so he

punishes the wicked leisurely and long after, not being afraid of error

or after repentance through punishing too hastily, but to take away from

us that eager and brutish thirst for revenge, and to teach us that we

are not to retaliate on those that have offended us in anger, and when

the soul is most inflamed and distorted with passion and almost beside

itself for rage, like people satisfying fierce thirst or hunger, but to

imitate the mildness and long-suffering of the deity, and to avenge

ourselves in an orderly and decent manner, only when we have taken

counsel with time long enough to give us the least possible likelihood

of after repentance. For it is a smaller evil, as Socrates said, to

drink dirty water when excessively thirsty, than, when one's mind is

disturbed and full of rage and fury, before it is settled and becomes

pure, to glut our revenge on the person of a relation and kinsman. For

it is not the punishment that follows as closely as possible upon

wrong-doing, as Thucydides said,[818] but that which is more remote,

that observes decorum. For as Melanthius says of anger,

"Fell things it does when it the mind unsettles,"[819]

so also reason acts with justice and moderation, when it banishes rage

and passion. So also people are made milder by the example of other men,

as when they hear that Plato, when he held his stick over his slave to

correct him, waited some time, as he himself has told us, to compose his

anger; and that Archytas, having learned of some wrong or disorderly

action on the part of some of his farm labourers, knowing that at the

time he was in a very great rage and highly incensed at them, did

nothing to them, but merely departed, saying, "You may thank your stars

that I am in a rage with you." If then the remembrance of the words and

recorded acts of men abates the fierceness and intensity of our rage,

much more likely is it that we (observing that the deity, though without

either fear or repentance in any case, yet puts off his punishments and

defers them for some time) shall be reserved in our views about such

matters, and shall think that mildness and long-suffering which the god

exhibits a divine part of virtue, reforming a few by speedy punishment,

but benefiting and correcting many by a tardy one.

Sec. VI. Let us consider in the second place that punishments inflicted by

men for offences regard only retaliation, and, when the offender is

punished, stop and go no further; so that they seem to follow offences

yelping at them like a dog, and closely pursuing at their heels as it

were. But it is likely that the deity would look at the state of any

guilty soul that he intended to punish, if haply it might turn and

repent, and would give[820] time for reformation to all whose vice was

not absolute and incurable. For knowing how great a share of virtue

souls come into the world with, deriving it from him, and how strong and

lasting is their nobility of nature, and how it breaks out into vice

against its natural disposition through the corruption of bad habits and

companions, and afterwards in some cases reforms itself, and recovers

its proper position, he does not inflict punishment on all persons

alike; but the incorrigible he at once removes from life and cuts off,

since it is altogether injurious to others, but most of all to a man's

own self, to live in perpetual vice, whereas to those who seem to have

fallen into wrong-doing, rather from ignorance of what was good than

from deliberate choice of what was bad, he gives time to repent. But if

they persist in vice he punishes them too, for he has no fear that they

will escape him. Consider also how many changes take place in the life

and character of men, so that the Greeks give the names [Greek: tropos]

and [Greek: ethos] to the character, the first word meaning _change_,

and the latter the immense force and power of _habit_. I think also that

the ancients called Cecrops half man and half dragon[821] not because,

as some say, he became from a good king wild and dragon-like, but

contrariwise because he was originally perverse and terrible, and

afterwards became a mild and humane king. And if this is uncertain, at

any rate we know that Gelon and Hiero, both Sicilians, and Pisistratus

the son of Hippocrates, though they got their supreme power by bad

means, yet used it for virtuous ends, and though they mounted the throne

in an irregular way, yet became good and useful princes. For by good

legislation and by encouraging agriculture they made the citizens

earnest and industrious instead of scoffers and chatterers. As for

Gelon, after fighting valiantly and defeating the Carthaginians in a

great battle, he would not conclude with them the peace they asked for

until they inserted an article promising to cease sacrificing their sons

to Cronos. And Lydiades was tyrant in Megalopolis, yet in the very

height of his power changing his ideas and being disgusted with

injustice, he restored their old constitution to the citizens,[822] and

fell gloriously, fighting against the enemy in behalf of his country.

And if any one had slain prematurely Miltiades the tyrant of the

Chersonese, or had prosecuted and got a conviction against Cimon for

incest with his sister, or had deprived Athens of Themistocles for his

wantonness and revellings and outrages in the market, as in later days

Athens lost Alcibiades, by an indictment, should we not have had to go

without the glory of Marathon, and Eurymedon, and beautiful Artemisium,

"where the Athenian youth laid the bright base of liberty?"[823] For

great natures produce nothing little, nor can their energy and activity

rust owing to their keen intellect, but they toss to and fro as at sea

till they come to a settled and durable character. As then one

inexperienced in farming, seeing a spot full of thick bushes and rank

growth, full of wild beasts and streams and mud, would not think much of

it, while to one who has learnt how to discriminate and discern between

different kind of soils all these are various tokens of the richness and

goodness of the land, so great natures break out into many strange

excesses, which exasperate us at first beyond bearing, so that we think

it right to cut off such offenders and stop their career at once,

whereas a better judge, seeing the good and noble even in these, waits

for age and the season which nature appoints for gathering fruit to

bring sense and virtue.

Sec. VII. So much for this point. Do you not think also that some of the

Greeks did well to adopt that Egyptian law which orders a pregnant woman

condemned to death not to suffer the penalty till after she has given

birth?" "Certainly," said all the company. I continued, "Put the case

not of a woman pregnant, but of a man who can in process of time bring

to light and reveal some secret act or plan, point out some unknown

evil, or devise some scheme of safety, or invent something useful and

necessary, would it not be better to defer his execution, and wait the

result of his meditation? That is my opinion, at least." "So we all

think," said Patrocleas. "Quite right," said I. "For do but consider,

had Dionysius had vengeance taken on him at the beginning of his

tyranny, none of the Greeks would have dwelt in Sicily, which was laid

waste by the Carthaginians. Nor would the Greeks have dwelt in

Apollonia, or Anactorium, or the peninsula of the Leucadians, had not

Periander's chastisement been postponed for a long time. I think also

that Cassander's punishment was deferred that Thebes might be repeopled.

And of the mercenaries that plundered this very temple most crossed over

into Sicily with Timoleon, and after they had conquered the

Carthaginians and put down their authority, perished miserably,

miserable wretches that they were. For no doubt the deity makes use of

some wicked men, as executioners, to punish others, and so I think he

crushes as it were most tyrants. For as the gall of the hyena and rennet

of the seal, both nasty beasts in all other respects, are useful in

certain diseases, so when some need sharp correction, the deity casts

upon them the implacable fury of some tyrant, or the savage ferocity of

some prince, and does not remove the bane and trouble till their fault

be got rid of and purged. Such a potion was Phalaris to the

Agrigentines, and Marius to the Romans. And to the people of Sicyon the

god distinctly foretold that their city needed a scourge, when they took

away from the Cleonaeans (as if he was a Sicyonian) the lad Teletias, who

was crowned in the Pythian games, and tore him to pieces. As for the

Sicyonians, Orthagoras became their tyrant, and subsequently Myro and

Clisthenes, and these three checked their wanton outbreaks; but the

Cleonaeans, not getting such a cure, went to ruin. You have of course

heard Homer's lines,

"'From a bad father sprang a son far better,

Excelling in all virtue;'[824]

"and yet that son of Copreus never performed any brilliant or notable

action: but the descendants of Sisyphus and Autolycus and Phlegyas

nourished in the glory and virtues of great kings. Pericles also sprang

of a family under a curse,[825] and Pompey the Great at Rome was the son

of Pompeius Strabo, whose dead body the Roman people cast out and

trampled upon, so great was their hatred of him. How is it strange then,

since the farmer does not cut down the thorn till he has taken his

asparagus, nor do the Libyans burn the twigs till they have gathered the

ledanum, that god does not exterminate the wicked and rugged root of an

illustrious and royal race till it has produced its fit fruit? For it

would have been better for the Phocians to have lost ten thousand of the

oxen and horses of Iphitus, and for more gold and silver to have gone

from Delphi, than that Odysseus and AEsculapius should not have been

born, nor those others who from bad and wicked men became good and

useful."

Sec. VIII. "And do you not all think that it is better that punishment

should take place at the fitting time and in the fitting manner rather

than quickly and on the spur of the moment? Consider the case of

Callippus, who with the very dagger with which he slew Dion, pretending

to be his friend, was afterwards slain by his own friends. And when

Mitius the Argive was killed in a tumult, a brazen statue in the

market-place fell on his murderer and killed him during the public

games. And of course, Patrocleas, you know all about Bessus the Paeonian,

and about Aristo the Oetaean leader of mercenaries." "Not I, by Zeus,"

said Patrocleas, "but I should like to hear." "Aristo," I continued, "at

the permission of the tyrants removed the necklace of Eriphyle[826]

which was hung up in this temple, and took it to his wife as a present;

but his son being angry with his mother for some reason or other, set

the house on fire, and burnt all that were in it. As for Bessus, it

seems he had killed his father, though his crime was long undiscovered.

But at last going to sup with some strangers, he knocked down a nest of

swallows, pricking it with his lance, and killed all the young swallows.

And when the company said, as it was likely they would, 'Whatever makes

you act in such a strange manner?' 'Have they not,' he replied, 'been

long bearing false witness against me, crying out that I had killed my

father?' And the company, astonished at his answer, laid the matter

before the king, and the affair was inquired into, and Bessus punished."

Sec. IX. "These cases," I continued, "we cite supposing, as has been laid

down, that there is a deferring of punishment to the wicked; and, for

the rest, I think we ought to listen to Hesiod, who tells us--not like

Plato, who asserts that punishment is a condition that follows

crime--that it is contemporaneous with it, and grows with it from the

same source and root. For Hesiod says,

"Evil advice is worst to the adviser;"[827]

and,

"He who plots mischief 'gainst another brings

It first on his own pate."[828]

The cantharis is said to have in itself the antidote to its own sting,

but wickedness, creating its own pain and torment, pays the penalty of

its misdeeds not afterwards but at the time of its ill-doing. And as

every malefactor about to pay the penalty of his crime in his person

bears his cross, so vice fabricates for itself each of its own torments,

being the terrible author of its own misery in life, wherein in addition

to shame it has frequent fears and fierce passions and endless remorse

and anxiety. But some are just like children, who, seeing malefactors in

the theatres in golden tunics and purple robes with crowns on and

dancing, admire them and marvel at them, thinking them happy, till they

see them goaded and lashed and issuing fire from their gaudy but cheap

garments.[829] For most wicked people, though they have great households

and conspicuous offices and great power, are yet being secretly punished

before they are seen to be murdered or hurled down rocks, which is

rather the climax and end of their punishment than the punishment

itself. For as Plato tells us that Herodicus the Selymbrian having

fallen into consumption, an incurable disease, was the first of mankind

to mix exercise with the art of healing, and so prolonged his own life

and that of others suffering from the same disease, so those wicked

persons who seem to avoid immediate punishment, receive a longer and not

slower punishment, not later but extending over a wider period; for they

are not punished in their old age, but rather grow old in perpetual

punishment. I speak of course of long time as a human being, for to the

gods all the period of man's life is as nothing, and so to them 'now and

not thirty years ago' means no more than with us torturing or hanging a

malefactor in the evening instead of the morning would mean; especially

as man is shut up in life as in a prison from which there is no egress

or escape, and though doubtless during his life he has much feasting and

business and gifts and favours and amusement, yet, just like people

playing at dice or draughts in a prison, the rope is all the time

hanging over his head."[830]

Sec. X. "And indeed what prevents our asserting that people in prison under

sentence of death are not punished till their heads are cut off, or that

the person who has taken hemlock, and walks about till he feels it is

getting into his legs, suffers not at all till he is deprived of

sensation by the freezing and curdling of his blood, if we consider the

last moment of punishment all the punishment, and ignore all the

intermediate sufferings and fears and anxiety and remorse, the destiny

of every guilty wretch? That would be arguing that the fish that has

swallowed the hook is not caught, till we see it boiled by the cook or

sliced at table. For every wrong-doer is liable to punishment, and soon

swallows the pleasantness of his wrong-doing like a bait, while his

conscience still vexes and troubles him,

"As through the sea the impetuous tunny darts."

For the recklessness and audacity of vice is strong and rampant till the

crime is committed, but afterwards, when the passion subsides like a

storm, it becomes timid and dejected and a prey to fears and

superstitions. So that Stesichorus in his account of Clytaemnestra's

dream may have represented the facts and real state of the case, where

he says, "A dragon seemed to appear to her with its lofty head smeared

all over with blood, and out of it seemed to come king Orestes the

grandson of Plisthenes." For visions in dreams, and apparitions during

the day, and oracles, and lightning, and whatever is thought to come

from the deity, bring tempests of apprehension to the guilty. So they

say that one time Apollodorus in a dream saw himself flayed by the

Scythians, and then boiled, and that his heart out of the caldron spoke

to him in a low voice and said, "I am the cause of this;" and at another

time he dreamed that he saw his daughters running round him in a circle

all on fire and in flames. And Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus, a

little before his death, dreamt that Aphrodite threw some blood on his

face out of a certain phial. And the friends of Ptolemy Ceraunus dreamed

that he was summoned for trial by Seleucus, and that the judges were

vultures and wolves, who tore his flesh and distributed it wholesale

among his enemies. And Pausanias at Byzantium, having sent for Cleonice

a free-born maiden, intending to outrage her and pass the night with

her, being seized with some alarm or suspicion killed her, and

frequently saw her in his dreams saying to him, "Come near for

judgement, lust is most assuredly a grievous bane to men," and as this

apparition did not cease, he sailed, it seems, to Heraclea to the place

where the souls of the dead could be summoned, and by propitiations and

sacrifices called up the soul of the maiden, and she appeared to him and

told him that this trouble would end when he got to Lacedaemon, and

directly he got there he died."[831]

Sec. XI. "And so, if nothing happens to the soul after death, but that

event is the end of all enjoyment or punishment, one would be rather

inclined to say that the deity was lax and indulgent in quickly

punishing the wicked and depriving them of life. For even if we were to

say that the wicked had no other trouble in a long life, yet, when their

wrong-doing was proved to bring them no profit or enjoyment, no good or

adequate return for their many and great anxieties, the consciousness of

that would be quite enough to throw[832] their mind off its balance. So

they record of Lysimachus that he was so overcome by thirst that he

surrendered himself and his forces to the Getae for some drink, but after

he had drunk and bethought him that he was now a captive, he said,

"Alas! How guilty am I for so brief a gratification to lose so great a

kingdom!" And yet it is very difficult to resist a necessity of nature.

But when a man, either for the love of money, or for political place or

power, or carried away by some amorous propensity, does some lawless and

dreadful deed, and, after his eager desire is satisfied, sees in process

of time that only the base and terrible elements of his crime remain,

while nothing useful, or necessary, or advantageous has flowed from it,

is it not likely that the idea would often present itself to him that,

moved by vain-glory, or for some illiberal and unlovely pleasure, he had

violated the greatest and noblest rights of mankind, and had filled his

life with shame and trouble? For as Simonides used to say playfully that

he always found his money-chest full but his gratitude-chest empty,[833]

so the wicked contemplating their own vice soon find out that their

gratification is joyless and hopeless,[834] and ever attended by fears

and griefs and gloomy memories, and suspicions about the future, and

distrust about the present. Thus we hear Ino, repenting for what she had

done, saying on the stage,

"Dear women, would that I could now inhabit

For the first time the house of Athamas,

Guiltless of any of my awful deeds!"[835]

It is likely that the soul of every wicked person will meditate in this

way, and consider how it can escape the memory of its ill-deeds, and lay

its conscience to sleep, and become pure, and live another life over

again from the beginning. For there is no confidence, or reality, or

continuance, or security, in what wickedness proposes to itself, unless

by Zeus we shall say that evil-doers are wise, but wherever the greedy

love of wealth or pleasure or violent envy dwells with hatred and

malignity, there will you also see and find stationed superstition, and

remissness for labour, and cowardice in respect to death, and sudden

caprice in the passions, and vain-glory and boasting. Those that censure

them frighten them, and they even fear those that praise them as wronged

by their deceit, and as most hostile to the bad because they readily

praise those they think good. For as in the case of ill-tempered steel

the hardness of vice is rotten, and its strength easily shattered. So

that in course of time, understanding their real selves, they are vexed

and disgusted with their past life and abhor it. For if a bad man who

restores property entrusted to his care, or becomes surety for a friend,

or contributes very generously and liberally to his country out of love

of glory or honour, at once repents and is sorry for what he has done

from the fickleness and changeableness of his mind; and if men applauded

in the theatres directly afterwards groan, their love of glory subsiding

into love of money; shall we suppose that those who sacrificed men to

tyrannies and conspiracies as Apollodorus did, or that those who robbed

their friends of money as Glaucus the son of Epicydes did,[836] never

repented, or loathed themselves, or regretted their past misdeeds? For

my part, if it is lawful to say so, I do not think evil-doers need any

god or man to punish them, for the marring and troubling of all their

life by vice is in itself adequate punishment."

Sec. XII. "But consider now whether I have not spoken too long." Then Timon

said, "Perhaps you have, considering what remains and the time it will

take. For now I am going to start the last question, as if it were a

combatant in reserve, since the other two questions have been debated

sufficiently. For as to the charge and bold accusation that Euripides

brings against the gods, for visiting the sins of the parents upon the

children, consider that even those of us who are silent agree with

Euripides. For if the guilty were punished themselves there would be no

further need to punish the innocent, for it is not fair to punish even

the guilty twice for the same offence, whereas if the gods through

easiness remit the punishment of the wicked, and exact it later on from

the innocent, they do not well to compensate for their tardiness by

injustice. Such conduct resembles the story told of AEsop's coming to

this very spot,[837] with money from Croesus, to offer a splendid

sacrifice to the god, and to give four minae to each of the Delphians.

