Part 4

11. Thus, if there is nothing for the soul after death, that is, if death is the end of all reward and punishment, one might be disposed to say that the Deity deals indulgently and leniently with those of the wicked who are soon punished and die early. For were it maintained that in their lifetime the wicked incur no other evil than the conviction that wrong-doing is utterly fruitless and graceless, and for the many and great conflicts of mind that it costs confers no benefit nor anything worthy of endeavor, the perception of this alone is fatal to the soul’s happiness. It is with the evil-doer as with Lysimachus,[30:1] who, compelled by thirst to surrender his person and his command to the Getae, having quenched his thirst and being at the same time made a prisoner, exclaimed, “Alas for my guilt in suffering myself to be deprived of so great a kingdom for so brief a pleasure!” It is, indeed, in a case like this, exceedingly difficult to resist the necessity created by a natural appetite. But when a man, either from inordinate desire for wealth, or from envy of those possessed of civic honor and power, or for the sake of some sensual gratification, commits an unlawful and abominable deed, and, after the thirst and madness of passion have subsided, sees in due time the vile and fearful traits of character which lead to crime established permanently within him, while he can discern in himself nothing useful, or serviceable, or profitable, is it not probable that the thought often occurs to him that for vainglory or for slavish and fruitless pleasure, he has set at naught the greatest and best things that are accounted right among men, and thus whelmed his life in shame and trouble? For as Simonides[30:2] said in jest that he found the chest of money always full, that of thanks empty, so the wicked, having a clear view of their own guilt, find it—after the indulgence which yields for the moment an empty pleasure—utterly devoid of hope, and always laden with fears and griefs, with cheerless memories, suspicion of what the future may bring, and distrust of the present. Thus, as we hear Ino say on the stage, repenting of what she has done,—

“Dear women, tell me how, as at the first, As if this deed of mine were uncommitted, The house of Athamas may be my home,”[31:1]—

so it is probable that the soul of every evil-doer discusses these things within itself, and considers how it can by any possibility evade the memory of its misdeeds, cast out from itself the consciousness of them, and, becoming pure, start as if from the beginning on a new life. For wickedness manifests neither courage, nor modesty, nor consistency, nor steadfastness in the objects of its preference,—unless, by Zeus, we admit that evil-doers are wise; but where avarice, and eager voluptuousness, and implacable envy, are associated with malice and depravity, there also, on examination, you may see beneath the surface superstition, and effeminate indolence, and dread of death, and an abrupt vacillation of impulses, and an arrogant pretence to undeserved honor. Men of this character fear those who blame them, and at the same time dread those who praise them, as those whom they have wronged by their hypocrisy, and as persons especially hostile to the wicked, as is evinced in their cordial commendation of those who seem to be good. Indeed, the hardness in depravity, as in bad iron, is brittle, and what seems in it to have the greatest power of resistance is easily broken in pieces. Hence, in process of time, as bad men come to the knowledge of themselves, they are depressed, and grow peevish, and hold their own manner of life in abhorrence. When a mean man restores a deposit intrusted to his care, or gives security for a friend, or with honorable ambition confers gifts and services on his country, and immediately repents and is in trouble for what he has done, because of the utter instability and vacillation of his mind,—and when some who are applauded in the theatre for their generosity groan as their love of glory is merged in their love of money,—can it be that those who, like Apollodorus,[32:1] sacrifice men in the interest of their tyrannies and conspiracies, or like Glaucus,[33:1] the son of Epicydes, plunder the property of their friends, do not feel remorse, nor hate themselves, nor suffer grief, for the crimes that they have committed? I, indeed, if it is not irreverent thus to speak, do not think that those who work iniquity need any avenger among gods or men; but their own life suffices for their punishment, being utterly corrupted and kept in constant agitation by their guilt.

