and utterly whelming the subject in doubt and difficulty, if one is
not able to refute what was urged at the outset, and to set aside the
objections already offered? First, then, taking our start from the
home-altar of reverence for all that is divine,—the heritage of the
philosophers of the Academy,—we shall piously refrain from speaking
about these things as if we had certain knowledge of them. For it
is less presumptuous for one unskilled in music to discourse about
it, or for one not versed in military science to give his judgment
in matters relating to the conduct of war, than for us to pretend to
look through the things that appertain to God and to superior spirits,
mere men as we are, like unskilled observers who should undertake to
pass sentence on the skill of artists by their own conjectures and
surmises. It is not easy, indeed, for a common person to comprehend
a physician’s reasons for using the knife later, and not earlier, or
for ordering a bath, not yesterday, but to-day; and still less is it
easy or safe for a mortal to say of God anything except that he, best
knowing the fit time for the curing of wickedness, applies to every
evil-doer punishment as the appropriate medicine, and this not of the
same intensity, nor at one and the same interval of time, for all. Now
that the medical treatment of souls, termed punishment and justice,
is the greatest of all arts, Pindar,[8:1] with myriads of others,
testifies, calling God, the chief and lord of all, the supremely good
artificer, as being the author of justice, to whom it belongs to allot
to each of the guilty the time, mode, and measure of his punishment.
Moreover, Plato says that Minos, although the son of Zeus, became his
disciple in this art, so that it is not possible for one who has not
been a learner in it and acquired skill in it, to proceed aright in the
administration of justice, or to pass an intelligent judgment on its
administration by another. Even the laws which men make do not always
have a justifying reason that is simple and generally manifest; but
some of their enactments seem very ridiculous. Thus, in Lacedaemon,
the Ephori when they come into office make immediate proclamation
that no man shall let the beard on the upper lip grow,[9:1] and that
the laws must be so obeyed that they shall never be annoying to the
citizens. Thus too, the Romans strike the slaves whom they are going to
emancipate with a slender twig.[9:2] They also, when they make their
wills, appoint certain persons their heirs, and sell their property
to other persons,[9:3] which appears absurd. But the most absurd of
all seems that enactment of Solon, that, in case of an insurrection in
the city, he who does not attach himself to either party, or act on
either side, shall be branded with civic infamy.[10:1] In fine, one
who understood not the purpose of the lawgiver, nor comprehended the
reasons for the individual statutes, might enumerate many instances of
foolish legislation. What wonder is it then, if, while human affairs
are so difficult to be understood, it is not easy to say concerning the
gods why they punish some transgressors later, some earlier?
5. These things I say, not as a pretence for getting rid of the
subject, but as an apology for the liberty which I crave in discussing
it, that my discourse, as if looking to some ultimate harbor or
refuge,[10:2] may proceed with the greater assurance to resolve
the doubt. But first see how, as Plato says, God, making himself
conspicuous as the example of all things good, bestows human virtue,
in some sort his own likeness, on those who are able to be followers
of God. For nature throughout, being first in a state of chaos, had
the beginning of its change, and of its becoming an orderly universe,
by means of a resemblance to and a participation in the Divine idea
and the Divine virtue. The same author says that nature kindled sight
in us, that the soul by seeing and admiring the heavenly bodies,
accustoming itself to behold and admire what is becoming and orderly,
might hate unseemly and vagrant passions, and might shun rash and
haphazard conduct, as the source of all wickedness and vice. For it has
fallen to man’s lot to enjoy from God no greater gift than the capacity
of being formed to virtue by the imitation of those things in God that
are beautiful and good. Thus also to bad men he appoints punishment
with a lingering and leisurely stroke, not because he fears mistake or
reason for repentance were he to punish more promptly, but in order
to expel from us the brutish and impetuous element that there is in
punishment, and to teach us not to fall upon those who have injured us
with anger, nor when
“Revenge, outleaping all restraint of reason,”[11:1]
blazes and rages, as if we were bent on appeasing thirst or hunger,
but, imitating his clemency and long-suffering, to proceed to
chastisement deliberately and cautiously, choosing, as helping us to
take the wiser counsel, the time that shall give us the least reason
for repentance. As Socrates said, it is not so bad to drink turbid
water to excess as for a temper agitated and overwhelmed by anger and
rage, before it can be settled and clarified, to satiate itself in the
punishment of a kinsman or a neighbor. For it is not, as Thucydides
says, the retribution nearest in time to the injury received, but that
which lies the farthest from it, that obeys the law of fitness. As
anger, according to Melanthius,[12:1]
“By deeds depraved and dire casts reason out,”
so reason performs right and moderate deeds, putting anger and
resentment to flight. Hence it is that men are made meek by the
examples of other men; as when they hear how Plato, having lifted
