things within itself, and considers how it can by any possibility evade
the memory of its misdeeds, cast out from itself the consciousness of
them, and, becoming pure, start as if from the beginning on a new life.
For wickedness manifests neither courage, nor modesty, nor consistency,
nor steadfastness in the objects of its preference,—unless, by Zeus,
we admit that evil-doers are wise; but where avarice, and eager
voluptuousness, and implacable envy, are associated with malice and
depravity, there also, on examination, you may see beneath the surface
superstition, and effeminate indolence, and dread of death, and an
abrupt vacillation of impulses, and an arrogant pretence to undeserved
honor. Men of this character fear those who blame them, and at the same
time dread those who praise them, as those whom they have wronged by
their hypocrisy, and as persons especially hostile to the wicked, as
is evinced in their cordial commendation of those who seem to be good.
Indeed, the hardness in depravity, as in bad iron, is brittle, and
what seems in it to have the greatest power of resistance is easily
broken in pieces. Hence, in process of time, as bad men come to the
knowledge of themselves, they are depressed, and grow peevish, and
hold their own manner of life in abhorrence. When a mean man restores
a deposit intrusted to his care, or gives security for a friend, or
with honorable ambition confers gifts and services on his country, and
immediately repents and is in trouble for what he has done, because
of the utter instability and vacillation of his mind,—and when some
who are applauded in the theatre for their generosity groan as their
love of glory is merged in their love of money,—can it be that those
who, like Apollodorus,[32:1] sacrifice men in the interest of their
tyrannies and conspiracies, or like Glaucus,[33:1] the son of Epicydes,
plunder the property of their friends, do not feel remorse, nor hate
themselves, nor suffer grief, for the crimes that they have committed?
I, indeed, if it is not irreverent thus to speak, do not think that
those who work iniquity need any avenger among gods or men; but their
own life suffices for their punishment, being utterly corrupted and
kept in constant agitation by their guilt.
12. Consider now whether our discussion has exceeded a reasonable time.
TIMON replied,[33:2]—Perhaps so, with reference to the time
that will yet be required; for I am going to bring forward the last
doubt as a combatant held in reserve, since the others have been fairly
conquered. What Euripides with the utmost boldness of speech inveighs
against the gods for doing, namely, visiting the sins of the fathers
upon the children, account us as tacitly charging upon them. Certainly,
if those who have done wrong were themselves punished, there is no
justice in chastising those who have done no wrong; for it is not
right to punish even the evil-doers in their own person twice for the
same offence; and if the gods, in their remissness failing to punish
the guilty, afterward inflict penalties on the innocent, they do not
fittingly make amends for their slow doing by unrighteous doing. Take
the case of Aesop.[34:1] It is said that he came hither with money
furnished by Croesus, intending to offer a magnificent sacrifice to the
god of the temple, and to distribute among the citizens of Delphi four
minas[34:2] apiece. But, as it is reported, having become disaffected
toward the people here on account of some affront or quarrel, he made
the sacrifice indeed, but sent the rest of the money back to Sardis,
not thinking the men of Delphi worthy of the gift. They then raised
against him the charge of sacrilege, and put him to death by throwing
him from yonder cliff, which they call Hyampeia. From that time it is
said that the god was angry with them, and made their soil unfruitful,
and sent among them all kinds of strange diseases, so that they went
round among the public assemblies of the Grecian cities, proclaiming
with earnest entreaty that whoever would demand justice of them in
behalf of Aesop should receive full satisfaction. But not until the
third generation came Idmon, the Samian, not related to Aesop, except
as the descendant of those who had bought him at Samos, and to him the
Delphians made satisfaction in the ways prescribed, and were freed
from their calamities. It was on that account, it is said, that the
people changed the place of punishment for sacrilege from Hyampeia to
the cliff called Nauplia. Now those who hold the memory of Alexander
in the fondest regard, of whom I am one, do not approve of his sacking
the city of Branchidae,[35:1] and destroying its inhabitants of all
ages, because their great-grandfathers had treacherously delivered
up the temple of Miletus. So Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse,
derided and teased the Corcyraeans,[36:1] when they asked him why he
ravaged their island, saying, “By Zeus, because your fathers showed
hospitality to Odysseus.” Again, when the people of Ithaca complained
that his soldiers were stealing their sheep, he replied, “Your king not
only did the like, but put out the shepherd’s[36:2] eye.” But is not
Apollo more unreasonable than these men whom I have named, if he is
now ruining the Pheneatae by stopping up the outlet of their streams,
and putting their whole country under water,[36:3] because Hercules
is said a thousand years ago to have stolen the oracular tripod and
carried it to Pheneus? And was he less unreasonable in announcing to
the Sybarites that they should see the end of their calamities, when
by three destructive visitations they should have appeased the wrath
of the Leucadian Hera?[37:1] Nor is it so very long a time since the
Locrians ceased sending virgins to Troy.