And some quarrel or difference belike ensuing between him and the

Delphians here, he offered the sacrifice, but sent the money back to

Sardis, as though the Delphians were not worthy to receive that benefit,

so they fabricated against him a charge of sacrilege, and put him to

death by throwing him headlong down yonder rock called Hyampia. And in

consequence the god is said to have been wroth with them, and to have

brought dearth on their land, and all kinds of strange diseases, so that

they went round at the public festivals of the Greeks, and invited by

proclamation whoever wished to take satisfaction of them for AEsop's

death. And three generations afterwards came Idmon[838] a Samian, no

relation of AEsop's, but a descendant of those who had purchased AEsop as

a slave at Samos, and by giving him satisfaction the Delphians got rid

of their trouble. And it was in consequence of this, they say, that the

punishment of those guilty of sacrilege was transferred from Hyampia to

Nauplia.[839] And even great lovers of Alexander, as we are, do not

praise his destroying the city of the Branchidae and putting everybody in

it to death because their great-grandfathers betrayed the temple at

Miletus.[840] And Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, laughing and

jeering at the Corcyraeans for asking him why he wasted their island,

replied, "Because, by Zeus, your forefathers welcomed Odysseus." And

when the people of Ithaca likewise complained of his soldiers carrying

off their sheep, he said, "Your king came to us, and actually put out

the shepherd's eye to boot."[841] And is it not stranger still in Apollo

punishing the present inhabitants of Pheneus, by damming up the channel

dug to carry off their water,[842] and so flooding the whole of their

district, because a thousand years ago, they say, Hercules carried off

to Pheneus the oracular tripod? and in telling the Sybarites that the

only end of their troubles would be propitiating by their ruin on three

occasions the wrath of Leucadian Hera? And indeed it is no long time

since the Locrians have ceased sending maidens[843] to Troy,

"Who without upper garments and barefooted,

Like slave-girls, in the early morning swept

Around Athene's altar all unveiled,

Till old age came upon them with its burdens,"

all because Ajax violated Cassandra. Where is the reason or justice in

all this? Nor do we praise the Thracians who to this day, in honour of

Orpheus, mark their wives;[844] nor the barbarians on the banks of the

Eridanus who, they say, wear mourning for Phaeethon. And I think it would

be still more ridiculous if the people living at the time Phaeethon

perished had neglected him, and those who lived five or ten generations

after his tragic death had begun the practice of wearing mourning and

grieving for him. And yet this would be only folly, there would be

nothing dreadful or fatal about it, but what should make the anger of

the gods subside at once and then afterwards, like some rivers, burst

out against others till they completely ruin them?

Sec. XIII. Directly he left off, fearing that if he began again he would

introduce more and greater absurdities, I asked him, "Well, do you

believe all this to be true?" And he replied, "If not all, but only

some, of it is true, do you not think that the subject presents the same

difficulty?" "Perhaps," said I, "it is as with those in a raging fever,

whether they have few or many clothes on the bed they are equally hot or

nearly so, yet to ease them we shall do well to remove some of the

clothes; but let us waive this point, if you don't like the line of

argument, though a good deal of what you have said seems myth and fable,

and let us recall to our minds the recent festival in honour of Apollo

called Theoxenia,[845] and the noble share in it which the heralds

expressly reserve for the descendants of Pindar, and how grand and

pleasant it seemed to you." "Who could help being pleased," said he,

"with such a delightful honour, so Greek and breathing the simple spirit

of antiquity, had he not, to use Pindar's own phrase, 'a black heart

forged when the flame was cold?'" "I pass over then," said I, "the

similar proclamation at Sparta, 'After the Lesbian singer,' in honour

and memory of old Terpander, for it is a similar case. But you

yourselves certainly lay claim to be better than other Boeotians as

descended from Opheltes,[846] and than other Phocians because of your

ancestor Daiphantus,[847] and you were the first to give me help and

assistance in preserving for the Lycormae and Satilaei their hereditary

privilege of wearing crowns as descendants of Hercules, when I contended

that we ought to confirm the honours and favours of the descendants of

Hercules more especially because, though he was such a benefactor to the

Greeks, he had had himself no adequate favour or return." "You remind

me," he said, "of a noble effort, and one well worthy of a philosopher."

"Dismiss then," said I, "my dear fellow, your vehement accusation

against the gods, and do not be so vexed that some of a bad or evil

stock are punished by them, or else do not joy in and approve of the

honour paid to descent from a good stock. For it is unreasonable, if we

continue to show favour to a virtuous stock, to think punishment wrong

in the case of a criminal stock, or that it should not correspond with

the adequate reward of merit. And he that is glad to see the descendants

of Cimon honoured at Athens, but is displeased and indignant that the

descendants of Lachares or Aristo are in exile, is too soft and easy, or

rather too fault-finding and peevish with the gods, accusing them if the

descendants of a bad and wicked man are fortunate, and accusing them

also if the progeny of the bad are wiped off the face of the earth; thus

finding fault with the deity alike, whether the descendants of the good

or bad father are unfortunate."

Sec. XIV. "Let these remarks," I continued, "be your bulwarks as it were

against those excessively bitter and railing accusations. And taking up

again as it were the initial clue to our subject, which as it is about

the deity is dark and full of mazes and labyrinths, let us warily and

calmly follow the track to what is probable and plausible, for certainty

and truth are things very difficult to find even in every-day life. For

example, why are the children of those that have died of consumption or

dropsy bidden to sit with their feet in water till the dead body is

burnt? For that is thought to prevent the disease transferring itself to

them. Again, when a she-goat takes a bit of eringo into her mouth, why

do the whole herd stand still, till the goatherd comes up and takes it

out of her mouth? There are other properties that have connection and

communication, and that transfer themselves from one thing to another

with incredible[848] quickness and over immense distances. But we marvel

more at intervals of time than place. And yet is it more wonderful that

Athens should have been smitten with a plague[849] that started in

Arabia, and of which Pericles died and Thucydides fell sick, than that,

when the Delphians and Sybarites became wicked, vengeance should have

fallen on their descendants.[850] For properties have relations and

connections between ends and beginnings, and although the reason of them

may not be known by us, they silently perform their errand."

Sec. XV. "Moreover the public punishments of cities by the gods admits of a

just defence. For a city is one continuous entity, a sort of creature

that never changes from age, or becomes different by time, but is ever

sympathetic with and conformable to itself, and is answerable for

whatever it does or has done for the public weal, as long as the

community by its union and federal bonds preserves its unity. For he

that would make several, or rather any quantity of, cities out of one by

process of time would be like a person who made one human being several,

by regarding him now as an old man, now as a young man, now as a

stripling. Or rather this kind of reasoning resembles the arguments of

Epicharmus, from whom the sophists borrowed the piled-up method of

reasoning,[851] for example, he incurred the debt long ago, so he does

not owe it now, being a different person, or, he was invited to dinner

yesterday, but he comes uninvited to-day, for he is another person. And

yet age produces greater changes in any individual than it does commonly

in cities. For any one would recognize Athens again if he had not seen

it for thirty years, for the present habits and feelings of the people

there, their business, amusements, likes and dislikes, are just what

they were long ago; whereas a man's friend or acquaintance meeting him

after some time would hardly recognize his appearance, for the change of

character easily introduced by every thought and deed, feeling and

custom, produce a wonderful strangeness and novelty in the same person.

And yet a man is reckoned to be the same person from birth to death, and

similarly we think it right for a city always remaining the same to be

liable to reproach for the ill deeds of its former inhabitants, on the

same principle as it enjoys its ancient glory and power; or shall we,

without being aware of it, throw everything into Heraclitus' river, into

which he says a person cannot step twice,[852] since nature is ever

changing and altering everything?"

Sec. XVI. "If then a city is one continuous entity, so of course is a race

that starts from one beginning, that can trace back intimate union and

similarity of faculties, for that which is begot is not, like some

production of art, unlike the begetter, for it proceeds from him, and is

not merely produced by him, so that it appropriately receives his share,

whether that be honour or punishment. And if I should not seem to be

trifling, I should say that the bronze statue of Cassander melted down

by the Athenians, and the body of Dionysius thrown out of their

territory by the Syracusans after his death, were treated more unjustly

than punishing their posterity would have been. For there was none of

the nature of Cassander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had

left his dead body before this outrage, whereas Nysaeus and

Apollocrates,[853] Antipater and Philip,[854] and similarly other sons

of wicked parents had innate in them a good deal of their fathers, and

that no listless or inactive element, but one by which they lived and

were nourished, and by which their ideas were controlled. Nor is it at

all strange or absurd that some should have their fathers'

characteristics. And to speak generally, as in surgery whatever is

useful is also just, and that person would be ridiculous who should say

it was unjust to cauterize the thumb when the hip-joints were in pain,

and to lance the stomach when the liver was inflamed, or when oxen were

tender in their hoofs to anoint the tips of their horns, so he that

looks for any other justice in punishment than curing vice, and is

dissatisfied if surgery is employed to one part to benefit another, as

surgeons open a vein to relieve ophthalmia, can see nothing beyond the

evidence of the senses, and does not remember that even a schoolmaster

by correcting one lad admonishes others, and that by decimation a

general makes his whole army obey. And so not only by one part to

another comes benefit, but also to the soul through the soul, even more

often than to the body through the body, come certain dispositions, and

vices or improvement of character. For just as it is likely in the case

of the body that the same feelings and changes will take place, so the

soul, being worked upon by fancies, naturally becomes better or worse

according as it has more confidence or fear."

Sec. XVII. While I was thus speaking, Olympicus interposed, and said, "You

seem in your argument to assume the important assumption of the

permanence of the soul." I replied, "You too concede it, or rather did

concede it. For that the deity deals with everyone according to his

merit has been the assumption of our argument from the beginning." Then

said he, "Do you think that it follows, because the gods notice our

actions and deal with us accordingly, that souls are either altogether

imperishable, or for some time survive dissolution?" Then said I, "Not

exactly so, my good sir, but is the deity so little and so attached to

trifles, if we have nothing divine in ourselves, nothing resembling him,

nothing lasting or sure, but that we all do fade as a leaf, as

Homer[855] says, and die after a brief life, as to take the

trouble--like women that tend and cultivate their gardens of Adonis[856]

in pots--to create souls to flourish in a delicate body having no

stability only for a day, and then to be annihilated at once[857] by any

occasion? And if you please, leaving the other gods out of the question,

consider the case of our god here.[858] Does it seem likely to you that,

if he knew that the souls of the dead perish immediately, and glide out

of their bodies like mist or smoke, he would enjoin many propitiatory

offerings for the departed and honours for the dead, merely cheating and

beguiling those that believed in him? For my own part, I shall never

abandon my belief in the permanence of the soul, unless some second

Hercules[859] shall come and take away the tripod of the Pythian

Priestess, and abolish and destroy the oracle. For as long as many such

oracles are still given, as was said to be given to Corax of Naxos

formerly, it is impious to declare that the soul dies." Then said

Patrocleas, "What oracle do you refer to? Who was this Corax? To me both

the occurrence and name are quite strange." "That cannot be," said I,

"but I am to blame for using the surname instead of the name. For he

that killed Archilochus in battle was called Calondes, it seems, but his

surname was Corax. He was first rejected by the Pythian Priestess, as

having slain a man sacred to the Muses, but after using many entreaties

and prayers, and urging pleas in defence of his act, he was ordered to

go to the dwelling of Tettix, and appease the soul of Archilochus. Now

this place was Taenarum, for there they say Tettix the Cretan had gone

with a fleet and founded a city, and dwelt near the place where departed

souls were conjured up. Similarly also, when the Spartans were bidden by

the oracle to appease the soul of Pausanias, the necromancers were

summoned from Italy, and, after they had offered sacrifice, they got the

ghost out of the temple."

Sec. XVIII. "It is one and the same argument," I continued, "that confirms

the providence of the deity and the permanence of the soul of man, so

that you cannot leave one if you take away the other. And if the soul

survives after death, it makes the probability stronger that rewards or

punishments will be assigned to it. For during life the soul struggles,

like an athlete, and when the struggle is over, then it gets its

deserts. But what rewards or punishments the soul gets when by itself in

the unseen world for the deeds done in the body has nothing to do with

us that are alive, and is perhaps not credited by us, and certainly

unknown to us; whereas those punishments that come on descendants and on

the race are evident to all that are alive, and deter and keep back many

from wickedness. For there is no more disgraceful or bitter punishment

than to see our children in misfortune through our faults, and if the

soul of an impious or lawless man could see after death, not his statues

or honours taken from him, but his children or friends or race in great

adversity owing to him, and paying the penalty for his misdeeds, no one

would ever persuade him, could he come to life again, to be unjust and

licentious, even for the honours of Zeus. I could tell you a story on

this head, which I recently heard, but I hesitate to do so, lest you

should regard it only as a myth; I confine myself therefore to

probability." "Pray don't," said Olympicus, "let us have your story."

And as the others made the same request, I said, "Permit me first to

finish my discourse according to probability, and then, if you like, I

will set my myth a going, if it is a myth."

Sec. XIX. Bion says the deity in punishing the children of the wicked for

their fathers' crimes is more ridiculous than a doctor administering a

potion to a son or grandson for a father's or grandfather's disease. But

the cases, though in some respects similar and like, are in others

dissimilar. For to cure one person of a disease does not cure another,

nor is one any better, when suffering from ophthalmia or fever, by

seeing another anointed or poulticed. But the punishments of evil-doers

are exhibited to everybody for this reason, that it is the function of

justice, when it is carried out as reason dictates, to check some by the

punishment of others. So that Bion did not see in what respect his

comparison touched our subject. For sometimes, when a man falls into a

grievous but not incurable malady, which afterwards by intemperance and

negligence ruins his constitution and kills him, is not his son, who is

not supposed to be suffering from the same malady but only to have a

predisposition for it, enjoined to a careful manner of living by his

medical man, or friend, or intelligent trainer in gymnastics, or honest

guardian, and recommended to abstain from fish and pastry, wine and

women, and to take medicine frequently, and to go in for training in the

gymnasiums, and so to dissipate and get rid of the small seeds of what

might be a serious malady, if he allowed it to come to a head? Do we not

indeed give advice of this kind to the children of diseased fathers or

mothers, bidding them take care and be cautious and not to neglect

themselves, but at once to arrest the first germ, of the malady, nipping

it in the bud while removable, and before it has got a firm footing in

the constitution?" "Certainly we do," said all the company. "We are not

then," I continued, "acting in a strange or ridiculous but in a

necessary and useful way, in arranging their exercise and food and

physic for the sons of epileptic or atrabilious or gouty people, not

when they are ill, but to prevent their becoming so. For the offspring

of a poor constitution does not require punishment, but it does require

medical treatment and care, and if any one stigmatizes this, because it

curtails pleasure and involves some self-denial and pain, as a

punishment inflicted by cowardice and timidity, we care not for his

opinion. Can it be right to tend and care for the body that has an

hereditary predisposition to some malady, and are we to neglect the

growth and spread in the young character of hereditary taint of vice,

and to dally with it, and wait till it be plainly mixed up with the

feelings, and, to use the language of Pindar, "produce malignant fruit

in the heart?"

Sec. XX. Or is the deity in this respect no wiser than Hesiod, who exhorts

and advises, "not to beget children on our return from a sad funeral,

but after a banquet with the gods,"[860] as though not vice or virtue

only, but sorrow or joy and all other propensities, came from

generation, to which the poet bids us come gay and agreeable and

sprightly. But it is not Hesiod's function, or the work of human wisdom,

but it belongs to the deity, to discern and accurately distinguish

similarities and differences of character, before they become obvious by

resulting in crime through the influence of the passions. For the young

of bears and wolves and apes manifest from their birth the nature innate

in them in all its naked simplicity; whereas mankind, under the

influence of customs and opinions and laws, frequently conceal their bad

qualities and imitate what is good, so as altogether to obliterate and

escape from the innate taint of vice, or to be undetected for a long

time, throwing the veil of craft round their real nature, so that we are

scarce conscious of their villainy till we feel the blow or smart of

some unjust action, so that we are in fact only aware that there is such

a thing as injustice when men act unjustly, or as vice when men act

viciously, or as cowardice when men run away, just as if one were to

suppose that scorpions had a sting only when they stung us, or that

vipers were venomous only when they bit us, which would be a very silly

idea. For every bad man is not bad only when he breaks out into crime,

but he has the seeds of vice in his nature, and is only vicious in act

when he has opportunity and means, as opportunity makes the thief

steal,[861] and the tyrant violate the laws. But the deity is not

ignorant of the nature and disposition of every man, inasmuch as by his

very nature he can read the soul better than the body, and does not wait

to punish violence in the act, or shamelessness in the tongue, or

lasciviousness in the members. For he does not retaliate upon the

wrong-doer as having been ill-treated by him, nor is he angry with the

robber as having been plundered by him, nor does he hate the adulterer

as having himself suffered from his licentiousness, but it is to cure

him that he often punishes the adulterous or avaricious or unjust man in

embryo, before he has had time to work out all his villainy, as we try

to stop epileptic fits before they come on.