his staff over his servant’s head, stood still for a long time,
punishing his own anger, as he said; and how Archytas, learning of
some misconduct and disorder of his laborers in the field, conscious
that he was becoming resentful and bitter in his feeling toward them,
did nothing except to say, as he left them, “It is fortunate for you
that I am angry.” But if the reported sayings and doings of men can
tone down the harshness and severity of anger, how much more fitting
is it that we—seeing that God, to whom there is no need of delay nor
possibility of repentance, yet puts off punishment into the future,
and awaits its fitting time—should ourselves be circumspect in these
matters, and should regard as a Divine part of virtue the clemency and
long-suffering which God manifests, reforming few indeed by punishment,
but by the slowness of punishment benefiting and admonishing many![12:2]
6. Let us next consider, in the second place, that punishments
inflicted by men have no purpose but retaliation, terminating in the
suffering of the wrong-doer, and going no farther. They thus follow
hard upon the offences, as a dog barking at the offender’s heels,
and pursue evil deeds close in their rear. But God probably sees
through the dispositions of the diseased souls to which he draws nigh
in judgment, knows whether they show an inclination to repentance,
and grants time for reformation to those whose guilt has not been
excessive or irreclaimable. For, aware what endowment of virtue souls
bring from him when they come into the world, and how strong and
imperishable in them is this native nobleness, which, though—corrupted
by bad association and nurture—it may blossom into evil contrary to
nature, yet when cured restores some men entirely to proper habits of
life, he therefore does not punish all alike; but the incurable he
speedily takes out of being, and cuts them off, inasmuch as it is not
only harmful to others, but, most of all, injurious to the sinner’s
own self, to be always conversant with wickedness. On the other hand,
to those whose sins probably proceeded rather from ignorance of the
good than from preference for what is vile, he gives time for a change
of character; but if they continue as they are, he executes justice
on them too, and there is no danger of their escaping. Now see what
changes have taken place in the habits and lives of men. Therefore
the changeable part of the life or character is designated by a word
denoting _turn_,[14:1] and also by a word denoting _habit_,[14:2]
because habit constitutes a large part of the character, and, when
adopted, has commanding influence. I am inclined to think, indeed,
that the ancients ascribed to Cecrops[14:3] a double nature, not, as
some say, because from a good king he became a fierce and dragon-like
tyrant, but, on the other hand, because, having been in the beginning
perverse and an object of terror, he afterward ruled with meekness
and kindness. But if this is an open question, we know concerning
Gelon[14:4] and Hieron[14:5] of Sicily, and Peisistratus,[15:1] the
son of Hippocrates, that, getting possession of absolute power by foul
means, they used it to good purpose. Gaining the ascendency unlawfully,
they governed with moderation and for the public welfare. Indeed,
they made excellent laws, gave great encouragement to agriculture,
and converted their subjects from scoffers and babblers into sober
citizens and industrious men. Gelon also, being an excellent military
commander and conquering the Carthaginians in a great battle, refused
to conclude the peace which they sought, till he had procured the
insertion in the treaty of a promise on their part to cease offering
children to Cronus.[15:2] Lydiades[15:3] at first exercised a
tyrannical sway in Megalopolis; but during his reign becoming a
different man, and inspired with hatred for injustice, he restored
laws to the citizens, and then, fighting with their enemies, fell
gloriously in his country’s cause. If one had killed Miltiades[16:1]
when he was a tyrant in Chersonesus, or had prosecuted and slain Cimon
when he was living with his sister as his wife,[16:2] or had the people
banished Themistocles[16:3] from the city when he went about making
riot and doing mischief, and showed his insolence in the market-place,
sentencing him to exile as Alcibiades was afterward sentenced, would
not the Marathons have been lost to us? and the Eurymedons? and the
beautiful
“Euboean headland,[17:1] where the sons of Athens
Laid the fair corner-stone of liberty?”[17:2]
Great natures, indeed, produce nothing small. Because of the intensity
of their impulses, what is strong and efficient in them does not remain
idle; but they are tossed to and fro as on an ocean before attaining
to a fixed and established character. Therefore, as one unskilled in
husbandry, seeing a tract of country full of prickly shrubs and weeds,
abounding in vermin, and having much stagnant water and a great deal
of mud, would not make choice of it, while to one who has learned to
discriminate and judge, these very things indicate strength and all
other good qualities in the soil, and show that it can be ploughed
without resistance, so in like manner there are great natures that
bring forth many things annoying and blameworthy, the roughness and
thorniness of which so put us out of patience that we might think it
best to cut them off and to prevent all further growth; while the
better Judge, discerning from these very tokens the excellence and
nobleness that lie beneath them, awaits maturity as the coadjutor of
reason and virtue, and the period when the nature once so wild shall
yield fruit that is not wild.