“With naked limbs, bare feet, and servile guise,
At early dawn they sweep Athene’s temple,
Unveiled, while age remorseless steals upon them.”
And all this because of the licentiousness of Ajax.[37:2] Now where is
the reasonableness or rightfulness of these things? Equally little
can we commend the Thracians[38:1] for still tattooing their wives,
to avenge Orpheus; or the barbarians about the Po, who wear black, as
they say, in mourning for Phaethon, which seems all the more ridiculous
when we consider that, while those who lived when Phaethon perished
cared nothing at all about the matter, their posterity of the fifth
or the tenth generation are changing their garments and mourning for
him.[38:2] Yet this is merely foolish, not atrocious or intolerable.
But on what justifiable ground does the anger of the gods, suddenly
disappearing, as some rivers do, break out again in a different place,
on other people than the evil-doers, terminating only in extreme
calamity?
13. As soon as Timon came to a pause, fearing that with a fresh start
he might bring forth more and greater absurdities, I instantly asked
him,—Do you really think that all these things are true?
If not all, said he, yet if some of them be true, do you not think that
the discussion labors under the same difficulty?
Perhaps, said I; and so to persons in a high fever, whether they
chance to wear one garment, or to be wrapped in many, the burning heat
is nearly or quite the same, and yet it contributes to their relief to
remove the multitude of coverings. But if the patient is unwilling to
have this done, let him have his own way. Yet most of these stories
seem like myths and fictions. But recall to mind the religious
festival lately held here, when you saw the magnificent portion of the
viands[39:1] which the heralds took from the table, proclaiming that it
was due to the posterity of Pindar, and remember how solemn and sweet
this token of honor seemed to you.
But, said he, who would not be delighted by the gracefulness of a
commemoration so entirely Grecian and so simply archaic? unless he had,
to borrow Pindar’s own words, a black heart forged in a cold fire.
There is then no need, said I, of my citing a similar proclamation
made in Sparta, “After the Lesbian singer,”[39:2] in honor and
remembrance of the ancient Terpander; for the principle is the
same. But you,[40:1] I suppose, think yourselves superior to other
Boeotians, as being of the race of the Opheltiadae;[40:2] you make
similar claims among the Phocians[40:3] by virtue of your descent from
Daiphantus;[40:4] and you, indeed, were the first to stand by me and
help me in preserving for the Lycormaeans and the Satilaeans[40:5]
their hereditary honor, and the right to wear crowns in public which
belongs to the posterity of Hercules,—maintaining that lasting honors
and favors are due to those descended from Hercules, because he, though
a great benefactor to the Greeks, never received his due of gratitude,
or any fitting recompense.
You remind us, said TIMON, of a truly noble contest, and of
one in which it was especially becoming for a philosopher to take part.