Sec. XXI. Just now we were dissatisfied that the wicked were punished late

and tardily, whereas at present we find fault with the deity for

correcting the character and disposition of same before they commit

crime, from our ignoring that the future deed may be worse and more

dreadful than the past, and the hidden intention than the overt act; for

we are not able fully to understand the reasons why it is better to

leave some alone in their ill deeds, and to arrest others in the

intention; just as no doubt medicine is not appropriate in the case of

some patients, which would be beneficial to others not ill, but yet

perhaps in a more dangerous condition still. And so the gods do not

visit all the offences of parents on their children, but if a good man

is the son of a bad one, as the son of a sickly parent is sometimes of a

good constitution, he is exempt from the punishment of his race, as not

being a participator in its viciousness. But if a young man imitates his

vicious race it is only right that he should inherit the punishment of

their ill deeds, as he would their debts. For Antigonus was not punished

for Demetrius, nor, of the old heroes,[862] Phyleus for Augeas, or

Nestor for Neleus, for though their sires were bad they were good, but

those whose nature liked and approved the vices of their ancestors,

these justice punished, taking vengeance on their similarity in

viciousness. For as the warts and moles and freckles of parents often

skip a generation, and reappear in the grandsons and granddaughters, and

as a Greek woman, that had a black baby and so was accused of adultery,

found out that she was the great granddaughter of an Ethiopian,[863] and

as the son of Pytho the Nisibian who recently died, and who was said to

trace his descent to the Sparti,[864] had the birthmark on his body of

the print of a spear the token of his race, which though long dormant

had come up again as out of the deep, so frequently earlier generations

conceal and suppress the mental idiosyncrasies and passions of their

race, which afterwards nature causes to break out in other members of

the family, and so displays the family bent either to vice or virtue."

Sec. XXII. When I had said thus much I was silent, but Olympicus smiled and

said, "We do not praise you, lest we should seem to forget your promised

story, as though what you had advanced was adequate proof enough, but we

will give our opinion when we have heard it." Then I began as follows.

"Thespesius of Soli, an intimate friend of that Protogenes[865] who

lived in this city with us for some time, had been very profligate

during the early part of his life, and had quickly run through his

property, and for some time owing to his straits had given himself up to

bad practices, when repenting of his old ways, and following the pursuit

of riches, he resembled those profligate husbands that pay no attention

to their wives while they live with them, but get rid of them, and then,

after they have married other men, do all they can wickedly to seduce

them. Abstaining then from nothing dishonourable that could bring either

enjoyment or gain, in no long time he got together no great amount of

property, but a very great reputation for villainy. But what most

damaged his character was the answer he received from the oracle of

Amphilochus.[866] For he sent it seems a messenger to consult the god

whether he would live the rest of his life better, and the answer was he

would do better after his death. And indeed this happened in a sense not

long after. For he fell headlong down from a great height, and though he

had received no wound nor even a blow, the fall did for him, but three

days after (just as he was about to be buried) he recovered. He soon

picked up his strength again, and went home, and so changed his manner

of life that people would hardly credit it. For the Cilicians say that

they know nobody who was in those days more fairdealing in business, or

more devout to the deity, or more disagreeable to his enemies, or more

faithful to his friends; insomuch that all who had any dealings with him

desired to hear the reason of this change, not thinking that so great a

reformation of character could have proceeded from chance, and their

idea was correct, as his narrative to Protogenes and others of his great

friends showed. For he told them that, when his soul left the body, the

change he first underwent was as if he were a pilot thrown violently

into the sea out of a ship. Then raising himself up a little, he thought

he recovered the power of breathing again altogether, and looked round

him in every direction, as if one eye of the soul was open. But he saw

none of the things he had ever seen before, but stars enormous in size

and at immense distance from one another, sending forth a wonderful and

intense brightness of colour, so that the soul was borne along and moved

about everywhere quickly and easily, like a ship is fair weather. But

omitting most of the sights he saw, he said that the souls of the dead

mounted into the air, which yielded to them and formed fiery bubbles,

and then, when each bubble quietly broke, they assumed human forms,

light in weight but with different kinds of motion, for some leapt about

with wonderful agility and darted straight upwards, while others like

spindles flitted round all together in a circle, some in an upward

direction, some in a downward, with mixed and confused motion, hardly

stopping at all, or only after a very long time. As to most of these he

was ignorant who they were, but he saw two or three that he knew, and

tried to approach them and talk with them, but they would not listen to

him, and did not seem to be in their right minds, but out of their

senses and distraught, avoiding every sight and touch, and at first

turned round and round alone, but afterwards meeting many other souls

whirling round and in the same condition as themselves, they moved about

promiscuously with no particular object in view, and uttered

inarticulate sounds, like yells, mixed with wailing and terror. Other

souls in the upper part of the air seemed joyful, and frequently

approached one another in a friendly way, and avoided those troubled

souls, and seemed to mark their displeasure by keeping themselves to

themselves, and their joy and delight by extension and expansion. At

last he said he saw the soul of a relation, that he thought he knew but

was not quite sure, as he died when he was a boy, which came up to him

and said to him, "Welcome, Thespesius." And he wondering, and saying

that his name was not Thespesius but Aridaeus, the soul replied, "That

was your old name, but henceforth it will be Thespesius. For assuredly

you are not dead, but by the will of the gods are come here with your

intellect, for the rest of your soul you have left in the body like an

anchor; and as a proof of what I say both now and hereafter notice that

the souls of the dead have no shadow and do not move their eyelids."

Thespesius, on hearing these words, pulled himself somewhat more

together again, and began to use his reason, and looking more closely he

noticed that an indistinct and shadow-like line was suspended over him,

while the others shone all round and were transparent, but were not all

alike; for some were like the full-moon at its brightest, throwing out

one smooth even and continuous colour, others had spots or light marks

here and there, while others were quite variegated and strange to the

sight, with black spots like snakes, while others again had dim

scratches.

Then the kinsman of Thespesius (for there is nothing to prevent our

calling the souls by the name of the persons), pointed out everything,

and told him that Adrastea, the daughter of Necessity and Zeus, was

placed in the highest position to punish all crimes, and no criminal was

either so great or so small as to be able to escape her either by fraud

or violence. But, as there were three kinds of punishment, each had its

own officer and administering functionary. "For speedy Vengeance

undertakes the punishment of those that are to be corrected at once in

the body and through their bodies, and she mildly passes by many

offences that only need expiation; but if the cure of vice demands

further pains, then the deity hands over such criminals after death to

Justice, and those whom Justice rejects as altogether incurable, Erinnys

(the third and fiercest of Adrastea's officers), pursues as they are

fleeing and wandering about in various directions, and with pitiless

severity utterly undoes them all, and thrusts them down to a place not

to be seen or spoken about. And, of all these punishments, that which is

administered in this life by Vengeance is most like those in use among

the barbarians. For as among the Persians they pluck off and scourge the

garments and tiaras of those that are to be punished, while the

offenders weep and beg them to cease, so most punishments by fine or

bodily chastisement have no sharp touch, nor do they reach vice itself,

but are only for show and sentiment. And whoever goes from this world to

that incorrigible and impure, Justice takes him aside, naked as he is in

soul, and unable to veil or hide or conceal his villainy, but descried

all round and in all points by everybody, and shows him first to his

good parents, if such they were, to let them see what a wretch he is and

how unworthy of his ancestors; but if they were wicked too, seeing them

punished and himself being seen by them, he is chastised for a long time

till he is purged of each of his bad propensities by sufferings and

pains, which as much exceed in magnitude and intensity all sufferings in

the flesh, as what is real is more vivid than a dream. But the scars and

marks of the stripes for each bad propensity are more visible in some

than in others. Observe also, he continued, the different and various

colours of the souls. That dark dirty-brown colour is the pigment of

illiberality and covetousness, and the blood-red the sign of cruelty and

savageness, and where the blue is there sensuality and love of pleasure

are not easily eradicated, and that violet and livid colour marks malice

and envy, like the dark liquid ejected by the cuttle fish. For as during

life vice produces these colours by the soul being acted upon by

passions and reacting upon the body, so here it is the end of

purification and correction when they are toned down, and the soul

becomes altogether bright and one colour. But as long as these colours

remain, there are relapses of the passions accompanied by palpitation

and throbbing of the heart, in some faint and soon suppressed, in others

more violent and lasting. And some of these souls by being again and

again corrected recover their proper disposition and condition, while

others again by their violent ignorance and excessive love of

pleasure[867] are carried into the bodies of animals; for one by

weakness of reasoning power, and slowness of contemplation, is impelled

by the practical element in him to generation, while another, lacking an

instrument to satisfy his licentiousness, desires to gratify his

passions immediately, and to get that gratification through the medium

of the body; for here there is no real fruition, but only an imperfect

shadow and dream of incomplete pleasure."

After he had said this, Thespesius' kinsman hurried him at great speed

through immense space, as it seemed to him, though he travelled as

easily and straight as if he were carried on the wings of the sun's

rays. At last he got to an extensive and bottomless abyss, where his

strength left him, as he found was the case with the other souls there:

for keeping together and making swoops, like birds, they flitted all

round the abyss, but did not venture to pass over it. To internal view

it resembled the caverns of Bacchus, being beautiful throughout[868]

with trees and green foliage and flowers of all kinds, and it breathed a

soft and gentle air, laden with scents marvellously pleasant, and

producing the effect that wine does on those who are topers; for the

souls were elevated by its fragrance, and gay and blithe with one

another: and the whole spot was full of mirth and laughter, and such

songs as emanate from gaiety and enjoyment. And Thespesius' kinsman told

him that this was the way Dionysus went up to heaven by, and by which he

afterwards took up Semele, and it was called the place of Oblivion. But

he would not let Thespesius stay there, much as he wished, but forcibly

dragged him away, instructing and telling him that the intellect was

melted and moistened by pleasure, and that the irrational and corporeal

element being watered and made flesh stirs up the memory of the body,

from which comes a yearning and strong desire for generation, so called

from being an inclination to the earth,[869] when the soul is weighed

down with moisture.

Next Thespesius travelled as far in another direction, and seemed to see

a great crater into which several rivers emptied themselves, one whiter

than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple of the

rainbow, and others of various hues whose brightness was apparent at

some distance, but when he got nearer the air became thinner and the

colours grew dim, and the crater lost all its gay colours but white. And

he saw three genii sitting together in a triangular position, mixing the

rivers together in certain proportions. Then the guide of Thespesius'

soul told him, that Orpheus got as far as here, when he came in quest of

the soul of his wife,[870] and from not exactly remembering what he had

seen spread a false report among mankind, that the oracle at Delphi was

common to Apollo and Night, though Apollo had no communion with Night:

but this, pursued the guide, is an oracle common to Night and the Moon,

that utters forth its oracular knowledge in no particular part of the

world, nor has it any particular seat, but wanders about everywhere in

men's dreams and visions. Hence, as you see, dreams receive and

disseminate a mixture[871] of simple truth with deceit and error. But

the oracle of Apollo you do not know, nor can you see it, for the

earthiness of the soul does not suffer it to soar upwards, but keeps it

down in dependence on the body. And taking him nearer his guide tried to

show him the light from the tripod, which, as he said, shone as far as

Parnassus through the bosom of Themis, but though he desired to see it

he could not for its brightness, but as he passed by he heard the shrill

voice of a woman speaking in verse several things, among others, he

thought, telling the time of his death. That, said the genius, was the

voice of the Sibyl, who sang about the future as she was being borne

about in the Orb of the moon. Though desirous then to hear more, he was

conveyed into another direction by the violent motion of the moon, as if

he had been in the eddies of a whirlpool, so that he heard very little

more, only a prophecy about Mt. Vesuvius and that Dicaearchia[872] would

be destroyed by fire, and a short piece about the Emperor then

reigning,[873] that "though he was good he would lose his empire through

sickness."

After this Thespesius and his guide turned to see those that were

undergoing punishment. And at first they saw only distressing and

pitiable sights, but after that, Thespesius, little expecting it, found

himself among his friends and acquaintances and kinsfolk who were being

punished, and undergoing dreadful sufferings and hideous and bitter

tortures, and who wept and wailed to him. And at last he descried his

father coming up out of a certain gulf covered with marks and scars,

stretching out his hands, and not allowed to keep silence, but compelled

by those that presided over his torture to confess that he had been an

accursed wretch and poisoned some strangers that had gold, and during

his lifetime had escaped the detection of everybody; but had been found

out here, and his guilt brought home to him, for which he had already

suffered much, and was being dragged on to suffer more. So great was his

consternation and fear that he did not dare to intercede or beg for his

father's release, but wishing to turn and flee he could no longer see

his gentle and kind guide, but he was thrust forward by some persons

horrible to look at, as if some dire necessity compelled him to go

through with the business, and saw that the shades of those that had

been notorious criminals and punished in their life-time were not so

severely tortured here or like the others, but had an incomplete[874]

though toilsome punishment for their irrational passions.[875] Whereas

those who under the mask and show of virtue had lived all their lives in

undetected vice were forced by their torturers with labour and pain to

turn their souls inside out, unnaturally wriggling and writhing about,

like the sea-scolopendras who, when they have swallowed the hook, turn

themselves inside out; but some of them their torturers flayed and

crimped so as to show their various inward vices which were only skinned

over, which were deep in their soul the principal part of man. And he

said he saw other souls, like snakes two or three or even more twined

together, devouring one another in malignity and malevolence for what

they had suffered or done in life. He said also that there were several

lakes running parallel, one of boiling gold, another most cold of lead,

another hard of iron, and several demons were standing by, like smiths,

who lowered down and drew up by turns with instruments the souls of

those whose criminality lay in insatiable cupidity. For when they were

red-hot and transparent through their bath in the lake of gold, the

demons thrust them into the lake of lead and dipped them in that; and

when they got congealed in it and hard as hail, they dipped them into

the lake of iron, and there they became wonderfully black, and broken

and crushed by the hardness of the iron, and changed their appearance,

and after that they were dipped again in the lake of gold, after

suffering, he said, dreadful agony in all these changes of torment. But

he said those souls suffered most piteously of all that, when they

seemed to have escaped justice, were arrested again, and these were

those whose crimes had been visited on their children or descendants.

For whenever one of these latter happened to come up, he fell into a

rage and cried out, and showed the marks of what he had suffered, and

upbraided and pursued the soul of the parent, that wished to fly and

hide himself but could not. For quickly did the ministers of torture

pursue them, and hurry them back again to Justice,[876] wailing all the

while on account of their fore-knowledge of what their punishment would

be. And to some of them he said many of their posterity clung at once,

and just like bees or bats stuck to them, and squeaked and gibbered[877]

in their rage at the memory of what they had suffered owing to them.

Last of all he saw the souls of those that were to come into the world a

second time, forcibly moulded and transformed into various kinds of

animals by artificers appointed for the very purpose with instruments

and blows, who broke off all the limbs of some, and only wrenched off

some of others, and polished others down or annihilated them altogether,

to fit them for other habits and modes of life. Among them he saw the

soul of Nero tortured in other ways, and pierced with red-hot nails. And

the artificers having taken it in hand and converted it into the

semblance of a Pindaric viper, which gets its way to life by gnawing

through its mother's womb, a great light, he said, suddenly shone, and a

voice came out of the light, ordering them to change it into something

milder, so they devised of it the animal that croaks about lakes and

marshes, for he had been punished sufficiently for his crimes, and now

deserved some favour at the hands of the gods, for he had freed Greece,

the noblest nation of his subjects and the best-beloved of the

gods.[878] So much did Thespesius behold, but as he intended to return a

horrible dread came upon him. For a woman, marvellous in appearance and

size, took hold of him and said to him, "Come here that you may the

better remember everything you have seen." And she was about to strike

him with a red-hot iron pin, such as the encaustic painters use,[879]

when another woman prevented her; and he was suddenly sucked up, as

through[880] a pipe, by a strong and violent wind, and lit upon his own

body, and woke up and found that he was close to his tomb.

[806] In the temple at Delphi, the scene of the

discussion, as we see later on, Sec.Sec. vii. xii.

[807] Reading [Greek: edokei] with Reiske.

[808] Euripides, "Orestes," 420. Cf. "Ion," 1615.

[809] Thucydides, iii. 38.

[810] See the circumstances in Pausanias, iv. 17 and 22.

[811] Compare Petronius, "Satyricon," 44: "Dii pedes

lanatos habent." Compare also "Tibullus," i. 9. 4: "Sera

tamen tacitis Poena venit pedibus."

[812] Reading [Greek: maliota] (for [Greek: molis]) with

Wyttenbach.

[813] An allusion to the proverb [Greek: Opse Theou

aleousi myloi, aleousi de lepta]. See Erasmus, "Adagia,"

p. 1864.

[814] Cf. Plato, "Republic," 472 A.

[815] See Note, "On Abundance of Friends," Sec. ii.

[816] Reading [Greek: ei gar].

[817] Or _a world_.

[818] See above, Sec. ii.

[819] Quoted also in "On restraining Anger," Sec. ii.

[820] It seems necessary to read either [Greek:

porizein] with Mez, or [Greek: horizein] with

Wyttenbach.

[821] Compare Aristophanes, "Vespae," 438.

[822] See Pausanias, viii. 27.

[823] Pindar.

[824] Homer, "Iliad," xv. 641, 642.

[825] See Thucydides, i. 127.

[826] See Pausanias, v. 17; viii. 24; ix. 41; x. 29.

[827] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 266.

[828] Ibid. 265. Compare Pausanias, ii. 9; Ovid, A. A.

i. 655, 656.

[829] "Significat martyres Christianos, in tunica

molesta fumantes."--_Reiske._

[830] Like the sword of Damocles. See Horace, "Odes,"

iii. 1. 17, 21.

[831] See also Pausanias, iii. 17.

[832] Surely [Greek: an anatrepoi] must be read.

[833] Compare "On Curiosity," Sec. x.

[834] The reading is very doubtful. I adopt [Greek:

hedones men euthus kenen charin, elpidos eremon

euriskousi.]

[835] Euripides, "Ino."

[836] See Herodotus, vi. 86; Juvenal, xiii, 199-207.

