Chapter XVI: Part 16

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.