7. Enough has been said on this point. To pass to another
consideration, do you not think that it was wise in some of the Greek
states to copy the Egyptian law, that a woman with child under sentence
of death shall have her sentence suspended till her child is born?
We think so,—they all said.
Then I continued,—If one cannot bear children, yet will be able
in process of time to bring forth into the light some clandestine
transaction or conspiracy, or will disclose some lurking evil, or will
become the author of some salutary counsel, or will invent a supply for
some urgent need, is not he who awaits the benefit that will accrue
from delay in punishing such a man wiser than he who would put the
offender out of the way at once? So I think.
And so do we, said PATROCLEAS.
You are right, said I. For consider that, if Dionysius[18:1] had been
punished in the beginning of his tyrannical reign, none of Greek
descent would ever have lived again in Sicily after its devastation by
the Carthaginians. Nor, if Periander[19:1] had been speedily punished,
would Greeks have again inhabited Apollonia, or Anactorium, or the
peninsula of the Leucadians.[19:2] I think, too, that Cassander’s
punishment was delayed, that Thebes might be repeopled.[19:3] The
larger part of the strangers that had plundered the temple,[19:4] and
afterwards went to Sicily with Timoleon, perished wretchedly in their
guilt, but not till they had conquered the Carthaginians, and put an
end to their oppressive rule.[20:1] Indeed, the Deity uses some bad
men as public executioners to punish others, and then destroys the
executioners themselves. This, I think, has been the case with most
tyrants. For as the gall of the hyena, and the saliva of the sea-calf,
and other parts of loathsome beasts, have a certain virtue in the cure
of diseases, so upon some who need severe chastisement God inflicts
the implacable bitterness of a tyrant or the annoying oppression of
a chieftain, and removes not what pains and troubles them till the
disease is cured and purged away. Such a medicine was Phalaris[20:2]
to the people of Agrigentum, and Marius to the Romans.[20:3] God
indeed expressly foretold to the people of Sicyon that they would
of necessity be severely scourged, for seizing as of their own city
Teletias, a Cleonaean youth, who had been crowned in the Pythian games,
and then tearing him in pieces.[21:1] Accordingly Orthagoras, and after
him Myron and Cleisthenes and their satellites, put an end to their
lawlessness. But the Cleonaeans, not chancing to have the same curative
treatment, came to naught.[21:2] Hear also Homer, when he says,
“A son endowed with every virtue sprang
From parentage that gave no sign of virtue.”
This son of Copreus, of whom he thus speaks, achieved indeed no
splendid or noble deeds; but the posterity of Sisyphus, and that of
Autolycus, and that of Phlegyas, bloomed forth in the glories and
virtues that belong to great kings. Pericles sprang from an infamous
Athenian family,[21:3] and Pompey the Great in Rome was the son of
Strabo,[21:4] whom the Roman people so hated that they cast his dead
body out of doors and trod it under foot. What wonder is it then, if,
as the farmer does not cut down the thorn-bush till he has taken from
it the green shoots which he uses as salad, nor do the Libyans burn the
cistus till they have collected the balsam which it yields, so God does
not destroy the evil and thorny root of an honorable and royal race
till the appropriate fruit springs from it? For it was better for the
Phocians to have lost ten thousand of the cattle and horses of Iphitus,
and a larger amount of gold and silver than was ever abstracted from
Delphi, than that Odysseus[22:1] or Aesculapius[22:2] should not
have been born, or that the world should have failed of the good and
eminently useful men who have been the sons of wicked and depraved
fathers.