Relax then, my friend, said I, the severity of your accusation, and do
not take it so hard if some of the descendants of wicked and depraved
people are punished; or else do not welcome or commend the honor
rendered to worthy parentage. For if we would retain the reward of
virtue in the posterity of the virtuous, we cannot reasonably think
that punishments for misdoings ought to fail and cease, but must
suppose that they will run on at even pace with the rewards, giving
retribution in each case in proportion to desert. But he who gladly
sees the posterity of Cimon honored in Athens, yet is vexed and angry
at the exile of the descendants of Lachares[41:1] or of Ariston,[41:2]
is very stupid and feeble-minded, or rather has the presumption to take
the place of a wrangler and railer against the Divine Being,—accusing
him, forsooth, if the children’s children of an unrighteous and wicked
man seem to prosper, and again accusing him if the posterity of bad
ancestors are suffered to decline and to become extinct,—indeed,
finding equal fault with God when the children of a good father or
those of a bad father fare ill.
14. Let these considerations serve you as defences against those who
are so excessively bitter and objurgatory. But taking up again the
beginning of the thread in our discussion concerning God,—obscure,
indeed, and with many turnings and windings,—let us direct our way
discreetly and deliberately toward what is probable and credible.
For not even in the things which we ourselves do can we always state
with confidence the actual and true meaning. Thus we cannot tell why
we order the children of those who die of phthisis or of dropsy to
sit with their feet in water till the corpse is buried, though it is
believed that in this case they neither contract the disease at the
time nor are liable to it afterward. Nor, again, can we tell the reason
why, when a goat takes into his mouth a piece of snakeroot,[42:1] the
whole flock stand still till the goatherd comes and takes it out of his
mouth. There are properties of various objects that are transfused or
transmitted in ways incredible as to velocity and distance. In these
cases we are indeed more surprised at remoteness of time than of space.
Yet it is really more amazing that Athens should have been infected
throughout with a pestilence[42:2] that began in Aethiopia, and that
Pericles should have died of it, and Thucydides should have been
attacked by it, than that, if the Delphians and the Sybarites have been
wicked, protracted punishment should come upon their posterity. For
all properties of objects have mutual action and reaction from their
very beginning till now, and bear relations to one another of which,
though we are ignorant of the cause, it none the less produces its
appropriate effect.
15. Nevertheless, the public calamities of cities have obviously
their reason in justice. For a city has unity and continuity like a
living creature, not devesting itself of identity by the changes that
occur at successive periods of its life, nor becoming a different
being from its former self by the lapse of time, but always retaining
a conscious selfhood with the peculiarities that belong to it, and
receiving the entire blame or praise of whatever it does or has done
in its collective capacity, so long as the community which constitutes
it and binds it together remains a unit. But dividing it by successive
periods of time so as to make of a single city many cities, or rather
an infinite number of cities, is like making of one man many men,
because he is now elderly, yet once was younger, and still earlier was
a mere stripling. This might remind one of the Epicharmians, from whom
the sophists derived the cumulative argument,[43:1] according to which
he who used to be in debt now owes nothing, having become a different
man, and he who was yesterday invited to supper to-day comes uninvited,
being another person. However, different periods of life make greater
changes in every one of us than they ordinarily make in cities. One who
sees Athens would recognize it thirty years afterward; for the present
manners, sports, industries, likings, and resentments of the people
closely resemble those of former days. But after a considerable time,
scarce a kinsman or friend would recognize a man’s countenance and
form; while the change of manners readily brought about in a person by
differing fashions of intercourse, employment, experience, and legal
obligation look strange and new even to one who has always known him.
But yet the man is said to be one and the same man from the beginning
to the end. The city in like manner remaining the same, we regard it as
involved in the disgrace of its ancestry by the very right by which it
shares their glory and their power. Else we shall throw everything into
the river of Heracleitus, into which, he says, no one can enter twice,
because changing nature is transposing and altering all things.