[837] The company are in the temple at Delphi, be it

remembered.

[838] Called Iadmon in Herodotus, ii. 134, where this

story is also told.

[839] Wyttenbach suggests Daulis.

[840] To Xerxes.

[841] The allusion is to the well-known story of

Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus, who is supposed to

have dwelt in the island of Sicily, where Agathocles was

tyrant.

[842] See Pausanias, viii. 14.

[843] Two were to be sent for 1,000 continuous years. So

the Oracle.

[844] See Pausanias ix. 30; Herodotus, v. 6.

[845] See Pausanias, vii. 27; Athenaeus, 372 A.

[846] A former king of Thebes. See Pausanias, ix. 5.

[847] Called Daiphantes, Pausanias, x. 1.

[848] Reading [Greek: apistois] with Xylander.

[849] The famous plague. See Thucydides, ii. 47-54.

[850] The allusion is to the circumstances mentioned in

Sec. xii.

[851] "Videtur idem cum _sorita_ esse."--_Reiske._

[852] Compare our author, "De EI a pud Delphos," Sec.

xviii. See also Seneca, "Epist.," lviii. p. 483; and

Plato, "Cratylus," 402 A.

[853] Sons of Dionysius.

[854] Sons of Cassander.

[855] "Iliad" vi. 146-149.

[856] Compare Plato, "Phaedrus," 276 B. These gardens of

Adonis were what we might call flowerpot gardens. See

Erasmus, "Adagia."

[857] [Greek: euthys] seems the best reading, [Greek:

aei] is flat.

[858] Apollo.

[859] See Sec. xii.

[860] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 735, 736.

[861] Compare the French Proverb, "L'occasion fait le

larron." And Juvenal's "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus."

[862] So Reiske very ingeniously.

[863] A rather far-fetched pedigree.

[864] See Pansanias, viii. 11; ix. 5, 10. See also Ovid,

"Metamorphoses," Book iii. 100-130.

[865] Compare "On Love," Sec. ii.

[866] At Mallus, in Cilicia. See Pausanias, i. 34.

[867] Reading [Greek: philedonias ischys] with Reiske.

[868] Reading [Greek: diapepoikilmenon on] with

Wyttenbach.

[869] A paronomasia on [Greek: genesis] as if [Greek:

epi gen neusis]. We cannot English it.

[870] Eurydice.

[871] "[Greek: mignymenon], Turn, et Bong.," _Reiske._

Surely the right reading.

[872] Latin Puteoli.

[873] Vespasian. See Suetonius, "Vespasian," ch. 24, as

to the particulars of his death.

[874] The reading is very doubtful. I have followed

Wyttenbach in reading [Greek: tribomenen triben atele].

[875] Such as that of the Danaides. So Wyttenbach.

[876] Adopting the arrangement of Wyttenbach.

[877] Compare Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 5-10.

[878] See Pausanias, vii. 17, for a sneaking kindness

for Nero.

[879] See Athenaeus, 687 B.

[880] Reading [Greek: dia] with Reiske.

AGAINST BORROWING MONEY.

Sec. I. Plato in his Laws[881] does not permit neighbours to use one

another's water, unless they have first dug for themselves as far as the

clay, and reached ground that is unsuitable for a well. For clay, having

a rich and compact nature, absorbs the water it receives, and does not

let it pass through. But he allows people that cannot make a well of

their own to use their neighbour's water, for the law ought to relieve

necessity. Ought there not also to be a law about money, that people

should not borrow of others, nor go to other people's sources of income,

until they have first examined their own resources at home, and

collected, as by drops, what is necessary for their use? But nowadays

from luxury and effeminacy and lavish expenditure people do not use

their own resources, though they have them, but borrow from others at

great interest without necessity. And what proves this very clearly is

the fact that people do not lend money to the needy, but only to those

who, wanting an immediate supply, bring a witness and adequate security

for their credit, so that they can be in no actual necessity of

borrowing.[882]

Sec. II. Why pay court to the banker or trader? Borrow from your own table.

You have cups, silver dishes, pots and pans. Use them in your need.

Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will furnish you with earthenware instead,

purer than silver, for they will not smell strongly and unpleasantly of

interest, a kind of rust that daily soils your sumptuousness, nor will

they remind you of the calends and the new moon, which, though the most

holy of days, the money-lenders make ill-omened and hateful. For those

who instead of selling them put their goods out at pawn cannot be saved

even by Zeus the Protector of Property: they are ashamed to sell, they

are not ashamed to pay interest on their goods when out at pawn. And yet

the famous Pericles made the ornament of Athene, which weighed forty

talents of fine gold, removable at will, for "so," he said, "we can use

the gold in war, and at some other time restore as costly a one." So

should we too in our necessities, as in a siege, not receive a garrison

imposed on us by a hostile money-lender, nor allow our goods to go into

slavery; but stripping our table, our bed, our carriages, and our diet,

of superfluities, we should keep ourselves free, intending to restore

all those things again, if we have good luck.

Sec. III. So the Roman matrons offered their gold and ornaments as

first-fruits to Pythian Apollo, out of which a golden cup was made and

sent to Delphi;[883] and the Carthaginian matrons had their heads shorn,

and with the hair cut off made cords for the machines and engines to be

used in defence of their country.[884] But we being ashamed of

independence enslave ourselves to covenants and conditions, when we

ought to restrict and confine ourselves to what is useful, and dock or

sell useless superfluities, to build a temple of liberty for ourselves,

our wives, and children. The famous Artemis at Ephesus gives asylum and

security from their creditors to debtors, when they take refuge in her

temple; but the asylum and sanctuary of frugality is everywhere open to

the sober-minded, affording them joyful and honourable and ample space

for much ease. For as the Pythian Priestess told the Athenians at the

time of the Median war that the god had given them wooden walls,[885]

and they left the region and city, their goods and houses, and took

refuge in their ships for liberty, so the god gives us a wooden table,

and earthenware plate, and coarse garments, if we wish to live free.

Care not for fine horses or chariots with handsome harness, adorned with

gold[886] and silver, which swift interest will catch up and outrun, but

mounted on any chance donkey or nag flee from the hostile and tyrannical

money-lender, not demanding like the Mede land and water,[887] but

interfering with your liberty, and lowering your status. If you pay him

not, he duns you; if you offer the money, he won't have it; if you are

selling anything, he cheapens the price; if you don't want to sell, he

forces you; if you sue him, he comes to terms with you; if you swear, he

hectors; if you go to his house, he shuts the door in your face; whereas

if you stay at home, he billets himself on you, and is ever rapping at

your door.

Sec. IV. How did Solon benefit the Athenians by ordaining that debtors

should no longer have to pay in person? For they are slaves to all

money-lenders,[888] and not to them only, what would there be so

monstrous in that? but to their slaves, who are insolent and savage

barbarians, such as Plato represents the fiery torturers and

executioners in Hades who preside over the punishment of the impious.

For they make the forum a hell for wretched debtors, and like vultures

devour and rend them limb from limb, "piercing into their bowels,"[889]

and stand over others and prevent their tasting their own grapes or

crops, as if they were so many Tantaluses. And as Darius sent Datis and

Artaphernes to Athens with manacles and chains in their hands for their

captives, so they bring into Greece boxes full of bonds and agreements,

like fetters, and visit the towns and scour the country round, sowing

not like Triptolemus harmless corn, but planting the toilsome and

prolific and never-ending roots of debts, which grow and spread all

round, and ruin and choke cities. They say that hares at once give birth

and suckle and conceive again, but the debts of these knaves and

barbarians give birth before they conceive; for at the very moment of

giving they ask back, and take up what they laid down, and lend what

they take for lending.

Sec. V. It is a saying among the Messenians, that "there is a Pylos before

Pylos, and another Pylos too." So it may be said with respect to these

money-lenders, "there is interest before interest, and other interest

too." Then of course they laugh at those natural philosophers who say

that nothing can come of nothing, for they get interest on what neither

is nor was; and they think it disgraceful to farm out the taxes, though

the law allows it, while they themselves against the law exact tribute

for what they lend, or rather, if one is to say the truth, defraud as

they lend, for he who receives less than he signs his name for is

defrauded. The Persians indeed think lying a secondary crime, but debt a

principal one, for lying frequently follows upon debt, but money-lenders

tell more lies, for they make fraudulent entries in their account-books,

writing down that they have given so-and-so so much, when they have

really given less. And the only excuse for their lying is covetousness,

not necessity, not utter poverty, but insatiable greediness, the outcome

of which is without enjoyment and useless to themselves, and fatal to

their victims. For neither do they farm the fields which they rob their

debtors of, nor do they inhabit their houses when they have thrust them

out, nor use their tables or apparel, but first one is ruined, and then

a second is hunted down, for whom the first one serves as a decoy. For

the bane spreads and grows like a fire, to the destruction and ruin of

all who fall into their clutches, for it consumes one after another; and

the money-lender, who fans and feeds this flame to ensnare many, gets no

more advantage from it but that some time after he can take his

account-book and read how many he has sold up, how many turned out of

house and home, and track the sources of his wealth, which is ever

growing into a larger pile.

Sec. VI. And do not think I say this as an enemy proclaiming war against

the money-lenders,

"For never did they lift my cows or horses,"[890]

but merely to prove to those who too readily borrow money what disgrace

and servitude it brings with it, and what extreme folly and weakness it

is. Have you anything? do not borrow, for you are not in a necessitous

condition. Have you nothing? do not borrow, for you will never be able

to pay back. Let us consider either case separately. Cato said to a

certain old man who was a wicked fellow, "My good sir, why do you add

the shame that comes from wickedness to old age, that has so many

troubles of its own?" So too do you, since poverty has so many troubles

of its own, not add the terrible distress that comes from borrowing

money and from debt; and do not take away from poverty its only

advantage over wealth, its freedom from corroding care. For the proverb

that says, "I cannot carry a goat, put an ox on my shoulder," has a

ridiculous ring. Unable to bear poverty, are you going to put on your

back a money-lender, a weight hard to carry even for a rich man? How

then, will you say, am I to maintain myself? Do you ask this, having two

hands, two legs, and a tongue, in short, being a man, to love and be

loved, to give and receive benefits? Can you not be a schoolmaster or

tutor, or porter, or sailor, or make coasting voyages? Any of these ways

of getting a livelihood is less disgraceful and difficult than to always

have to hear, "Pay me that thou owest."

Sec. VII. The well-known Rutilius went up to Musonius at Rome, and said to

him, "Musonius, Zeus Soter, whom you imitate and emulate, does not

borrow money." And Musonius smilingly answered, "Neither does he lend."

For you must know Rutilius, himself a lender, was bantering Musonius for

being a borrower. What Stoic inflatedness was all this! What need was

there to bring in Zeus Soter? For all nature teaches the same lesson.

Swallows do not borrow money, nor do ants, although nature has given

them no hands, or reason, or profession. But men have intellect in

excess, and so ingenious are they that they keep near them horses, and

dogs, and partridges, and jackdaws. Why then do you despair, who are as

impressible as a jackdaw, have as much voice as a partridge, and are as

noble as a dog, of getting some person to befriend you, by looking after

him, winning his affections, guarding him, fighting his battles? Do you

not see how many opportunities there are both on land and sea? As Crates

says,

"Miccylus and his wife, to ward off famine

In these bad times, I saw both carding wool."

And King Antigonus asked Cleanthes, when he saw him at Athens after a

long interval, "Do you still grind, Cleanthes?" And he replied, "I do, O

king, but for my living, yet so as not to desert philosophy." Such was

the admirable spirit of the man who, coming from the mill and

kneading-trough, wrote with the hand that had baked and ground about the

gods, and the moon, and stars, and the sun. But those kinds of labour

are in our view servile! And so that we may appear free we borrow money,

and flatter and dance attendance on slaves, and give them dinners and

presents, and pay taxes as it were to them, not on account of our

poverty (for no one lends money to a poor man), but from our love of

lavish expenditure. For if we were content with things necessary for

subsistence, the race of money-lenders would be as extinct as Centaurs

and Gorgons are; it is luxury that has created them as much as

goldsmiths, and silversmiths, and perfumers, and dyers in bright

colours. For we do not owe money for bread and wine, but for estates,

and slaves, and mules, and dining-rooms, and tables, and for our lavish

public entertainments, in our unprofitable and thankless ambition. And

he that is once involved in debt remains in it all his time, like a

horse bitted and bridled that takes one rider after another, and there

is no escape to green pastures and meadows, but they wander about like

those demons who were driven out of heaven by the gods who are thus

described by Empedocles:--

"Into the sea the force of heaven thrusts them,

The sea rejects them back upon the land;

To the sun's rays th' unresting earth remits them;

The sun anon whirls them to heaven again."

So one after another usurer or trader gets hold of the poor wretch,

hailing either from Corinth, or Patrae, or Athens, till he gets set on to

by them all, and torn to bits, and cut into mince-meat as it were for

his interest. For as a person who is fallen into the mire must either

get up out of it or remain in it, and if he turns about in it, and

wallows in it, and bedabbles his body all over in it, he contracts only

the greater defilement, so by borrowing from one person to pay another

and changing their money-lenders they contract and incur fresh interest,

and get into greater liabilities, and closely resemble sufferers from

cholera, whose case does not admit of cure because they evacuate

everything they are ordered to take, and so ever add to the disease. So

these will not get cleansed from the disease of debt, but at regular

times in the year pay their interest with pain and agony, and then

immediately another creditor presents his little account, so again their

heads swim and ache, when they ought to have got rid of their debts

altogether, and regained their freedom.

Sec. VIII. I now turn my attention to those who are rich and luxurious, and

use language like the following, "Am I then to go without slaves and

hearth and home?" As if any dropsical person, whose body was greatly

swollen and who was very weak, should say to his doctor, "Am I then to

become lean and empty?" And why not, to get well? And do you too go

without a slave, not to be a slave yourself; and without chattels, not

to be another man's chattel. Listen to a story about two vultures; one

was vomiting and saying it would bring its inside up, and the other who

was by said, "What harm if you do? For it won't be your inside you bring

up, but that dead body we devoured lately." And so any debtor does not

sell his own estate, or his own house, but his creditor's, for he has

made him by law master of them. Nay, but by Zeus, says one, my father

left me this field. Yes, and your father also left you liberty and a

status in the community, which you ought to value more than you do. And

your father begot you with hand and foot, but should either of them

mortify, you pay the surgeon to cut it off. Thus Calypso clad and

"dressed" Odysseus "in raiment smelling sweet,"[891] like the body of an

immortal, as a gift and token of her affection for him; but when his

vessel was upset and he himself immersed, and owing to this wet and

heavy raiment could hardly keep himself on the top of the waves, he

threw it off and stripped himself, and covered his naked breast with

Ino's veil,[892] and "swam for it gazing on the distant shore,"[893] and

so saved his life, and lacked neither food nor raiment. What then? have

not poor debtors storms, when the money-lender stands over them and

says, _Pay_?

"Thus spoke Poseidon, and the clouds did gather,

And lashed the sea to fury, and at once

Eurus and Notus and the stormy Zephyr

Blew all together."[894]

Thus interest rolls on interest as wave upon wave, and he that is

involved in debt struggles against the load that bears him down, but

cannot swim away and escape, but sinks to the bottom, and carries with

him to ruin his friends that have gone security for him. But Crates the

Theban, though he had neither duns nor debts, and was only disgusted at

the distracting cares of housekeeping, gave up a property worth eight

talents, and assumed the philosopher's threadbare cloak and wallet, and

took refuge in philosophy and poverty. And Anaxagoras left his

sheep-farm. But why need I mention these? since the lyric poet

Philoxenus, obtaining by lot in a Sicilian colony much substance and a

house abounding in every kind of comfort, but finding that luxury and

pleasure and absence of refinement was the fashion there, said, "By the

gods these comforts shall not undo me, I will give them up," and he left

his lot to others, and sailed home again. But debtors have to put up

with being dunned, subjected to tribute, suffering slavery, passing

debased coin, and like Phineus, feeding certain winged Harpies, who

carry off and lay violent hands on their food, not at the proper season,

for they get possession of their debtors' corn before it is sown, and

they traffic for oil before the olives are ripe; and the money-lender

says, "I have wine at such and such a price," and takes a bond for it,

when the grapes are yet on the vine waiting for Arcturus to ripen them.

[881] Page 844, A. B. C.

[882] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: didousi] and

[Greek: echousi].

[883] See Livy, v. 25.

[884] See Appian, lv. 26.

[885] See Herodotus, vii. 141-143; viii. 51.

[886] Reading with Reiske [Greek: katachrusa].

[887] The technical term for submission to an enemy. See

Pausanias, iii. 12; x. 20. Herodotus, v. 17, 18; vii.

133.

[888] Reading with Reiske [Greek: daneistais]. Perhaps

[Greek: aphanistais] originally came after [Greek:

agriois], and got somehow displaced.

[889] See Homer, "Odyssey," xi. 578, 579, and context.

[890] Homer, "Iliad," i. 154.

[891] "Odyssey," v. 264.

[892] "Odyssey," v. 333-375.

[893] "Odyssey," v. 439.

[894] "Odyssey," v. 291-295.

WHETHER "LIVE UNKNOWN" BE A WISE

PRECEPT.

Sec. I. He who uttered this precept[895] certainly did not wish to live

unknown, for he uttered it to let all the world know he was a superior

thinker, and to get to himself unjust glory by exhorting others to shun

glory.

