Sec. I. Outwardly there seems no difference between hatred and envy, but
they seem identical. For generally speaking, as vice has many hooks, and
is swayed hither and thither by the passions that hang on it, there are
many points of contact and entanglement between them, for as in the case
of illnesses there is a sympathy between the various passions. Thus the
prosperous man is equally a source of pain to hate and envy. And so we
think benevolence the opposite of both these passions, being as it is a
wish for our neighbour's good, and we think hate and envy identical, for
the desire of both is the very opposite of benevolence. But since their
similarities are not so great as their dissimilarities, let us
investigate and trace out these two passions from their origin.
Sec. II. Hatred then is generated by the fancy that the person hated is
either bad generally or bad to oneself. For those who think they are
wronged naturally hate those who they think wrong them, and dislike and
are on their guard against those who are injurious or bad to
others;[762] but people envy merely those they think prosperous. So envy
seems illimitable, being, like ophthalmia, troubled at everything
bright, whereas hatred is limited, since it settles only on what seems
hostile.
Sec. III. In the second place people feel hatred even against the brutes;
for some hate cats and beetles and toads and serpents. Thus Germanicus
could not bear the crowing or sight of a cock, and the Persian magicians
kill their mice, not only hating them themselves but thinking them
hateful to their god, and the Arabians and Ethiopians abominate them as
much. Whereas we envy only human beings.
Sec. IV. Indeed among the brutes it is not likely that there should be any
envy, for they have no conception of prosperity or adversity, nor have
they any idea of reputation or want of reputation, which are the things
that mainly excite envy; but they hate one another, and are hostile to
one another, and fight with one another to the death, as eagles and
dragons, crows and owls, titmice and finches, insomuch that they say
that even the blood of these creatures will not mix, and if you try to
mix it it will immediately separate again. It is likely also that there
is strong hatred between the cock and the lion, and the pig and the
elephant, owing to fear. For what people fear they naturally hate. We
see also from this that envy differs from hatred, for the animals are
capable of the one, but not of the other.
Sec. V. Moreover envy against anyone is never just, for no one wrongs
another by his prosperity, though that is what he is envied for; but
many are hated with justice, for we even think others[763] worthy of
hatred, if they do not flee from such, and are not disgusted and vexed
at them. A great indication of this is that some people admit they hate
many, but declare they envy nobody. Indeed hatred of evil is reckoned
among praiseworthy things; and when some were praising Charillus, the
nephew of Lycurgus and king of Sparta, for his mildness and gentleness,
his colleague said, "How can Charillus be good, who is not even harsh to
the bad?" And so the poet described the bodily defects of Thersites at
much length, whereas he expressed his vile moral character most shortly
and by one remark, "He was most hateful both to Achilles and
Odysseus."[764] For to be hated by the most excellent is the height of
worthlessness. But people deny that they are envious, and, if they are
charged with being so, they put forward ten thousand pleas, saying they
are angry with the man or fear him or hate him, suggesting any other
passion than envy, and concealing it as the only disorder of the soul
which is abominable.
Sec. VI. Of necessity then these two passions cannot, like plants, be fed
and nourished and grow on the same roots; for they are by nature
different.[765] For we hate people more as they grow worse, but they are
envied only the more the more they advance in virtue. And so
Themistocles, when quite a lad, said he had done nothing remarkable, for
he was not yet envied. For as insects attack most ripe corn and roses in
their bloom, so envy fastens most on the good and on those who are
growing in virtue and good repute for moral character. Again extreme
badness intensifies hatred. So hated indeed and loathed were the
accusers of Socrates, as guilty of extreme vileness, by their
fellow-citizens, that they would neither supply them with fire, nor
answer their questions, nor touch the water they had bathed in, but
ordered the servants to pour it away as polluted, till they could bear
this hatred no longer and hung themselves. But splendid and exceptional
success often extinguishes envy. For it is not likely that anyone envied
Alexander or Cyrus, after their conquests made them lords of the world.