16. But if a city is one continuous entity, equally so is a race that
springs from one original stock and carries along with it certain
common tendencies derived from that stock; and that which is born is
not, like a manufactured article, separated from him who produced it;
for it exists from him, not merely by him, so that it possesses and
bears within itself some part of him, which is properly the object of
chastisement or of commendation. Not in mere sport I would say that
it was more unjust for the Athenians to destroy the brazen statue of
Cassander,[45:1] and for the people of Syracuse to cast beyond their
borders the body of Dionysius,[45:2] than for the posterity of those
men to suffer punishment. For there was nothing of the nature of
Cassander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had already left the
corpse; but in Nisaeus,[45:3] and Apollocrates,[45:4] and Antipater
and Philip,[45:5] and equally in other sons of wicked parents, there
was implanted, and remains continuously, the part of their parents
that had the mastery over their lives, and in the children this is
not quiescent or inactive, but they live by it, and are nourished by
it, and order their conduct by it, and think as it prompts. Nor is
it at all marvellous or absurd that, being the children of such men,
they should possess their qualities. In fine, I would say that, as in
the healing art, whatever is beneficial is therefore right, and as he
would be ridiculous who should think it wrong in a case of hip-disease
to cauterize the thumb, and when the liver is ulcerated to scarify
the upper part of the abdomen, and when the hoofs of oxen are tender
to anoint the tips of their horns,[46:1] equally is he ridiculous who
thinks in the matter of punishment that anything else than the cure of
wickedness is right, and who is vexed when the remedy is applied to
some parts rather than to others, after the manner of those who open a
vein to cure ophthalmia. Nor does such a person seem to look beyond
the range of his bodily senses; nor does he bear it in mind that a
teacher in whipping one boy admonishes all, and that a general in the
capital punishment of one out of ten brings all the guilty men under
his command back to their duty. In truth not only is one part of the
body cured through another part, but there are certain dispositions of
mind and conduct, equally those that are evil and those that tend to
reformation, as to which soul is influenced by soul more than body is
affected by body. For from body to body the same affection and the same
change seem to be transmitted; while in the case under consideration
the soul, through the influence of the imagination, becomes worse or
better in a degree corresponding to the intensity of hope or fear.
17. While I was still speaking, OLYMPICUS interrupted me,
saying,—You seem to have, underlying this reasoning of yours, an
hypothesis of prime importance,—the continued existence of the soul.
Yes, said I, inasmuch as you yourselves admit it, or rather did admit
it; for the argument from the very beginning proceeded from the
supposition that God deals with men according to their merits.
OLYMPICUS replied,—Do you think that it follows from God’s
dealing with us according to our merits, that souls are either
absolutely incorruptible, or destined at least to continue in being
for a certain period after death?[48:1]
I replied,—No, my good friend. God, forsooth, is so petty and so
trifling,[48:2] that—as if we had nothing of the divine in us, nor
anything closely resembling him, and stable and firm, but were,
as Homer says, mere leaves, like those that wither and perish
altogether—he makes such account of us as the women do of their gardens
of Adonis,[48:3] which they tend and cultivate in earthen pots,—souls
lasting for a day, blooming in a frail flesh that has no strong root
of life, then at once extinguished by any casualty that may chance to
occur. But if you choose, making no mention of other gods, look at this
one of ours here, and say whether you suppose that he, knowing that
the souls of the dying are instantly destroyed when they are exhaled
from their bodies, like clouds or smoke-wreaths, should demand so many
propitiations for those who die, and such tokens of great reverence and
honor for the dead, thus deceiving and deluding those who believe in
him. I therefore would not deny the continued existence of the soul,
unless some one, like Hercules, should carry off the tripod of the
Pythian priestess, and abolish and destroy the oracle. For while even
down to our own time many such things are foretold by the oracle as are
said to have been announced to Corax of Naxos,[49:1] it is unholy to
deem the soul capable of dying.
Then PATROCLEAS said,—What was that prediction, and who was
that Corax? Both the story and the name are unfamiliar to me.