"I hate the wise man for himself not wise."[896]

They say that Philoxenus the son of Eryxis and Gnatho the Sicilian,

being exceedingly greedy where good fare was going, would blow their

nose in the dishes, to disgust all others at the table, that they alone

might take their fill of the choicest dishes. So those that are

insatiable pursuers of glory calumniate glory to others who are their

rivals, that they may get it without antagonists. In this they resemble

rowers, who face the stern of the vessel but propel it ahead, that by

the recoil from the stroke of their oars they may reach port, so those

that give vent to precepts like this pursue glory with their face turned

in the opposite direction. For otherwise what need was there to utter a

precept like this, or to write and hand it down to posterity, if he

wished to live unknown to his own generation, who did not wish to live

unknown to posterity?

Sec. II. Look at the matter in the following way.[897] Has not that "live

unknown" a villainous ring, as though one had broken open graves? Is

your life so disgraceful that we must all be ignorant of it? For my part

I should say, Even if your life be bad do not live unknown, but be

known, reform, repent; if you have virtue, be not utterly useless in

life; if you are vicious, do not continue unreformed. Point out then and

define to whom you recommend this precept. If to an ignorant or wicked

or senseless person, you resemble one who should say to a person in a

fever or delirium, "Be unknown. Don't let the doctor know your

condition. Go and throw yourself into some dark place, that you and your

ailments may be unknown." So you say to a vicious man, "Go off with your

vice, and hide your deadly and irremediable disease from your friends,

fearful to show your superstitious fears, palpitations as it were, to

those who could admonish you and cure you." Our remote ancestors paid

public attention to the sick, and if any one had either had or cured a

similar complaint, he communicated his experience to the patient, and so

they say medical art became great by these contributions from

experience. We ought also in the same way to expose to everyone diseased

lives and the passions of the soul, and to handle them, and to examine

the condition of each,[898] and say, Are you a passionate man? Be on

your guard against anger. Are you of a jealous turn? Look to it. Are you

in love? I myself was in love once, but I had to repent. But nowadays

people deny and conceal and cloak their vices, and so fix them deeper in

themselves.

Sec. III. Moreover if you advise men of worth to live unknown and in

obscurity, you say to Epaminondas, Do not be a general; and to Lycurgus,

Do not be a legislator; and to Thrasybulus, Do not be a tyrannicide; and

to Pythagoras, Do not teach; and to Socrates, Do not discourse; and

first and foremost you bid yourself, Epicurus, to refrain from writing

letters to your friends in Asia, and from enrolling Egyptian strangers

among your disciples, and from dancing attendance on the youths of

Lampsacus, and sending books to all quarters to display your wisdom to

all men and all women, and leaving directions in your will about your

funeral. What is the meaning of those common tables of yours? what that

crowd of friends and handsome youths? Why those many thousand lines

written and composed so laboriously on Metrodorus, and Aristobulus, and

Chaeredemus, that they may not be unknown even in death, if[899] you

ordain for virtue oblivion, for art inactivity, for philosophy silence,

and for success that it should be speedily forgotten?

Sec. IV. But if you exclude all knowledge about life, like putting the

lights out at a supper party, that you may go from pleasure to pleasure

undetected,[900] then "live unknown." Certainly if I am going to pass my

life with the harlot Hedeia, or my days with Leontium, and spurn at

virtue, and put my _summum bonum_ in sensual gratifications, these are

ends that require darkness and night, on these oblivion and ignorance

are rightly cast. But if any one in nature sings the praises of the

deity and justice and providence, and in morals upholds the law and

society and the constitution, and in the constitution what is honourable

and not expedient, why should he "live unknown"? Is it that he should

instruct nobody, inspire in nobody an emulation for virtue, and be to

nobody a pattern in good?[901] Had Themistocles been unknown at Athens,

Greece would not have repelled Xerxes; had Camillus been unknown at

Rome, Rome would not have remained a state; had Plato been unknown to

Dion, Sicily would not have won its freedom. And as light, I take it,

makes us not only visible but useful to one another, so knowledge gives

not only glory but impetus to virtue. Epaminondas in obscurity up to his

fortieth year was no use to the Thebans, but when his merits became

known and he was put into power, he saved his state from ruin, and

liberated Greece from slavery, making his abilities efficacious in

emergency through his reputation like the bright shining of a light. For

Sophocles' words,

"Brightly shines brass in use, but when unused

It groweth dull in time, and mars the house,"[902]

are also appropriate to the character of a man, which gets rusty and

senile by not mixing in affairs but living in obscurity. For mute

inglorious ease, and a sedentary life devoted to leisure, not only

injure the body but also the soul: and as hidden waters overshadowed and

stagnant get foul because they have no outlet, so the innate powers of

unruffled lives, that neither imbibe nor pass on anything, even if they

had any useful element in them once, seem to be effete and wasted.

Sec. V. Have you never noticed how when night comes on a tired languor

seizes the body, and inactive torpor overpowers the soul, and reason

shrinks within itself like a fire going out, and feeling quite worn out

is gently agitated by disordered fancies, only just indicating that the

man is alive? But when the sun rises and scares away deceitful dreams,

and brings on as it were the everyday world[903] and with its light

rouses and stimulates the thoughts and actions of everybody, then, as

Democritus says, "men form new ideas for the day," and betake themselves

to their various pursuits with mutual impetuosity, as if drawn by a

strong impulse.

Sec. VI. And I think that life itself, and the way we come into the world,

is so ordained by the deity that we should know one another. For

everyone comes into this great universe obscure and unknown casually and

by degrees, but when he mixes with his fellows and grows to maturity he

shines forth, and becomes well-known instead of obscure, and conspicuous

instead of unknown. For knowledge is not the road to being, as some say,

but being to knowledge, for being does not create but only exhibits

things, as death is not the reducing of existence to non-existence, but

rather the result of dissolution is obscurity. So people considering the

Sun as Apollo according to hereditary and ancient institutions, call him

Delius[904] and Pythius; whereas the lord of the world of darkness,

whether god or demon, they call Hades[905] (for when we die we go into

an unseen and invisible place), and the lord of dark night and idle

sleep. And I think our ancestors called man himself by a word meaning

light,[906] because by their relationship to light all have implanted in

them a strong and vehement desire to know and to be known. And some

philosophers think that the soul itself is light in its essence,

inferring so on other grounds and because it can least endure ignorance

about facts, and hates[907] everything obscure, and is disturbed at

everything dark, which inspires fear and suspicion in it, whereas light

is so dear and welcome to it that it thinks nothing otherwise delightful

bearable without it, as indeed light makes every pleasure pastime and

enjoyment gay and cheerful, like the application of some sweet and

general flavour. But the man who thrusts himself into obscurity, and

wraps himself up in darkness and buries himself alive, is like one who

is dissatisfied with his birth, and renounces his being.

Sec. VII. And yet _Pindar_ tells us[908] that the abode of the blest is a

glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night

in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever

in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there

the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the

past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of

those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls

to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night

belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be

punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do

not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ground,[910]

for it is destroyed by fire or has rolled away; nor does the carrying of

heavy burdens press upon and tire out the bodies of those that undergo

punishment,

"For their strength has no longer flesh and bones,"[911]

nor have the dead any vestige of body that can receive the infliction of

punishment that can make impression; but in reality the only punishment

of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter

annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912]

and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in

uselessness and idleness, ignorance and obscurity.

[895] Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very

personal Sec. iii.

[896] Euripides, Fragm. 930.

[897] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: Alla touto men

taute].

[898] Reading [Greek: ekastou] for [Greek: ekaston].

Reiske proposed [Greek: ekaston].

[899] Reading [Greek: ei] (for [Greek: hina]) with

Xylander and Wyttenbach.

[900] Reading with Wyttenbach.

[901] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, "Forte

[Greek: kalou], at Amiot."

[902] Frag. 742.

[903] "Dormiens quisque in peculiarem abest mumdum,

expergefactus in communem redit."--_Xylander._ Compare

Herrick's Poem, "_Dreames._"

[904] Bright.

[905] Invisible.

[906] [Greek: phos].

[907] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: echthairei].

[908] Reading [Greek: phesin] for [Greek: physin].

[909] Hiatus hic valde deflendus.

[910] As was fabled about Tityus, "Odyssey," xi.

576-579.

[911] "Odyssey," xi. 219.

[912] So Reiske, [Greek: potamin tes lethes].

ON EXILE.

Sec. I. They say those discourses, like friends, are best and surest that

come to our refuge and aid in adversity, and are useful. For many who

come forward do more harm than good in the remarks they make to the

unfortunate, as people unable to swim trying to rescue the drowning get

entangled with them and sink to the bottom together. Now the discourse

that ought to come from friends and people disposed to be helpful should

be consolation, and not mere assent with a man's sad feelings. For we do

not in adverse circumstances need people to weep and wail with us like

choruses in a tragedy, but people to speak plainly to us and instruct

us, that grief and dejection of mind are in all cases useless and idle

and senseless; and that where the circumstances themselves, when

examined by the light of reason, enable a man to say to himself that his

trouble is greater in fancy than in reality, it is quite ridiculous not

to inquire of the body what it has suffered, nor of the mind if it is

any the worse for what has happened, but to employ external sympathizers

to teach us what our grief is.

Sec. II. Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our

misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by

the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real

load a burden of its own. A stone is naturally hard, and ice naturally

cold, but they do not receive these properties and impressions from

without; whereas with regard to exile and loss of reputation or honours,

as also with regard to their opposites, as crowns and office and

position, it is not their own intrinsic nature but our opinion of them

that is the gauge of their real joy or sorrow, so that each person makes

them for himself light or heavy, easy to bear or hard to bear. When

Polynices was asked

"What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?"

he replied to the question,

"Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word."[913]

Compare with this the language of Alcman, as the poet has represented

him in the following lines. "Sardis, my father's ancient home, had I had

the fortune to be reared in thee, I should have been dressed in gold as

a priest of Cybele,[914] and beaten the fine drums; but as it is my name

is Alcman, and I am a citizen of Sparta, and I have learned to write

Greek poetry, which makes me greater than the tyrants Dascyles or

Gyges." Thus the very same thing one man's opinion makes good, like

current coin, and another's bad and injurious.

Sec. III. But let it be granted that exile is, as many say and sing, a

grievous thing. So some food is bitter, and sharp, and biting to the

taste, yet by an admixture with it of sweet and agreeable food we take

away its unpleasantness. There are also some colours unpleasant to look

at, that quite confuse and dazzle us by their intensity and excessive

force. If then we can relieve this by a mixture of shadow, or by

diverting the eye to green or some agreeable colour, so too can we deal

with misfortunes, mixing up with them the advantages and pleasant things

we still enjoy, as wealth, or friends, or leisure, and no deficiency in

what is necessary for our subsistence. For I do not think that there are

many natives of Sardis who would not choose your fortune even with

exile, and be content to live as you do in a strange land, rather than,

like snails who have no other home than their shells, enjoy no other

blessing but staying at home in ease.

Sec. IV. As then he in the comedy that was exhorting an unfortunate friend

to take courage and bear up against fortune, when he asked him "how,"

answered "as a philosopher," so may we also play the philosopher's part

and bear up against fortune manfully. How do we do when it rains, or

when the North Wind doth blow? We go to the fire, or the baths, or the

house, or put on another coat: we don't sit down in the rain and cry. So

too can you more than most revive and cheer yourself for the chill of

adversity, not standing in need of outward aid, but sensibly using your

actual advantages. The surgeon's cupping-glasses extract the worst

humours from the body to relieve and preserve the rest of it, whereas

the melancholy and querulous by ever dwelling on their worst

circumstances, and thinking only of them, and being engrossed by their

troubles, make even useful things useless to them, at the very time when

the need is most urgent. For as to those two jars, my friend, that

Homer[915] says are stored in Heaven, one full of good fortunes, one of

bad, it is not Zeus that presides as the dispenser of them, giving to

some a gentle and even portion, and to others unmixed streams of evils,

but ourselves. For the sensible make their life pleasanter and more

endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their

blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to

them while the best pass through.

Sec. V. And so, if we fall into any real trouble or evil, we ought to get

cheerfulness and ease of mind from the consideration of the actual

blessings that are still left to us, mitigating outward trouble by

private happiness. And as to those things which are not really evil in

their nature, but only so from imagination and empty fancy, we must act

as we do with children who are afraid of masks: by bringing them near,

and putting them in their hands, and turning them about, we accustom

them never to heed them at all: and so we by bringing reason to bear on

it may discover the rottenness and emptiness and exaggeration of our

fancy. As a case in point let us take your present exile from what you

deem your country. For in nature no country, or house, or field, or

smithy, as Aristo said, or surgery, is peculiarly ours, but all such

things exist or rather take their name in connection with the person who

dwells in them or possesses them. For man, as Plato says, is not an

earthly and immovable but heavenly plant, the head making the body erect

as from a root, and turned up to heaven.[916] And so Hercules said well,

"Argive or Theban am I, I vaunt not

To be of one town only, every tower

That does to Greece belong, that is my country."

But better still said Socrates, that he was not an Athenian or Greek,

but a citizen of the world (as a man might say he was a Rhodian or

Corinthian), for he did not confine himself to Sunium, or Taenarum, or

the Ceraunian mountains.

"See you the boundless reach of sky above,

And how it holds the earth in its soft arms?"

These are the boundaries of our country, nor is there either exile or

stranger or foreigner in these, where there is the same fire, water and

air, the same rulers controllers and presidents, the sun the moon and

the morning star, the same laws to all, under one appointment and

ordinance the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, Pleias and

Arcturus, the seasons of sowing and planting; where there is one king

and ruler, God, who has under his jurisdiction the beginning and middle

and end of everything, and travels round and does everything in a

regular way in accordance with nature; and in his wake to punish all

transgressions of the divine law follows Justice, whom all men naturally

invoke in dealing with one another as fellow citizens.

Sec. VI. As to your not dwelling at Sardis, that is nothing. Neither do all

the Athenians dwell at Colyttus, nor all the Corinthians at Craneum, nor

all the Lacedaemonians at Pitane. Do you consider all those Athenians

strangers and exiles who removed from Melita to Diomea, where they call

the month Metageitnion,[917] and keep the festival Metageitnia to

commemorate their migration, and gladly and gaily accept and are content

with their neighbourhood with other people? Surely you would not. What

part of the inhabited world or of the whole earth is very far distant

from another part, seeing that mathematicians teach us that the whole

earth is a mere point compared to heaven? But we, like ants or bees, if

we get banished from one ant-hill or hive are in sore distress and feel

lost, not knowing or having learnt to make and consider all things our

own, as indeed they are. And yet we laugh at the stupidity of one who

asserts that the moon shines brighter at Athens than at Corinth, though

in a sort we are in the same case ourselves, when in a strange land we

look on the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, as if we doubted whether

or not they were different from those we had been accustomed to. For

nature makes us free and unrestrained, but we bind and confine immure

and force ourselves into small and scanty space. Then too we laugh at

the Persian kings, who, if the story be true, drink only of the water of

the Choaspes, thus making the rest of the world waterless as far as they

are concerned, but when we migrate to other places, we desire the water

of the Cephisus, or we yearn for the Eurotas, or Taygetus, or Parnassus,

and so make the whole world for ourselves houseless and homeless.

Sec. VII. Some Egyptians, who migrated to Ethiopia because of the anger and

wrath of their king, to those who begged them to return to their wives

and children very immodestly exposed their persons, saying that they

would never be in want of wives or children while so provided. It is far

more becoming and less low to say that whoever has the good fortune to

be provided with the few necessaries of life is nowhere a stranger,

nowhere without home and hearth, only he must have besides these

prudence and sense, as an anchor and helm, that he may be able to moor

himself in any harbour. For a person indeed who has lost his wealth it

is not easy quickly to get another fortune, but every city is at once

his country to the man who knows how to make it such, and has the roots

by which he can live and thrive and get acclimatized in every place, as

was the case with Themistocles and Demetrius of Phalerum. The latter

after his banishment became a great friend of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and

not only passed his days in abundance, but also sent gifts to the

Athenians. And Themistocles, who was publicly entertained at the king's

expense, is stated to have said to his wife and children, "We should

have been ruined, if we had not been ruined." And so Diogenes the Cynic

to the person who said to him, "The people of Sinope have condemned you

to banishment from Pontus," replied, "And I have condemned them to stay

in Pontus, 'by the high cliffs of the inhospitable sea.'"[918] And

Stratonicus asked his host at Seriphus, for what offence exile was the

appointed punishment, and being told that they punished rogues by exile,

said, "Why then are not you a rogue, to escape from this hole of a

place?" For the comic poet says they get their crop of figs down there

with slings, and that the island is very barely supplied with the

necessaries of life.

Sec. VIII. For if you look at the real facts and shun idle fancy, he that

has one city is a stranger and foreigner in all others. For it does not

seem to such a one fair and just to leave his own city and dwell in

another. "It has been your lot to be a citizen of Sparta, see that you

adorn your native city," whether it be inglorious, or unhealthy, or

disturbed with factions, or has its affairs in disorder. But the person

whom fortune has deprived of his own city, she allows to make his home

in any he fancies. That was an excellent precept of Pythagoras, "Choose

the best kind of life, custom will make it easy." So too it is wise and

profitable to say here, "Choose the best and pleasantest city, time will

make it your country, and a country that will not always distract you

and trouble you and give you various orders such as, 'Contribute so much

money, Go on an embassy to Rome, Entertain the prefect, Perform public

duties.'" If a person in his senses and not altogether silly were to

think of these things, he would prefer to live in exile in some island,

like Gryarus or Cinarus,

"Savage, and fruitless, ill repaying tillage,"

and that not in dejection and wailing, or using the language of those

women in Simonides,

"I am shut in by the dark roaring sea

That foams all round,"

but he will rather be of the mind of Philip, who when he was thrown in

wrestling, and turned round, and noticed the mark his body made in the

dust, said, "O Hercules, what a little part of the earth I have by

nature, though I desire all the world!"