8. But must we not think it better that punishments should take place
in fitting time and way, than that they should be inflicted speedily
and promptly? There was a fitness in the case of Callippus, who with
the very same dagger with which he had procured the death of Dion
while feigning to be his friend was himself killed by the friends of
Dion;[23:1] and in that of the murderer of Mitius of Argos, who was
killed in a riot, and whose brazen statue in the market-place fell with
fatal issue on the man who had killed him. You, Patrocleas, must, I
am sure, know about Bessus the Paeonian, and Aristo the Oetaean, the
commander of the foreign soldiers.
No, by Zeus, said PATROCLEAS, I do not know, but I want to
know about them.
Aristo,[23:2] said I, by leave of the tyrants,[23:3] took away the
ornaments of Eriphyle deposited here,[23:4] and carried them as a
present to his wife; but his son, being for some reason angry with
his mother, set the house on fire, and burned all that were in it.
Bessus, it is said, killed his father, and escaped detection for a long
time. But at length, going to supper among strangers, he shook down a
swallow’s nest with his spear, and killed the young birds; and when
those present asked, as was natural, what had provoked him to do so
strange a thing, he said, “Do they not, even of old, bear false witness
against me, and cry out that I killed my father?” Those who heard him,
marvelling at what he said, told the king, and, on investigation,
Bessus suffered due punishment.
9. What I have said thus far has been said on the supposition that, as
is generally thought, there is an actual delay in the punishment of
the wicked. But as to what may yet be said on this point, it may be
well for us to listen to Hesiod, who maintains, not, with Plato, that
punishment is a suffering that follows wrong-doing, but that it is a
twin birth with wrong-doing, springing from the same soil and the same
root; for he says,
“Bad counsel does most harm to him who gives it,”
and,
“Who does another wrong himself most wrongs.”
The cantharis,[24:1] by a certain contrast in the elements of its
physical structure, is said to contain within itself the antidote for
the wound which it makes. But—the converse of this—guilt, bringing
with itself into being its own pain and punishment, not subsequently
to, but in the very act of wrong-doing receives its penalty. The
malefactor who is to be crucified carries his cross with his own
body; and in like manner wickedness creates from itself, to be borne
by itself, each several form of chastisement, being, so to speak, an
expert artificer of a wretched life, attended by thronging fears and
distressing emotions, by ceaseless remorse and constant perturbation.
But some persons are like children, who, often seeing in the theatres
malefactors in gold-embroidered tunics and purple mantles, crowned and
dancing, admire and applaud them as happy beings, until they appear on
the stage goaded and scourged, and with fire streaming from their gay
and finely wrought apparel.[25:1] For many of the wicked, surrounded by
large families, and possessed of places of high command and extended
authority, are not visibly punished till they are seen slain or hurled
down a precipice, which ought to be called, not punishment, but the
end or consummation of punishment. As Plato says that Herodicus, the
Selymbrian, being attacked with phthisis, an incurable disease, and
being the first to unite gymnastics with the healing art, made death
long for himself and for those similarly affected; so too such of the
wicked as seem to escape immediate punishment receive, not after a long
time, but during a long time, not a slower, but a longer punishment;
nor are they punished when they grow old, but they grow old in a state
of punishment. Yet it is only to you that I speak of a long time; for
to the gods any period of human life is as nothing, and “now, not
thirty years hence,” is to them as it would be to us for a malefactor
to be put to torture or hanged this evening, and not to-morrow morning.
Besides, one is kept in life as in a prison that has no outlet or mode
of escape; yet he may enjoy frequent feasts, may transact business, may
receive presents and kindnesses, like the men who play with dice or at
draughts in prison, with the rope hanging over their heads.