But as the sun, when it is high over our heads and sends down its rays,
makes next to no shadow, so at those successes that attain such a height
as to be over its head envy is humbled, and retires completely dazzled.
So Alexander had none to envy him, but many to hate him, by whom he was
plotted against till he died. So too misfortunes stop envy, but they do
not remove hatred. For people hate their enemies even when they lie
prostrate at their feet, but no one envies the unfortunate. But the
remark of one of the sophists of our day is true, that the envious are
very prone to pity; so here too there is a great difference between
these two passions, for hatred abandons neither the fortunate nor
unfortunate, whereas envy is mitigated in the extreme of either fortune.
Sec. VII. Let as look at the same again from opposite points of view. Men
put an end to their enmity and hatred, either if persuaded they have not
been wronged, or if they come round to the view that those they hated
are good men and not bad, or thirdly if they receive a kindness. For, as
Thucydides says, the last favour conferred, even though a smaller one,
if it be seasonable, outweighs a greater offence.[766] Yet the
persuasion that they have not been wronged does not put an end to envy,
for people envy although absolutely persuaded that they have not been
wronged; and the two other cases actually increase envy; for people look
with an evil eye even more on those they think good, as having virtue,
which is the greatest blessing; and if they are treated kindly by the
prosperous it grieves them, for they envy both their will and power to
do kindnesses, the former proceeding from their goodness, the latter
from their prosperity, but both being blessings. Thus envy is a passion
altogether different from hatred, seeing that what abates the one pains
and exasperates the other.
Sec. VIII. Let us now look at the intent of each of these passions. The
intent of the person who hates is to do as much harm as he can, so they
define hatred to be a disposition and intent on the watch for an
opportunity to do harm. But this is altogether foreign to envy.[767] For
those who envy their relations and friends would not wish them to come
to ruin, or fall into calamity, but are only annoyed at their
prosperity; and would hinder, if they could, their glory and renown, but
they would not bring upon them irremediable misfortunes: they are
content to remove, as in the case of a lofty house, what stands in their
light.
[762] [Greek: allos] MSS. Wyttenbach [Greek: allon].
Malo [Greek: allois].
[763] So Wyttenbach.
[764] Homer, "Iliad," ii. 220.
[765] So Wyttenbach. The reading in this passage is very
doubtful.
[766] Thucydides, i. 42.
[767] Reading [Greek: apestin holos. Oi gar
phthonountes]. What can be made of [Greek: pollous]
here?
HOW ONE CAN PRAISE ONESELF WITHOUT
EXCITING ENVY.
Sec. I. To speak to other people about one's own importance or ability,
Herculanus, is universally declared to be tiresome and illiberal, but in
fact not many even of those who censure it avoid its unpleasantness.
Thus Euripides, though he says,
"If words had to be bought by human beings,
No one would wish to trumpet his own praises.
But since one can get words _sans_ any payment
From lofty ether, everyone delights
In speaking truth or falsehood of himself,
For he can do it with impunity;"
yet uses much tiresome boasting, intermixing with the passion and action
of his plays irrelevant matter about himself. Similarly Pindar says,
that "to boast unseasonably is to play an accompaniment to
madness,"[768] yet he does not cease to talk big about his own merit,
which indeed is well worthy of encomium, who would deny it? But those
who are crowned in the games leave it to others to celebrate their
victories, to avoid the unpleasantness of singing their own praises. So
we are with justice disgusted at Timotheus[769] for trumpeting his own
glory inelegantly and contrary to custom in the inscription for his
victory over Phrynis, "A proud day for you, Timotheus, was it when the
herald cried out, 'The Milesian Timotheus is victorious over the son of
Carbo and his Ionic notes.'" As Xenophon says, "Praise from others is
the pleasantest thing a man can hear,"[770] but to others a man's
self-praise is most nauseous. For first we think those impudent who
praise themselves, since modesty would be becoming even if they were
praised by others; secondly, we think them unjust in giving themselves
what they ought to receive from others; thirdly, if we are silent we
seem to be vexed and to envy them, and if we are afraid of this
imputation, we are obliged to heap praise upon them contrary to our real
opinion, and to bear them out, undertaking a task more befitting gross
flattery than honour.