Sec. IX. I think also you have seen Naxos, or at any rate Hyria, which is

close here. But the former was the home of Ephialtes and Otus, and the

latter was the dwelling-place of Orion. And Alcmaeon, when fleeing from

the Furies, so the poets tell us, dwelt in a place recently formed by

the silting of the Achelous;[919] but I think he chose that little spot

to dwell in ease and quiet, merely to avoid political disturbances and

factions, and those furies informers. And the Emperor Tiberius lived the

last seven years of his life in the island of Capreae, and the sacred

governing power of the world enclosed in his breast during all that time

never changed its abode. But the incessant and constant cares of empire,

coming from all sides, made not that island repose of his pure and

complete. But he who can disembark on a small island, and get rid of

great troubles, is a miserable man, if he cannot often say and sing to

himself those lines of Pindar, "To love the slender cypress, and to

leave the Cretan pastures lying near Ida. I have but little land, where

I grow strong, and have nothing to do with sorrow or faction,"[920] or

the ordinances of princes, or public duties in political emergencies, or

state functions hard to get off.

Sec. X. For if that seems a good saying of Callimachus, "Do not measure

wisdom by a Persian rope," much less should we measure happiness by

ropes and parasangs, and if we inhabit an island containing 200 furlongs

only, and not (like Sicily) four days' sail round, ought we to wail and

lament as if we were very unfortunate? For how does plenty of room bring

about an easy life? Have you not heard Tantalus saying in the play,[921]

"I sow a field that takes twelve days to travel round,

The Berecyntian region,"

but shortly after he says,

"My fortunes, that were once as high as heaven,

Now to the ground are fallen, and do say to me,

'Learn not to make too much of earthly things.'"

And Nausithous leaving the spacious Hyperia because of the proximity of

the Cyclopes, and migrating to an island "far from all enterprising

men,"[922] and living an unsocial life,

"Apart from men beside the stormy sea,"[923]

yet contrived to make the life of his citizens very pleasant. And the

Cyclades were first inhabited by the sons of Minos, and afterwards by

the sons of Codrus and Neleus, though foolish people now think they are

punished if they are exiled to them. And yet what island used as a place

of exile is not of larger extent than Scillus, where Xenophon after his

military service saw a comfortable old age?[924] And the Academy, a

small place bought for only 3,000 drachmae,[925] was the domicile of

Plato and Xenocrates and Polemo, who taught and lived there all their

lives, except one day every year, when Xenocrates went to Athens to

grace the festival of Dionysus, so they said, and to see the new plays

exhibited. And Theocritus of Chios twitted Aristotle with loving to live

at the courts of Philip and Alexander, and preferring to dwell at the

mouth of the Borborus to dwelling in the Academy. For there is a river

near Pella that the Macedonians call Borborus. As to islands Homer seems

to sing their praise, and recommend them to us as if on purpose, as

"She came to Lemnos, town of sacred Thoas;"[926]

and,

"What Lesbos has, the seat of the immortals;"[927]

and,

"He captured lofty Scyros, citadel

Of Enyeus;"[928]

and,

"And those who from Dulichium came, and from

The sacred islands called th' Echinades,

That lie across the sea opposite Elis;"[929]

and of the illustrious men that dwelt in islands he mentions AEolus the

favourite of the gods, and Odysseus most wise, and Ajax most brave, and

Alcinous most kind to strangers.

Sec. XI. When Zeno learned that the only ship he had left was with all its

freight lost at sea, he said, "Fortune, you deal kindly with me,

confining me to my threadbare cloak and the life of a philosopher." And

a man not altogether silly, or madly in love with crowds, might, I

think, not blame fortune for confining him in an island, but might even

praise her for relieving him from weariness and anxiety, and wanderings

in foreign countries, and perils by sea, and the uproar of the forum,

and for giving him truly a secure, quiet, undistracted and private life,

putting him as it were inside a circle in which everything necessary for

him was contained. For what island has not a house, a promenade, a bath,

and fish and hares for those who love fishing and field-sports? And the

greatest blessing, quiet, which others frequently pant for, you can

freely enjoy.[930] And whereas in the world,[930] when men are playing

at dice or otherwise enjoying the privacy of their homes, informers and

busybodies hunt them up and pursue them from their houses and gardens in

the suburbs, and drag them by force to the forum and court, in an island

no one comes to bother one or dun one or to borrow money, or to beg one

to be surety for him or canvass for him: only one's best friends and

intimates come to visit one out of good will and affection, and the rest

of one's life is a sort of holy retirement to whoever wishes or has

learnt to live the life of leisure. But he who thinks those happy who

are always scouring the country, and pass most of their lives in inns

and ferryboats, is like a person who thinks the planets happier than

fixed stars. And yet every planet keeps its order, rolling in one

sphere, as in an island. For, as Heraclitus says, the sun will never

deviate from its bounds, for if it did, the Furies, who are the

ministers of Justice, would find it out.

Sec. XII. Let us use such and similar language, my friend, and harp upon

it, to those who are banished to an island, and are debarred all access

with others

"By the sea waves, which many keep apart."[931]

But you who are not tied down to one spot, but only forbidden to live in

one, have by that prohibition liberty to go to all others. Moreover to

the considerations, I am not in office, or a member of the senate, or an

umpire in the games, you may oppose these, I do not belong to any

faction, I have no large sums to spend, I have not to dance attendance

at the doors of the prefect, it is no odds to me who has got by lot the

province, whether he is hot-tempered or an objectionable person. But

just as Archilochus overlooked the fruitful fields and vineyards of

Thasos, and abused that island as rocky and uneven, and said of it,

"It stands like donkey's chine crowned with wild forest,"

so we, fixing our eyes only on one aspect of exile, its inglorious

state, overlook its freedom from cares, its leisure, its liberty. And

yet people thought the kings of Persia happy, because they passed their

winter in Babylon, their summer in Media, and the pleasant season of

spring at Susa. So can the exile be present at the Eleusinian mysteries,

at the festival of Dionysus at Athens, at the Nemean games at Argos, at

the Pythian games at Delphi, and can pass on and be a spectator of the

Isthmian and Corinthian games, if he is fond of sight-seeing; and if

not, he has leisure, can walk about, read, sleep without being

disturbed, and can say like Diogenes, "Aristotle has to dine when Philip

thinks fit, Diogenes can dine at any time he himself chooses," having no

business, or magistrate, or prefect, to put him out of his general

habits of living.

Sec. XIII. And so it is that you will find few of the wisest and most

intelligent men buried in their own countries, but most (even without

any compulsion) have themselves weighed anchor, and transferred their

course, and removed, some to Athens, some from it. For who ever bestowed

such encomium upon his country as Euripides did in the following lines?

"First we are not a race brought in from other parts,

But are indigenous, when all other cities

Are, draughts-men like, transferred from place to place,

And are imported from elsewhere. And, lady,

If it is not beside the mark to boast,

We have above us a well-tempered sky,

A climate not too hot, nor yet too cold.

And all the finest things in Greece or Asia

We do procure as an attraction here."[932]

And yet the author of these lines went to Macedonia, and lived all the

latter part of his life at the court of Archelaus. And of course you

have heard the following epitaph;

"Here lies Euphorion's son, Athenian AEschylus,

To whom death came in corn-producing Gela."

For he, like Simonides before him, went to Sicily. And many have changed

the commencing words of Herodotus, "This is the setting forth of the

history of Herodotus of Halicarnassus" into "Herodotus of Thurii." For

he migrated to Thurii, and participated in that colony. As to the divine

and sacred spirit of the Muses, the poet of the Trojan war, Homer, did

not many cities claim him as theirs, because he did not cry up one city

only? And Hospitable Zeus has many great honours.

Sec. XIV. And if anyone shall say that these pursued glory and honour, go

to the philosophers, and their schools and lectures, consider those at

the Lyceum, the Academy, the Porch, the Palladium, the Odeum. If you

admire and prefer the Peripatetic school, Aristotle was a native of

Stagira, Theophrastus of Eresus, Strato of Lampsacus, Glyco of Troas,

Aristo of Ceos, Critolaus of Phaselis. If you prefer the Stoic school,

Zeno was a native of Cittium, Cleanthes of Assus, Chrysippus of Soli,

Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus; and the Athenian Archidemus

migrated to the country of the Parthians, and left at Babylon a

succession of the Stoic school. Who exiled these men? Nobody; it was

their own pursuit of quiet, of which no one who is famous or powerful

can get much at home, that made them teach us this by their practice,

while they taught us other things by their precepts. And even nowadays

most excellent and renowned persons live in strange lands, not in

consequence of being expelled or banished, but at their own option, to

avoid business and distracting cares, and the want of leisure which

their own country would bring them. For it seems to me that the Muses

aided our old writers to complete their finest and most esteemed works

by calling in exile as a fellow-worker. Thus Thucydides the Athenian

wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the

Athenians in Thrace near the forest of Scapte, Xenophon wrote at Scillus

in Elis, Philistus in Epirus, Timaeus of Tauromenium at Athens, Androtion

of Athens at Megara, and Bacchylides the poet[933] in Peloponnesus. All

these and many more, though exiled from their country, did not despair

or give themselves up to dejection, but so happy was their disposition

that they considered exile a resource given them by fortune, whereby

they obtained universal fame after their deaths, whereas no memorial is

left of those who were factious against them and banished them.

Sec. XV. He therefore is ridiculous who thinks that any ignominy attaches

itself to exile. What say you? Was Diogenes without glory, whom

Alexander saw basking in the sun, and stopped to ask if he wanted

anything, and when he answered, "Nothing, but that you would get a

little out of my light," Alexander, astonished at his spirit, said to

his friends, "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Was

Camillus without glory when banished from Rome, of which he is now

accounted the second founder? And indeed Themistocles did not lose by

his exile the glory he had obtained among the Greeks, but he added to it

among the barbarians, and there is no one so without honour, so ignoble,

who would prefer to be Leobates who indicted him rather than

Themistocles the exile, or Clodius who banished Cicero rather than the

banished one, or Aristophon the accuser rather than Timotheus who got

driven by him from his country.

Sec. XVI. But since a good many are moved by the lines of Euripides, who

seems to bring a strong indictment against exile, let us see what it is

he says in each question and answer about it.

_Jocasta._ What is't to be an exile? Is it grievous?

_Polynices._ Most grievous, and in deed worse than in word.

_Jocasta._ What is its aspect? What is hard for exiles?

_Polynices._ This is the greatest, that they have no freedom.

_Jocasta._ This is a slave's life not to speak one's thoughts!

_Polynices._ Then one must put up with one's masters' follies.[934]

But this is not a right or true estimate.[935] For first of all, not to

say out all one thinks is not the action of a slave but of a sensible

man, in times and matters that require reticence and silence, as

Euripides himself has said elsewhere better,

"Be silent where 'tis meet, speak where 'tis safe."

Then as for the follies of one's masters, one has to put up with them

just as much in one's own country as in exile. Indeed, more frequently

have the former reason to fear that the powerful in cities will act

unjustly to them either through calumny or violence. But his greatest

and absurdest error is that he takes away from exiles freedom of speech.

It is wonderful, if Theodorus had no freedom of speech, that when

Lysimachus the king said to him, "Did not your country cast you out

because of your character?" replied, "Yes, as Semele cast out Dionysus,

when unable to bear him any longer." And when he showed him Telesphorus

in a cage,[936] with his eyes scooped out, and his nose and ears and

tongue cut off, and said to him, "This is how I treat those that act ill

to me." * *[937] And had not Diogenes freedom of speech, who, when he

visited Philip's camp just as he was on the eve of offering battle to

the Greeks, and was taken before the king as a spy, told him he had come

to see his insatiable folly, who was going shortly to stake his

dominions and life on a mere die. And did not Hannibal the Carthaginian

use freedom of speech to Antiochus, though he was an exile, and

Antiochus a king? For as a favourable occasion presented itself he urged

the king to attack the enemy, and when after sacrifice he reported that

the entrails forbade it, Hannibal chided him and said, "You listen

rather to what flesh tells you than to the instruction of a man of

experience." Nor does exile deprive geometricians or grammarians of

their freedom of speech, or prevent their discussing what they know and

have learnt. Why should it then good and worthy men? It is meanness

everywhere that stops a man's speech, ties and gags his tongue, and

forces him to be silent. But what are the next lines of Euripides?

_Jocasta._ Hopes feed the hearts of exiles, so they say.

_Polynices._ Hopes have a flattering smile, but still delay.[938]

But this is an accusation against folly rather than exile. For it is not

those who have learnt and know how to enjoy the present, but those who

ever hang on the future, and hope after what they have not, that float

as it were on hope as on a raft, though they never get beyond the

walls.[939]

_Jocasta._ But did your father's friends do nothing for you?

_Polynices._ Be fortunate! Friends are no use in trouble.

_Jocasta._ Did not your good birth better your condition?

_Polynices._ 'Tis bad to want. Birth brought no bread to me.[940]

But it was ungrateful in Polynices thus to rail against exile as

discrediting his good birth and robbing him of friends, for it was on

account of his good birth that he was deemed worthy of a royal bride

though an exile, and he came to fight supported by a band of friends and

allies, a great force, as he himself admits a little later,

"Many of the princes of the Danai

And from Mycenae are with me, bestowing

A sad but necessary kindness on me."[941]

Nor was there any more justice in the lament of his

mother:--

"I never lit for you the nuptial torch

In marriage customary, nor did Ismenus

Furnish you with the usual solemn bath."[942]

She ought to have been pleased and content to hear that her son dwelt in

such a palace _as that at Argos_, and in lamenting that the nuptial

torch was not lit, and that he had not had the usual bath in the river

Ismenus, as though there was no water or fire at Argos for wedded

people, she lays on exile the evils really caused by pride and

stupidity.

Sec. XVII. But exile, you will say, is a matter of reproach. It may be

among fools, who also jeer at the beggar, the bald man, the dwarf, aye,

and even the stranger and resident alien. But those who are not carried

away in that manner admire good men, whether they are poor, or strangers

or exiles. Do we not see that all men adore the temple of Theseus as

well as the Parthenon and Eleusinium? And yet Theseus was an exile from

Athens, though it was owing to him that Athens is now inhabited, and he

was banished from a city which he did not merely dwell in, but had

himself built. And what glory is left to Eleusis, if we are ashamed of

Eumolpus, who migrated from Thrace, and taught the Greeks (as he still

teaches them) the mysteries? And who was the father of Codrus that

reigned at Athens? Was it not Melanthus, an exile from Messene? And do

you not praise the answer of Antisthenes to the person who told him that

his mother was a Phrygian, "So also is the mother of the gods." If you

are twitted then with exile, why do you not answer, "The father of the

glorious victor Hercules was an exile." And Cadmus, the grandfather of

Dionysus, when he was sent from home to find Europa, and never came

back, "though a Phoenician born he changed his country,"[943] and

migrated to Thebes, and became[944] the grandfather of "Dionysus, who

rejoices in the cry of Evoe, the exciter of women, who delights in

frantic honours." As for what AEschylus obscurely hints at in the line,

"Apollo the chaste god, exile from heaven,"

let me keep a religious silence, as Herodotus[945] says. And Empedocles

commences his system of philosophy as follows, "It is an ordinance of

necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, when anyone stains his hands

with crime and murder, the long-lived demons get hold of him, so that he

wanders away from the gods for thirty thousand years. Such is my

condition now, that of an exile and wanderer from the gods." In these

words he not only speaks of himself, but points out that all of us men

similarly are strangers and foreigners and exiles in this world. For he

says, "O men, it is not blood or a compounded spirit that made the being

or beginning of the soul, but it is your earth-born and mortal body that

is made up of these." He calls speciously by the mildest of names the

birth of the soul that has come from elsewhere a living in a strange

country. But the truth is the soul is an exile and wanderer, being

driven about by the divine decrees and laws, and then, as in some

sea-girt island, gets joined to the body like an oyster to its shell, as

Plato says, because it cannot call to mind or remember from what honour

and greatness of happiness it migrated, not from Sardis to Athens, nor

from Corinth to Lemnos or Scyros, but exchanging heaven and the moon for

earth and life upon earth, if it shifts from place to place for ever so

short a time it is put out and feels strange, and fades away like a

dying plant. But although one soil is more suitable to a plant than

another, and it thrives and grows better on such a soil, yet no

situation can rob a man of his happiness or virtue or sense. It was in

prison that Anaxagoras wrote his squaring of the circle, and that

Socrates, even after drinking the hemlock, talked philosophically, and

begged his friends to be philosophers, and was esteemed happy by them.

On the other hand, Phaethon and Tantalus, though they got up to heaven,

fell into the greatest misfortunes through their folly, as the poets

tell us.

[913] Euripides, "Phoenissae," 388, 389.

[914] Reading [Greek: bakelas]. _Gallus_ in Latin.

[915] "Iliad," xxiv. 527-533.

[916] Plato, "Timaeus," p. 90 A. Compare Ovid,

"Metamorphoses," i. 84-86.

[917] Derived from [Greek: meta, geiton], because then

people flitted and changed their neighbours.

[918] Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 253.

[919] See also Pausanias, viii. 24.

[920] Pindar, Fragm. 126.

[921] AEschylus, "Niobe," Fragm. 146.

[922] "Odyssey," vi. 8. I read [Greek: andron] as

Wyttenbach.

[923] "Odyssey," vi. 204.

[924] See Pausanias, v. 6.

[925] In our money about L121 17_s._ 6_d._

[926] "Iliad," xiv. 230.

[927] "Iliad," xxiv. 544.

[928] "Iliad," ix. 668.

[929] "Iliad," ii. 625, 626.

[930] So Reiske.