10. Indeed, why may I not say that those under sentence of death are
not punished till their heads are cut off,—and that he who has been
condemned to drink hemlock, and then goes about and remains unaffected
till his legs grow heavy, is not punished until he is overpowered by
the deadening of the muscles and the congealing of the blood, combined
with the loss of consciousness,—if we confine the name of punishment
to the last stage of punishment, and leave out of the account the
sufferings, and terrors, and apprehension, and remorse, which in the
mean while prey upon every guilty soul? As well might we maintain that
a fish that has swallowed the hook is not caught till we see it roasted
by the cook or cut up on the table. For every wrong-doer is in the
grasp of justice so soon as he has swallowed as a bait the pleasure
connected with his sin, having a conscience resting heavily upon him,
and driven hither and thither in the endeavor to expiate his guilt,
“As the impetuous tunny ploughs the sea.”
Up to the time when the crime is committed, the well-known assurance
and audacity of guilt are strong and efficient; but afterward the
excitement subsides like a wind that dies away, and the mind, enfeebled
and dispirited, becomes subject to fears and superstitions,—so that
Clytemnestra’s dream, as related by Stesichorus, is in conformity with
experience and truth. The verses are:
“A dragon seemed to come with blood-smeared head,
And took the form of King Pleisthenides.”[27:1]
Indeed, visions in sleep, noonday apparitions, oracles, peals of
thunder, and whatever events can seem to take place by the agency
of God, are fraught with tempests and terrors for those who are in
this condition. Thus, it is said that Apollodorus[28:1] once in
his sleep saw himself flayed by Scythians, then boiled, and his own
heart speaking out of the caldron, and saying, “I have brought all
this upon thee”; and again, that he saw his daughters on fire, their
bodies in flames, running round him in a circle. It is said, too,
that Hipparchus,[28:2] the son of Peisistratus, shortly before his
death, saw Aphrodite sprinkling blood upon his face from a vial.
The friends of Ptolemy surnamed Ceraunus[28:3] saw him summoned to
the tribunal by Seleucus, with vultures and wolves for his judges,
while he was distributing large portions of flesh to his enemies.
Pausanias,[28:4] having sent to seize by force Cleonice, a free-born
maiden in Byzantium, that he might have her company by night, and then,
in consequence of some unaccountable mental disturbance or suspicion,
killing her when she arrived, often saw her in his dreams, saying to
him,
“Come quick to judgment; lust works woe to man.”
The vision not being discontinued, it is said, he set sail for the
oracle of the dead at Heracleia, and there, by fitting propitiatory
sacrifices and libations, he called up the maiden’s soul;[29:1] and
she, coming into his presence, told him that he should rest from these
troubles on his arrival at Lacedaemon. As soon as he arrived there, he
died.
11. Thus, if there is nothing for the soul after death, that is, if
death is the end of all reward and punishment, one might be disposed
to say that the Deity deals indulgently and leniently with those of
the wicked who are soon punished and die early. For were it maintained
that in their lifetime the wicked incur no other evil than the
conviction that wrong-doing is utterly fruitless and graceless, and
for the many and great conflicts of mind that it costs confers no
benefit nor anything worthy of endeavor, the perception of this alone
is fatal to the soul’s happiness. It is with the evil-doer as with
Lysimachus,[30:1] who, compelled by thirst to surrender his person and
his command to the Getae, having quenched his thirst and being at the
same time made a prisoner, exclaimed, “Alas for my guilt in suffering
myself to be deprived of so great a kingdom for so brief a pleasure!”
It is, indeed, in a case like this, exceedingly difficult to resist
the necessity created by a natural appetite. But when a man, either
from inordinate desire for wealth, or from envy of those possessed of
civic honor and power, or for the sake of some sensual gratification,
commits an unlawful and abominable deed, and, after the thirst and
madness of passion have subsided, sees in due time the vile and fearful
traits of character which lead to crime established permanently within
him, while he can discern in himself nothing useful, or serviceable,
or profitable, is it not probable that the thought often occurs to
him that for vainglory or for slavish and fruitless pleasure, he has
set at naught the greatest and best things that are accounted right
among men, and thus whelmed his life in shame and trouble? For as
Simonides[30:2] said in jest that he found the chest of money always
full, that of thanks empty, so the wicked, having a clear view of their
own guilt, find it—after the indulgence which yields for the moment
an empty pleasure—utterly devoid of hope, and always laden with fears
and griefs, with cheerless memories, suspicion of what the future may
bring, and distrust of the present. Thus, as we hear Ino say on the
stage, repenting of what she has done,—
“Dear women, tell me how, as at the first,
As if this deed of mine were uncommitted,
The house of Athamas may be my home,”[31:1]—