By no means, said I; but I was to blame in using a by-name instead
of the real name. For he who killed Archilochus in battle was named
Calondas, as they say, and had Corax for a surname. He, having been
first driven out of the temple by the Pythian priestess because he had
killed a man sacred to the Muses, then employing prayers and entreaties
with a statement of the case in his own justification, was ordered to
go to the residence of Tettix,[50:1] in order to propitiate the soul of
Archilochus. This place was Taenarus;[50:2] for there it is said that
Tettix the Cretan arrived with a fleet, built a city, and established
himself hard by the oracle of the dead. In like manner, the Spartans
were ordered by the oracle to propitiate the soul of Pausanias, and
they sent for necromancers from Italy, who by their sacrifices drove
the apparition of Pausanias from the temple.[50:3]
18. There is then, said I, one course of reasoning which confirms
equally the providence of God and the continued life of the human
soul, and neither can remain credible if the other is taken away. But
to the soul existing after death there is a stronger probability that
rewards and punishments are rendered, than there is that they should be
fully rendered in this life.[51:1] For during this life the soul is,
like an athlete, in perpetual conflict; but when the conflict is over,
then what the soul has deserved is allotted to it. Yet whatever favors
or whatever chastisements the soul, being there by itself, receives,
are of no concern to us living here, nay, they are disbelieved and
they are out of the field of our knowledge; but these penalties that
pass on through children and remoter posterity, being manifest to men
living here, check and restrain many of the wicked. There is, indeed,
no punishment more shameful or more sorrowful than for men to see their
posterity suffering on their account. Were the soul of an impious and
lawless man to behold after death, not his statues overthrown, or any
honors that he had received cancelled, but his children, or friends,
or kindred, or family, suffering great misfortunes and receiving
punishment on his account, such a soul would not choose again to be
depraved and profligate,—no, not even to obtain honors like those which
belong to Zeus. To show this I have a story to tell, which I lately
heard; but I hesitate, lest you may think it a myth, while I want to
confine myself to what is reasonable.
Do not hesitate by any means, said OLYMPICUS, but tell the
story.
The others made the same request.
Then, said I, permit me to finish my reasoning, and afterward we will
take up the myth, if indeed it be a myth.
19. Bion[52:1] says that God in punishing the children of the wicked
is more ridiculous than a physician who should administer medicine to
a grandson or a son for his grandfather’s or his father’s illness. But
the two things are in some respects unlike, though in others alike and
similar. It is true, indeed, that one person’s being medically treated
does not remove another’s illness, nor is one who is suffering from
ophthalmia or from fever relieved by seeing another person anointed or
plastered; but the punishments of the wicked are inflicted in the sight
of all, because it is the office of justice reasonably administered
to restrain some by means of the penalties endured by others. But the
point in which Bion’s comparison really applies to the subject under
discussion escaped his discernment. When a man seized with a stubborn,
but not necessarily incurable illness, yields up his body to the
disease by intemperance and effeminacy, and dies in consequence, if his
son, though not seeming to be ill, yet barely has a tendency to the
same disease, his physician, or kinsman, or apothecary, or judicious
master, putting him upon a rigid diet, taking from him stimulants,
delicacies, strong drinks, and opportunities for sensual indulgence,
employing medicaments continually, and disciplining his body by
gymnastic exercises, excludes and expels the disease, not suffering the
minute seed of a grievous bodily affection to grow into an appreciable
magnitude. Do we not thus give our advice, thinking it fitting for the
children of diseased fathers and mothers to take care of themselves, to
be on their guard, and not to lose thought of their inherited liability
to disease, but promptly taking the inborn malady in hand, to expel it
at the beginning, while it is easily removed and has no fixed seat?
This is perfectly true, they say.
You grant then, I continue, that we do, not what is absurd, but what
is necessary,—not what is ridiculous, but what is beneficial,—when we
prescribe gymnastic exercises, diet, and medicine for the children
of epileptics, or of hypochondriacs, or of sufferers from the gout,
not because they are ill, but to prevent them from being ill. For a
body born of a diseased body is deserving, not indeed of punishment,
but of medical treatment and of vigilance, which if any one sees fit
to call the punishment of timidity and feebleness, his opinion is of
no account. If then it is worth our while to cherish and to preserve
the body born of a diseased body, ought we to permit the congenital
likeness of wickedness to spring up and come to growth in a young
character, and to wait till, having its issue in vicious passions, it
becomes openly manifest, and, as Pindar says, displays the malignant
fruit of the inmost soul?
20. In this matter God in his wisdom does not even transcend the
sentiment expressed by Hesiod,[54:1]
“From suppers of the gods the marriage-bed
Approach, and not from rites funereal,”