Sec. II. And yet, in spite of all this, there are occasions when a
statesman may venture to speak in his own praise, not to cry up his own
glory and merit, but when the time and matter demand that he should
speak the truth about himself, as he would about another; especially
when it is mentioned that another has done good and excellent
things,[771] there is no need for him to suppress the fact that he has
done as well. For such self-praise bears excellent fruit, since much
more and better praise springs from it as from seed. For the statesman
does not ask for reputation as a reward or consolation, nor is he merely
pleased at its attending upon his actions, but he values it because
credit and character give him opportunities to do good on a larger
scale. For it is both easy and pleasant to benefit those who believe in
us and are friendly to us, but it is not easy to act virtuously against
suspicion and calumny, and to force one's benefits on those that reject
them. Let us now consider, if there are any other reasons warranting
self-praise in a statesman, what they are, that, while we avoid vain
glory and disgusting other people, we may not omit any useful kind of
self-praise.
Sec. III. That is vain glory then when men seem to praise themselves that
they may call forth the laudation of others; and it is especially
despised because it seems to proceed from ambition and an unseasonable
opinion of oneself. For as those who cannot obtain food are forced to
feed on their own flesh against nature, and that is the end of famine,
so those that hunger after praise, if they get no one else to praise
them, disgrace themselves by their anxiety to feed their own vanity. But
when, not merely content with praising themselves, they vie with the
praise of others, and pit their own deeds and actions against theirs,
with the intent of outshining them, they add envy and malignity to their
vanity. The proverb teaches us that to put our foot into another's dance
is meddlesome and ridiculous; we ought equally to be on our guard
against intruding our own panegyric into others' praises out of envy and
spite, nor should we allow others either to praise us then, but we
should make way for those that are being honoured, if they are worthy of
honour, and even if they seem to us undeserving of honour and worthless,
we ought not to strip them of their praise by self-laudation, but by
direct argument and proof that they are not worthy of all these
encomiums. It is plain then that we ought to avoid all such conduct as
this.
Sec. IV. But self-praise cannot be blamed, if it is an answer to some
charge or calumny, as those words of Pericles, "And yet you are angry
with such a man as me, a man I take it inferior to no one either in
knowledge of what should be done, or in ability to point out the same,
and a lover of my country to boot, and superior to bribes."[772] For not
only did he avoid all swagger and vainglory and ambition in talking thus
loftily about himself, but he also exhibited the spirit and greatness of
his virtue, which could abase and crush envy because it could not be
abased itself. For people will hardly condemn such men, for they are
elevated and cheered and inspired by noble self-laudation such as this,
if it have a true basis, as all history testifies. Thus the Thebans,
when their generals were charged with not returning home, and laying
down their office of Boeotarchs when their time had expired, but instead
of that making inroads into Laconia, and helping Messene, hardly
acquitted Pelopidas, who was submissive and suppliant, but for
Epaminondas,[773] who gloried in what he had done, and at last said that
he was ready to die, if they would confess that he had ravaged Laconia,
and restored Messene, and made Arcadia one state, against the will of
the Thebans, they would not pass sentence upon him, but admired his
heroism, and with rejoicing and smiles set him free. So too we must not
altogether find fault with Sthenelus in Homer saying,
"We boast ourselves far better than our fathers,"[774]
when we remember the words of Agamemnon,
"How now? thou son of brave horse-taming Tydeus,
Why dost thou crouch for fear, and watch far off
The lines of battle? How unlike thy father!"[775]
For it was not because he was defamed himself, but he stood up for his
friend[776] that was abused, the occasion giving him a reasonable excuse
for self-commendation. So too the Romans were far from pleased at
Cicero's frequently passing encomiums upon himself in the affair of
Catiline, yet when Scipio said they ought not to try him (Scipio), since
he had given them the power to try anybody, they put on garlands, and
accompanied him to the Capitol, and sacrificed with him. For Cicero was
not compelled to praise himself, but only did so for glory, whereas the
danger in which Scipio stood removed envy from him.