[931] "Iliad," xxi. 59.

[932] Euripides, Fragm. 950.

[933] Reiske suggests [Greek: Bakchylides ho Keios]. A

very probable suggestion.

[934] Euripides, "Phoenissae," 388-393.

[935] Omitting [Greek: prhotos], which probably got in

from [Greek: proton] following, and for which Reiske

conjectured [Greek: horas hos].

[936] Such as Cardinal Balue was shut up by Louis XI in

for fourteen years.

[937] The answer of Theodorus is wanting.

[938] Euripides, "Phoenissae," 396, 397.

[939] That is, they never get any further.

[940] Euripides, "Phoenissae," 402-405.

[941] Euripides, "Phoenissae," 430-432.

[942] Ibid. 344-346.

[943] Reading [Greek: chthonos]. "Sic mutandum censet

Valckenarius."--_Wyttenbach._

[944] Through his daughter Semele.

[945] Herodotus, ii. 171.

ON FORTUNE.

Sec. I. "Fortune, not wisdom, rules the affairs of mortals."[946] And does

not justice, and fairness, and sobriety, and decorum rule the affairs of

mortals? Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Aristides persevered

in his poverty, when he might have been lord of much wealth? And that

Scipio after taking Carthage neither saw nor received any of the spoil?

Was it of fortune or owing to fortune that Philocrates spent on harlots

and fish the money he had received from Philip? And that Lasthenes and

Euthycrates lost Olynthus, measuring happiness by their belly and lusts?

Was it of fortune that Alexander the son of Philip not only himself

abstained from the captive women, but punished others that outraged

them? Was it under the influence of an evil genius and fortune that

Alexander,[947] the son of Priam, intrigued with the wife of his host

and ran away with her, and filled two continents with war and evils? For

if all these things are due to fortune, what hinders our saying that

cats and goats and apes are under the influence of fortune in respect of

greediness, and lust, and ribaldry?

Sec. II. And if there are such things as sobriety and justice and

fortitude, with what reason can we deny the existence of prudence, and

if prudence exists, how can we deny the existence of wisdom? For

sobriety is a kind of prudence, as people say, and justice also needs

the presence of prudence. Nay more, we call the wisdom and prudence that

makes people good in regard to pleasure self-control and sobriety, and

in dangers and hardships endurance and fortitude, and in dealings

between man and man and in public life equity and justice. And so, if we

are to ascribe to fortune the acts of wisdom, let us ascribe justice and

sobriety to fortune also, aye, and let us put down to fortune stealing,

and picking pockets, and lewdness, and let us bid farewell to argument,

and throw ourselves entirely on fortune, as if we were, like dust or

refuse, borne along and hurried away by a violent wind. For if there be

no wisdom, it is not likely that there is any deliberation or

investigation of matters, or search for expediency, but Sophocles only

talked nonsense when he said,

"Whate'er is sought is found, what is neglected

Escapes our notice;"[948]

and again in dividing human affairs,

"What can be taught I learn, what can be found out

Duly investigate, and of the gods

I ask for what is to be got by prayer."[949]

For what can be found out or learnt by men, if everything is due to

fortune? And what deliberative assembly of a state is not annulled, what

council of a king is not abrogated, if all things are subject to

fortune? whom we abuse as blind because we ourselves are blind in our

dealings with her. Indeed, how can it be otherwise, seeing that we

repudiate wisdom, which is like plucking out our eyes, and take a blind

guide of our lives?

Sec. III. Supposing any of us were to assert that seeing is a matter of

fortune, not of eyesight, nor of the eyes that give light, as Plato

says, and that hearing is a matter of fortune, and not the imbibing of a

current of air through the ear and brain, it would be well for us then

to be on our guard against the evidence of our senses. But indeed nature

has given us sight and hearing and taste and smell, and all other parts

of the body and their functions, as ministers of wisdom and prudence.

For "it is the mind that sees, and the mind that hears, everything else

is deaf and blind." And just as, if there were no sun, we should have

perpetual night for all the stars, as Heraclitus says, so man for all

his senses, if he had no mind or reason, would be little better than the

beasts. But as it is, it is not by fortune or chance that we are

superior to them and masters of them, but Prometheus, that is reason, is

the cause of this,

"Presenting us with bulls, horses, and asses,

To ease us of our toil, and serve instead,"

as AEschylus says.[950] For as to fortune and natural condition, most of

the beasts are better off than we are. For some are armed with horns and

tusks and stings, and as for the hedgehog, as Empedocles says, it has

its back all rough with sharp bristles, and some are shod and protected

by scales and fur and talons and hoofs worn smooth by use, whereas man

alone, as Plato says, is left by nature naked, unarmed, unshod, and

uncovered. But by one gift, that of reason and painstaking and

forethought, nature compensates for all these deficiencies. "Small

indeed is the strength of man, but by the versatility of his intellect

he can tame the inhabitants of the sea, earth, and air."[951] Nothing is

more agile and swift than horses, yet they run for man; the dog is a

courageous and high-spirited creature, yet it guards man; fish is most

pleasant to the taste, the pig the fattest of all animals, yet both are

food and delicacies for man. What is huger or more formidable in

appearance than the elephant? Yet it is man's plaything, and a spectacle

at public shows, and learns to dance and kneel. And all these things are

not idly introduced, but to the end that they may teach us to what

heights reason raises man, and what things it sets him above, and how it

makes him master of everything.

"For we are not good boxers, nor good wrestlers,

Nor yet swift runners,"[952]

for in all these points we are less fortunate than the beasts. But by

our experience and memory and wisdom and cunning, as Anaxagoras says, we

make use of them, and get their honey and milk, and catch them, and

drive and lead them about at our will. And there is nothing of fortune

in this, it is all the result of wisdom and forethought.

Sec. IV. Moreover the labours of carpenters and coppersmiths and

house-builders and statue-makers are affairs of mortals, and we see that

no success in such trades is got by fortune or chance. For that fortune

plays a very small part in the life of a wise man, whether coppersmith

or house-builder, and that the greatest works are wrought by art alone,

is shown by the poet in the following lines:--

"All handicraftsmen go into the street,

Ye that with fan-shaped baskets worship Ergane,

Zeus' fierce-eyed daughter;"[953]

for Ergane[954] and Athene, and not Fortune, do the trades regard as

their patrons. They do indeed say that Nealces,[955] on one occasion

painting a horse, was quite satisfied with his painting in all other

respects, but that some foam on the bridle from the horse's breath did

not please him, so that he frequently tried to rub it out; at last in

his anger he threw his sponge (just as it was, full of colours) at the

picture, and this very wonderfully produced exactly the effect he

desired. This is the only fortunate accident in art that history

records. Artificers everywhere use rules and weights and measures, that

none of their work may be done at random and anyhow. And indeed the arts

may be considered as wisdom on a small scale, or rather as emanations

from and fragments of wisdom scattered about among the necessities of

life; as the fire of Prometheus is riddled to have been divided and

scattered about in all quarters of the world. For thus small particles

and fragments of wisdom, breaking up as it were and getting divided into

pieces, have formed into order.

Sec. V. It is strange then that the arts do not require fortune to attain

to their ends, and yet that the most important and complete of all the

arts, the sum total of man's glory and merit, should be so completely

powerless. Why, there is a kind of wisdom even in the tightening or

slackening of chords, which people call music, and in the dressing of

food, which we call the art of cooking, and in cleaning clothes, which

we call the art of the fuller, and we teach boys how to put on their

shoes and clothes generally, and to take their meat in the right hand

and their bread in the left, since none of these things come by fortune,

but require attention and care. And are we to suppose that the most

important things which make so much for happiness do not call for

wisdom, and have nothing to do with reason and forethought? Why, no one

ever yet wetted earth with water and then left it, thinking it would

become bricks by fortune and spontaneously, or procured wool and

leather, and sat down and prayed Fortune that it might become clothes

and shoes; nor does anyone getting together much gold and silver and a

quantity of slaves, and living in a spacious hall with many doors, and

making a display of costly couches and tables, believe that these things

will constitute his happiness, and give him a painless happy life secure

from changes, unless he be wise also. A certain person asked the general

Iphicrates in a scolding way who he was, as he seemed neither a

heavy-armed soldier, nor a bowman, nor a targeteer, and he replied, "I

am the person who rule and make use of all these."

Sec. VI. So wisdom is neither gold, nor silver, nor fame, nor wealth, nor

health, nor strength, nor beauty. What is it then? It is what can use

all these well, and that by means of which each of these things becomes

pleasant and esteemed and useful, and without which they are useless;

and unprofitable and injurious, and a burden and disgrace to their

possessor. So Hesiod's Prometheus gives very good advice to Epimetheus,

"not to receive gifts from Olympian Zeus but to send them back,"[956]

meaning external things and things of fortune. For as if he urged one

who knew nothing of music not to play on the pipe, or one who knew

nothing of letters not to read, or one who was not used to horses not to

ride, so he advised him not to take office if he were foolish, nor to

grow rich if he were illiberal, nor to marry if likely to be ruled by

his wife. For success beyond their merit is to foolish persons a cause

of folly, as Demosthenes said,[957] and good fortune beyond their merit

is to those who are not sensible a cause of misfortune.[958]

[946] A line from Chaeremon.

[947] Better known as Paris.

[948] "Oedipus Tyrannus," 110, 111. Wyttenbach compares

Terence, "Heauton Timorumenos," 675. "Nil tam

difficilest, quin quaerende investigari possiet."

[949] Soph., Frag. 723.

[950] AEschylus, Fragm. 180. Reading [Greek: antidoula]

with Reiske and the MSS.

[951] Euripides, "AEolus," Fragm. 27.

[952] Homer, "Odyssey," viii. 246, 247.

[953] Soph., Frag. 724.

[954] "The Worker." Generally a title of Athene, as

Pausanias, i. 24; iii. 17; v. 14; vi. 26; viii. 32; ix.

26. Gataker thinks [Greek: kai ten] should be expunged.

Hercher omits [Greek: kai ten 'Athenan] altogether.

[955] So Hercher after Madvig. See Pliny, "Hist. Nat.,"

XXXV. 36, 20.

[956] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 86, 87.

[957] "Olynth.," i. 23.

[958] The whole of this essay reminds one of the

well-known lines of Juvenal, twice repeated--namely, x.

365, 366; and xiv. 315, 316:--

"Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia; nos te,

Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam caeloque locamus."

INDEX.

Abrotonus, 37.

Absence, the test of affection, 122.

Academy, the, 385.

Achilles, 5, 52, 102, 172, 187, 196, 200, 271, 290, 291, 301, 319.

Acropolis, statue of Leaena in the, 221.

Admetus, 52.

Adonis, 43, 352.

Adultery, the fruit of curiosity, 245.

Love of change, 298.

AEschines, 17, 188, 285.

AEschylus, quoted or referred to, 33, 45, 47, 55, 61, 125,

126, 130, 176, 203, 205, 242, 271, 273, 385, 388, 393, 396.

AEsculapius, 244, 270.

AEsop, fables of alluded to, 72, 81, 88, 125, 142.

Agamemnon, 292, 300, 301.

Agathoclea, 37.

Agathocles, 278, 324, 325, 347.

Agave, 144.

Agesilaus, 129, 136, 161, 166, 262, 264, 326.

Agis, 294.

Aglaonice, her knowledge of eclipses, 83.

Ajax, 113, 347.

Alcaeus, 56, 59.

Alcestis, 53.

Alcibiades, 54, 128, 135, 160, 192, 294, 338.

Alcman, 379.

Alexander, the Great, 16, 50, 113, 124, 137, 151, 162, 172, 174,

184, 185, 195, 250, 270, 277, 280, 292, 301, 303, 314, 321, 389,

390, 394.

Alexinus, 266.

Ammonius, Plutarch's master, 194.

Amoebeus, 102.

Amphictyones, 121, 230.

Anacharsis, 125, 219.

Anacreon, 33.

Anaxagoras, 136, 306, 373, 394, 397.

Anaxarchus, 107, 113, 253, 292.

Anger, how to restrain, 267-288.

Animals, appeal to, 21-25.

Use of, 202.

Answers, three different kinds of, 234.

Anticyra, 284.

Antigonus, 16, 38, 222, 258, 263, 276, 278, 326, 370.

Antileon, 50.

Antimachus, poet, 234.

Antipater, 77, 124, 182, 237, 260, 297.

Antipatridas, 50.

Antiphanes, 125.

Antiphon, 189.

Antisthenes, 266.

Antony, 176.

Anytus, 54, 141.

Apelles, 10, 171, 302.

Aphrodite, 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, 78, 80, 219.

Apollo, 154, 347, 377.

Araspes, 136.

Arcadio, 276.

Arcesilaus, 180, 283.

Archelaus, 258, 388.

Archidamus, king, 2, 264.

Archilochus, 215, 247, 387.

Archytas, of Tarentum, 11, 15, 336.

Ares, 44, 45, 47, 49.

Argus, 146.

Aristaeus (the _Saint Hubert_ of the Middle Ages), 45.

Aristides, 120, 136.

Aristippus, 6, 32, 93, 127, 128, 240, 285, 297.

Aristo, 98, 241.

Aristocrates, 322.

Aristogiton, 50, 67, 189, 220.

Aristomenes, the hero, 52.

Aristomenes, tutor of Ptolemy Epiphanes, 195.

Aristonica, 37.

Aristophanes, 15, 27, 43, 93, 195, 241.

Aristotle, 100, 101, 110, 124, 162, 215, 270, 278, 281, 303, 326,

386.

Arisinoe, sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 16.

Artemis, 367.

Asopichus, 52.

Ass-driver, story of Athenian, 282.

Athene, ornament of, 366.

Athene and the Satyr, 273.

Athene Chalcioecus, 228.

Called Ergane, 397.

Athenians, oracle given to the, 367.

Attis, 43.

Augustus, 189, 224, 225.

Aulis, famous for earthenware, 366.

Bacchis, 37.

Barbers, a talkative race, 226, 227.

Baxter, Richard, and Plutarch, Preface, viii, note.

Belestiche, 38.

Bellerophon, 246, 255.

Bessus, story about, 341.

Bias, 176, 217, 332.

Bion, 10, 67, 132, 172, 258, 354.

Bocchoris, 255.

Books, value of, 12.

Boys, not to be overworked, 13.

To be taught to speak the truth, 16.

Love of, 17, 31, 33-35, 50, 51, 52, 54, 61, 64, 65, 67.

Brasidas, 120, 126, 331.

Briareus, 146, 150, 299.

Brides, custom of in Boeotia, 70, 71.

Custom of at Leptis in Libya, 79.

Caeneus, his change of sex, 120.

Caesar, Julius, 210.

Callimachus, 272, 385.

Callisthenes, 270.

Callixenus, 141.

Camma, story about, 63, 64.

Carneades, 172, 235, 237, 306, 310.

Cassander, 256, 339, 351.

Cassandra, 347.

Cato, 48, 72, 211, 212, 263, 325, 369.

Cebes, 17.

Cephisocrates, 181.

Cephisodorus, 52.

Ceramicus, at Athens, 219, 259.

Cestus of Aphrodite, 76, 219.

Chaeron, son of Plutarch, 87.

Chaeron, and Chaeronea, 238.

Chaeronea, Plutarch's native place, 238.

Chalcis, people of, 51.

Chameleon, 158, 162.

Character, moral, 102.

Childless, paid court to, 28.

Chilo, 151, 202.

Chrysippus, 44, 99, 110, 113, 114, 115.

Cicero, 210, 318, 320, 390.

Cimon, father of Miltiades, 27, 52.

Claudia, 84.

Cleanthes, 370.

Clearchus, 191.

Cleomachus, 51.

Cleonice, 343, 344.

Clitus, 113, 195, 277.

Clodius, 231, 232.

Clytaemnestra, dream of, 343.

Conjugal constancy, 81.

Conjugal precepts, 70-84.

Contentedness of mind, on, 289-311.

Contracts, 139.

Corax, 352.

Cornelia, sister of Scipio, 84.

Correction of servants, 279-281.

Crassus, 207, 208.

Crates, 76, 141, 191, 203, 292, 328, 370, 372.

Creon, his daughter, 151.

Crete, 202.

Crisso, 172.

Croesus, 171, 192.

Ctesiphon, 275.

Curiosity, 238-252.

Cybele, 47, 55, 82, 379.

Cyclades, 385.

Cynic, story about, 258.

Cynosarges, 32, note.

Cyrus, 79, 236, 250, 314, 326.

Danaus, 27.

Darius, 157, 250.

Deity, on those who are punished late by the, 331-365.

Demaratus, 193.

Demetrius, 8, 191, 230.

Democritus, 14, 110, 129, 142, 249, 377.

Demosthenes, 9, 128, 192, 205, 257, 259, 320, 321, 323, 331, 399.

Diogenes, 2, 7, 93, 118, 123, 124, 127, 131, 140, 141, 193, 201, 203,

205, 248, 258, 259, 282, 292, 294, 301, 311, 383, 388, 389, 390,

391.

Dion, 11, 151, 161, 162, 192, 256.

Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, 76, 151, 160, 161, 162, 163, 168, 187,

188, 189, 226, 230, 261, 294, 321, 339.

Dionysius, a Corinthian poet, 51.

Dionysus (the Latin _Bacchus_), 45, 47, 91, 145, 393.

Dioxippus, 248.

Disease, the sacred, 41, note.

Disorders, of mind or body, which worse? 142, 145.

Dolon, 113, 120.

Domitian, 251.

Domitius, 207, 211.

Dorian measure, 134.

Drink, 2, 216, 217, 284.

Dryads, 45.

Earthenware, 366.

Education, 1-21.

Egyptian, answer of an, 240.