Sec. V. And not only on one's trial and in danger, but also in misfortune,
is tall talk and boasting more suitable than in prosperity. For in
prosperity people seem to clutch as it were at glory and enjoy it, and
so gratify their ambition; but in adversity, being far from ambition
owing to circumstances, such self-commendation seems to be a bearing up
and fortifying the spirit against fortune, and an avoidance altogether
of that desire for pity and condolence, and that humility, which we
often find in adversity. As then we esteem those persons vain and
without sense who in walking hold themselves very erect and with a stiff
neck, yet in boxing or fighting we commend such as hold themselves up
and alert, so the man struggling with adversity, who stands up straight
against his fate, "in fighting posture like some boxer,"[777] and
instead of being humble and abject becomes through his boasting lofty
and dignified, seems to be not offensive and impudent, but great and
invincible. This is why, I suppose, Homer has represented Patroclus
modest and without reproach in prosperity, yet at the moment of death
saying grandiloquently,
"Had twenty warriors fought me such as thou,
All had succumbed to my victorious spear."[778]
And Phocion, though in other respects he was gentle, yet after his
sentence exhibited his greatness of soul to many others, and notably to
one of those that were to die with him, who was weeping and wailing, to
whom he said, "What! are you not content to die with Phocion?"
Sec. VI. Not less, but still more, lawful is it for a public man who is
wronged to speak on his own behalf to those who treat him with
ingratitude. Thus Achilles generally conceded glory to the gods, and
modestly used such language as,
"If ever Zeus
Shall grant to me to sack Troy's well-built town;"[779]
but when insulted and outraged contrary to his deserts, he utters in his
rage boastful words,
"Alighting from my ships twelve towns I sacked,"[780]
and,
"For they will never dare to face my helmet
When it gleams near."[781]
For frank outspokenness, when it is part of one's defence, admits of
boasting. It was in this spirit no doubt that Themistocles, who neither
in word nor deed had given any offence, when he saw the Athenians were
tired of him and treating him with neglect, did not abstain from saying,
"My good sirs, why do you tire of receiving benefits so frequently at
the same hands?" and[782] "When the storm is on you fly to me for
shelter as to a tree, but when fine weather comes again, then you pass
by and strip me of my leaves."
Sec. VII. They then that are wronged generally mention what they have done
well to those who are ungrateful. And the person who is blamed for what
he has done well is altogether to be pardoned, and not censured, if he
passes encomiums on his own actions: for he is in the position of one
not scolding but making his defence. This it was that made Demosthenes'
freedom of speech splendid, and prevented people being wearied out by
the praise which in all his speech _On the Crown_ he lavished on
himself, pluming himself on those embassies and decrees in connection
with the war with which fault had been found.
Sec. VIII. Not very unlike this is the grace of antithesis, when a person
shows that the opposite of what he is charged with is base and low. Thus
Lycurgus when he was charged at Athens with having bribed an informer to
silence, replied, "What kind of a citizen do you think me, who, having
had so long time the fingering of your public money, am detected in
giving rather than taking unjustly?" And Cicero, when Metellus told him
that he had destroyed more as a witness than he had got acquitted as an
advocate, answered, "Who denies that my honesty is greater than my
eloquence?" Compare such sayings of Demosthenes as, "Who would not have
been justified in killing me, had I tried in word only to impair the
ancient glory of our city?"[783] And, "What think you these wretches
would have said, if the states had departed, when I was curiously
discussing these points?"[784] And indeed the whole of that speech _On
the Crown_ most ingeniously introduces his own praises in his
antitheses, and answers to the charges brought against him.
Sec. IX. However it is worth while to notice in his speech that he most
artistically inserts praise of his audience in the remarks about
himself, and so makes his speech less egotistical and less likely to
raise envy. Thus he shows how the Athenians behaved to the Euboeans and
to the Thebans, and what benefits they conferred on the people of
Byzantium and on the Chersonese, claiming for himself only a subordinate
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.