Emerson, on Plutarch, _see_ Title-page, and Preface, p. ix.

Empedocles, 43, 145, 149, 180, 288, 305, 371, 393, 396.

Empone, her devotion to her husband, 67-69.

Enemies, how a man may be benefited by his, 201-213.

Enthusiasm, 47.

Envy, 212, 213, 243, 304.

On envy and hatred, 312-315.

How one can praise oneself without exciting envy, 315-331.

Epaminondas, 11, 52, 136, 161, 294, 318, 321, 326, 376.

Ephesus, 367.

Ephorus, 236.

Epicharmus, 188, 189, 350.

Epicureans, argued against, 21-28, 373-378.

Epicurus, 24, 291, 306, 373, 375.

Epitaphs, 247, 248.

Erasistratus, 25, 244.

Ergane, name of Athene, 397.

Eumenes, 222.

Euphemism, 112, 143, 144, 167.

Euphorion, 303.

Eupolis, 163.

Euripides, quoted or referred to, 1, 8, 9, 14, 17, 27, 28, 40, 42, 43,

44, 50, 53, 56, 58, 60, 67, 79, 80, 86, 89, 107, 112, 119, 136, 138,

144, 146, 150, 151, 152, 155, 160, 170, 178, 179, 182, 190, 191, 194,

196, 197, 199, 205, 206, 207, 209, 214, 216, 222, 223, 236, 247, 251,

255, 256, 260, 261, 262, 270, 287, 290, 292, 293, 301, 305, 307, 309,

310, 315, 325, 332, 333, 334, 345, 346, 373, 379, 383, 388, 390, 391,

392, 397.

Eurydice of Hierapolis, 21.

Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, 53.

Euthydemus, 283.

Eutropio, cook to King Antigonus, 16.

Evenus, sayings of, 27, 155.

Exercise, value of, 12.

Exile, 378-394.

Fabius Maximus, 224, 225.

Fabricius, 294.

Family, defects and idiosyncrasies of, 356, 357.

Fancy, power of, 307.

Fathers, not to be too strict, 20.

To set a good example to their sons, 20, 21.

The _jus trium liberorum_, 22.

Saying of Evenus about fathers, 27.

Favour, _the_, 33, 34.

Reminding of favours unpleasant, 181.

Feast, every day a, 311.

Fickleness, 146.

Flatterers, 19.

Saying of Phocion about, 77, 182.

How to be discerned from friends, 153-201.

Flute-girls at marriages, 40.

Fortune, not to be railed at, 89-91.

Fortune's rope-dance, 139.

Fortune and vice, 140, 141.

On Fortune, 394-399.

Freedom of speech, 185-201.

Friends, on abundance of, 145-153.

Friendship going in pairs, 146, 147.

Originated by similarity, 152, 158, 159.

How friends are to be distinguished from flatterers, 153-201.

Galba, story about, 49.

Geese, ingenuity of, 229.

Germanicus, idiosyncrasy of, 312.

Glaucus, son of Epicydes, 353.

Gobryas, 157.

Gods considered as forces, 44, 302.

Perform their benefits secretly, 181.

Gorgias, 81.

Gorgo, wife of Leonidas, 84.

Gracchus, 273.

Great, the, especially open to flatterers, 184, 185.

Grief, immoderate at death to be avoided, 86, 87, 88.

Unexpected grief worst, 113, 306.

Gylippus, 15.

Habit, force of, 3, 4, 337.

Hannibal, remark of, 391.

Happiness, the mind the seat of, 95.

Hares, 368.

Harmodius, 67, 189, 220.

Hatred, and envy, 312-315.

Hegesias, 28.

Helicon, Mount, 29, 30.

Helots, 272.

Hemlock, how affected by wine, 228.

Heraclea, 343.

Heraclitus, 41, 93, 231, 276, 350, 387, 396.

Hercules, 39, 52, 299, 321, 347, 348, 352.

Heredity, 1, 2, 351, 355.

Hermes, his functions, 46.

Proverbial saying about, 215.

Herodotus, 72, 94, 141, 157, 171, 192, 299, 367, 388, 393.

Herophilus, 244.

Herrick, and Plutarch, _see_ Preface, viii, 288, note.

Hesiod, quoted or alluded to, 14, 36, 44, 96, 121, 123, 155, 180, 212,

256, 261, 290, 304, 341, 355, 398, 399.

Hiero, 209, 338.

Hieronymus, 271, 281.

Hipparchus, dream of, 343.

Hippocrates, 132, 237, 238.

Hippothorus, a tune, 70.

Homer, alluded to or quoted, 16, 23, 24, 26, 33, 44, 45, 48, 52, 54, 55,

56, 61, 65, 66, 71, 75, 76, 80, 83, 91, 95, 101, 102, 108, 110, 113,

117, 118, 122, 127, 128, 130, 132, 138, 139, 142, 147, 149, 160, 161,

165, 170, 172, 176, 179, 187, 192, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 204, 209,

216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 235, 239, 246, 247, 254,

268, 270, 271, 272, 281, 283, 284, 290, 291, 292, 300, 301, 302, 304,

307, 308, 309, 313, 318, 319, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327, 329, 340, 341,

347, 352, 368, 369, 372, 378, 385, 386, 387, 397, 398.

Hyperides, 187.

Hypsipyle, her foster-child, 146.

Ibycus, story about, 228.

Idaean Dactyli, 136.

Ignorance of self, 143.

Imagination, power of, 101, 102.

Indian wives, 140.

Indian sages, 140, 141.

Infants, death of, 92.

Iolaus, nephew of Hercules, 39, 52.

Iphicrates, answer of, 94, 398.

Knowledge of self, 154, 185, 207, 302.

Labour, its power, 3.

Lacydes, friend of Arcesilaus, 181.

Lacydes, king of the Argives, 208.

Lais, famous courtesan, 32, 49, 63.

Law, martial, 211.

Leaena, her heroism, 220, 221.

Lemnos, the women of, 41.

Leo of Byzantium, saying of, 206.

Life, the three kinds of, 11.

Like a game at dice, 293.

Chequered, 305.

"Live unknown," whether a wise precept, 373-378.

Litigation, evil effects of, 145.

Livia, wife of Augustus, 225.

Liver, the seat of desire, 115.

Locrians, custom of the, 347.

Locris, authorities of, 245.

Love, to one's offspring, 21-28.

On love generally, 29-69.

God of Love, his festival at Thespiae, 29, 63.

Pandemian and Celestial love, 57.

No strong love without jealousy, 135.

Lovers admire even the defects of their loves, 136, 167, 168, 209,

213.

Love blind, 153.

Loxias, name of Apollo, meaning of, 231.

Lyciscus, 332, 333.

Lycurgus, 3, 136, 230, 320.

Lydiades, 238.

Lydian measure, 134.

Lydian produce, 145.

Lynceus, 203.

Lysander, 76, 262.

Lysias, 218.

Lysimache, 263.

Lysimachus, king, 225, 241, 344, 390, 391.

Maecenas, 49.

Magas, 113, 276, 277.

Man, his wretchedness, 26, 142.

Different views of men, 114.

Man's various idiosyncrasies and fortunes, 149.

Marriage, 20, 31-39, 63-69.

Hesiod on the proper age for marriage, 36.

No _Meum_ and _Tuum_ to exist in marriage, 62, 74, 75.

Mutual respect a vital necessity in marriage, 62.

Conjugal Precepts, 70-84.

Marsyas, 273.

Means, various kinds of, 104, 105.

Measures, Dorian and Lydian, 134.

Median war, 367.

Medius, 184, 303.

Megabyzus, 171, 302.

Megara, wife of Hercules, 39.

Megarians, their sacrifice to Poseidon, 133.

Melanippus, 50.

Melanthius, 81, 336.

Meleager, 52.

Meletus, 120, 141.

Memory, the storehouse of learning, 14.

Menander, 55, 96, 114, 115, 146, 150, 164, 173, 179, 257, 291, 305, 307,

310, 330.

Menedemus, 98, 130, 165, 303.

Metageitnion, 382.

Metella, wife of Sulla, 219.

Metellus, 222, 277, 320.

Metrocles, 140, 295.

Metrodorus, saying of, 77.

Mice, dislike to, 312.

Miltiades, the son of Cimon, 27, 135, 338.

Mirrors of the ancients, 59, note.

Comparison of wives to mirrors, 73.

Proper use of the mirror, 76.

Comparison of the flatterer to a mirror, 161.

Mithridates, 170, 219.

Money, against borrowing, 365-373.

Montaigne, and Plutarch, Preface, vii.

Mothers, to be carefully selected, 1.

To suckle their children, 4.

Munychia, 38.

Music, power of, 102.

Musonius, 370.

Nasica, saying of, 205.

Nations, most warlike also most amorous, 52.

Natures, great, 338.

Nealces, story about, 397.

Neglect, not liked, 150.

Neocles, father of Themistocles, 27.

Nero, 151, 168, 175, 220, 284, 365.

Nicostratus, 49, 264.

Night, Greek word for, 249.

Ninus and Semiramis, 37, 38.

Niobe, 50.

No, saying, 255, 260, 262.

Ocnus, 304.

Odysseus, self-restraint of, 101, 221, 307.

Oedipus, 28, 197, 250, 251.

Oenanthe, 37.

Old age querulous, 329.

Olympia, remarkable portico at, 214.

Olympias, wife of King Philip, 75, 76.

Olynthus, 305.

Onomademus, wise advice of, 212.

Oratory, extempore and prepared, 9, 10, 128.

Laconic oratory, 230.

Orpheus, 53.

Paley, F. A., on the Moralia, Preface, vii.

Pan, 47.

Panthea, 136.

Parmenides, his Cosmogony, 44.

Parmenio, 151.

Parthian juice, 141.

Passions, difference in, 113, 114.

Patroclus, 172, 187, 319, 325.

Pausanias and Cleonice, 343, 344.

Pederasty, _see_ Boys, love of.

Perfection, not in mortals, 287.

Pericles, son of Xanthippus, 9, 11, 27, 258, 317, 323, 340, 349, 366.

Perseus, 192, 193, 307.

Persia, kings of, 73, 124, 140, 382, 387.

Phaeethon, 293, 347, 394.

Phalaris, 120, 168, 339.

Phayllus and his wife, 49, 50.

Phidias, 78.

Philip, King, 49, 50, 75, 80, 82, 188, 193, 230, 247, 276, 277, 384.

Philippides, comic poet, 32, 225, 241.

Philosophy, its importance, 11, 97, 98.

Philosophers' dress, 129, 141, 160, 203.

Birthplace of various philosophers, 389.

Philotas, 151.

Philotimus, 198.

Philoxenus, 373.

Phocion, 77, 136, 182, 260, 280, 319, 327, 328.

Phocylides, 5.

Phoenix, tutor of Achilles, 5, 196.

Phryne, 38, 49.

Phrynis, 134.

Pindar, 33, 34, 45, 54, 116, 138, 183, 190, 205, 210, 212, 267, 275,

294, 302, 303, 310, 315, 316, 335, 339, 348, 355, 377, 384.

Pirithous, 151.

Piso, Pupius, story about, 231, 232.

Pittacus, 222, 300.

Plato, 2, 5, 7, 8, 12, 15, 17, 27, 29, 34, 47, 49, 62, 66, 74, 77, 82,

83, 93, 96, 99, 100, 106, 113, 114, 115, 118, 120, 125, 132, 135, 136,

153, 154, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 167, 187, 188, 192, 194, 196, 206,

209, 213, 220, 230, 255, 261, 264, 274, 286, 287, 293, 294, 306, 311,

334, 335, 336, 341, 342, 365, 385, 393, 395, 396.

Plutarch's wife, _see_ Timoxena.

Polemo, 196, 285, 385.

Polycletus, 138.

Polypus, the, 152, 158, 161.

Polysperchon, 256, 261.

Pompey, the Great, 208, 210, 340.

His father Pompeius Strabo, 340.

Portico, remarkable, 214.

Porus, 277.

Poseidon, 133.

Postumia, 208.

Praise of self, 315-331.

Proteus, 152.

Proverbs, 4, 5, 9, 14, 18, 19, 20, 49, 62, 75, 80, 82, 121, 146, 147,

154, 157, 175, 183, 189, 212, 215, 217, 235, 260, 263, 306, 317,

333, 334, 341, 355, 369.

Ptolemy Auletes, 168.

Ptolemy Epiphanes, 195.

Ptolemy Philadelphus, 16.

Ptolemy Philopator, 168.

Ptolemy Physcon, 174.

Punishment, on those that receive late punishment from the Deity,

331-365.

Puppies, differently trained, 3, 4.

Pydna, 192.

Pyrrho, saying of, 132.

Pythagoras, 2, 18, 19, 100, 151, 194, 211, 240, 245, 383.

Pythian Priestess, 233, 367.

Reason, power of, 101, 133, 221, 289.

Remorse, 344, 345.

Repartee, 206, 207.

Respites, 339.

Rusticus, 251.

Rutilius, 370.

Sabinus, story about, 67-69.

Sappho, 34, 55, 84, 130, 274.

Saturnalia, 311, note.

Satyr, story about the, 202, 203.

Scaurus, 211.

Scilurus, and the bundle of sticks, 231.

Scipio, 318.

Sejanus, 151.

Seleucus Callinicus, 226.

Self, love of, 153, 154, 301.

Ignorance of, 143.

Knowledge of, 154, 185, 207, 302.

Semiramis, 37, 38.

Senator, story about Roman, 223, 224.

Seneca, 284.

Sextius, 123.

Shyness, 252-267.

Silence, benefit of, 220-222, 230-232, 237.

Simonides, 23, 106, 108, 126, 135, 154, 183, 184, 212, 237, 246, 299,

344, 384.

Sinatus, 63, 64.

Sinorix, 63, 64.

Socrates, 2, 8, 15, 17, 54, 76, 136, 140, 145, 188, 192, 194, 196, 210,

232, 234, 235, 240, 250, 271, 277, 283, 292, 293, 299, 300, 308, 314,

336, 394.

Solon, 33, 34, 56, 124, 171, 192, 213, 303, 335, 367.

His legislation for husbands, 65.

His direction to brides, 70.

Sophocles, quoted or referred to, 3, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, 62, 64, 76,

106, 122, 125, 134, 148, 150, 162, 197, 200, 207, 218, 227, 232, 242,

249, 251, 255, 272, 278, 281, 286, 295, 319, 376, 395, 397.

Sotades, 16.

Speusippus, nephew of Plato, 15, 192, 196.

Step-ladders, 156.

Step-mothers, 79, note.

Stilpo, 8, 133, 266, 295, 308.

Stoics, 172, 254, 302.

Stratocles, 32.

Suicide, always possible, 309.

Sulla, 219, 322.

Sycophant, origin of word, 252.

Talkativeness, 214-238.

Tantalus, 49, 138, 385, 394.

Tavern-frequenting, 131, note.

Taylor, Jeremy, and Plutarch, Preface, vii, viii, 84, note, 238, note,

245, note, 288, note.

Telephus, 207.

Tenedos, famous for earthenware, 366.

Theano, wife of Pythagoras, 78, 84.

Thebans, and Lacedaemonians, 270.

Themistocles, and his son, 1, 2.

His father Neocles, 27.

Themistocles and Miltiades, 135, 213, 338.

Suspicion about, 208.

Sayings of, 264, 314, 320.

Theocritus, the Sophist, 16, 263.

Theodorus, 141, 293, 327, 390, 391.

Theognis, his advice, 152.

Theophrastus, 124, 327.

Thero, the Thessalian, 52.

Theseus, 151, 392.

Thespesius, of Soli, curious story about, 357-365.

Thessalians very pugnacious, 3, note.

Thessaly famous for enchantments, 75, note, 83.

Thucydides, 127, 152, 167, 195, 198, 208, 261, 265, 314, 317, 332, 336,

349, 389.

Tiberius, 151, 174, 175, 225, 384.

Timaea, 294.

Timesias, oracle given to, 151.

Timoleon, 322.

Timon, 107.

Timotheus, 316.

Timoxena, wife of Plutarch, consolatory letter to, 85-92.

Timoxena, daughter of Plutarch, 85-92.

Tongue, government of the, 15, 16, 209, 210, 214-238, 274.

Barricaded by nature, 216.

Training, power of, 5-7.

Triptolemus, 368.

Truth, a divine thing, 154.

Tutors, choice of, 5-7;

Habits they teach boys, 94.

Versatility, 152, 153.

Vespasian, 67, 69.

Vice, not got rid of as easily as a wife, 96.

Uneasiness of, 96, 97, 139.

Whether it is sufficient to cause unhappiness, 138-142.

Vice in embryo, 355, 356.

Virtue, its two elements, 18.

Can be taught, 92-95.

On virtue and vice, 95-98.

On moral virtue, 98-118.

On progress in virtue, 118-138.

Washing hands usual before dinner, 156.

Wealth, has wings, 124, 303.

Wives, to be carefully selected, 1.

Rich wives, 20, 138.

Indian wives, 140.

Words, winged, 223.

Wyttenbach, his criticism on Reiske, Preface, viii, ix.

Xanthippe, wife of Socrates, 210, 283.

Xanthippus, father of Pericles, 27.

Xenocrates, 66, 77, 118, 196, 248, 261, 385.

Xenophanes, 55, 108, 257.

Xenophon, 17, 83, 166, 191, 202, 239, 250, note, 289, 316, 335, 389.

Xerxes, 272, 299.

Youth, a ticklish period of life, 17, 18.

Zaleucus, 322.

Zeno, founder of the Stoics, 99, 102, 124, 132, 203, 217, 220, 262, 263,

285, 294, 327, 386.

Zeuxis, his remark on painting, 148.

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,

CHANCERY LANE.

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