12. Consider now whether our discussion has exceeded a reasonable time.

TIMON replied,[33:2]—Perhaps so, with reference to the time that will yet be required; for I am going to bring forward the last doubt as a combatant held in reserve, since the others have been fairly conquered. What Euripides with the utmost boldness of speech inveighs against the gods for doing, namely, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, account us as tacitly charging upon them. Certainly, if those who have done wrong were themselves punished, there is no justice in chastising those who have done no wrong; for it is not right to punish even the evil-doers in their own person twice for the same offence; and if the gods, in their remissness failing to punish the guilty, afterward inflict penalties on the innocent, they do not fittingly make amends for their slow doing by unrighteous doing. Take the case of Aesop.[34:1] It is said that he came hither with money furnished by Croesus, intending to offer a magnificent sacrifice to the god of the temple, and to distribute among the citizens of Delphi four minas[34:2] apiece. But, as it is reported, having become disaffected toward the people here on account of some affront or quarrel, he made the sacrifice indeed, but sent the rest of the money back to Sardis, not thinking the men of Delphi worthy of the gift. They then raised against him the charge of sacrilege, and put him to death by throwing him from yonder cliff, which they call Hyampeia. From that time it is said that the god was angry with them, and made their soil unfruitful, and sent among them all kinds of strange diseases, so that they went round among the public assemblies of the Grecian cities, proclaiming with earnest entreaty that whoever would demand justice of them in behalf of Aesop should receive full satisfaction. But not until the third generation came Idmon, the Samian, not related to Aesop, except as the descendant of those who had bought him at Samos, and to him the Delphians made satisfaction in the ways prescribed, and were freed from their calamities. It was on that account, it is said, that the people changed the place of punishment for sacrilege from Hyampeia to the cliff called Nauplia. Now those who hold the memory of Alexander in the fondest regard, of whom I am one, do not approve of his sacking the city of Branchidae,[35:1] and destroying its inhabitants of all ages, because their great-grandfathers had treacherously delivered up the temple of Miletus. So Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, derided and teased the Corcyraeans,[36:1] when they asked him why he ravaged their island, saying, “By Zeus, because your fathers showed hospitality to Odysseus.” Again, when the people of Ithaca complained that his soldiers were stealing their sheep, he replied, “Your king not only did the like, but put out the shepherd’s[36:2] eye.” But is not Apollo more unreasonable than these men whom I have named, if he is now ruining the Pheneatae by stopping up the outlet of their streams, and putting their whole country under water,[36:3] because Hercules is said a thousand years ago to have stolen the oracular tripod and carried it to Pheneus? And was he less unreasonable in announcing to the Sybarites that they should see the end of their calamities, when by three destructive visitations they should have appeased the wrath of the Leucadian Hera?[37:1] Nor is it so very long a time since the Locrians ceased sending virgins to Troy.

“With naked limbs, bare feet, and servile guise, At early dawn they sweep Athene’s temple, Unveiled, while age remorseless steals upon them.”

And all this because of the licentiousness of Ajax.[37:2] Now where is the reasonableness or rightfulness of these things? Equally little can we commend the Thracians[38:1] for still tattooing their wives, to avenge Orpheus; or the barbarians about the Po, who wear black, as they say, in mourning for Phaethon, which seems all the more ridiculous when we consider that, while those who lived when Phaethon perished cared nothing at all about the matter, their posterity of the fifth or the tenth generation are changing their garments and mourning for him.[38:2] Yet this is merely foolish, not atrocious or intolerable. But on what justifiable ground does the anger of the gods, suddenly disappearing, as some rivers do, break out again in a different place, on other people than the evil-doers, terminating only in extreme calamity?

13. As soon as Timon came to a pause, fearing that with a fresh start he might bring forth more and greater absurdities, I instantly asked him,—Do you really think that all these things are true?

If not all, said he, yet if some of them be true, do you not think that the discussion labors under the same difficulty?

Perhaps, said I; and so to persons in a high fever, whether they chance to wear one garment, or to be wrapped in many, the burning heat is nearly or quite the same, and yet it contributes to their relief to remove the multitude of coverings. But if the patient is unwilling to have this done, let him have his own way. Yet most of these stories seem like myths and fictions. But recall to mind the religious festival lately held here, when you saw the magnificent portion of the viands[39:1] which the heralds took from the table, proclaiming that it was due to the posterity of Pindar, and remember how solemn and sweet this token of honor seemed to you.

But, said he, who would not be delighted by the gracefulness of a commemoration so entirely Grecian and so simply archaic? unless he had, to borrow Pindar’s own words, a black heart forged in a cold fire.

There is then no need, said I, of my citing a similar proclamation made in Sparta, “After the Lesbian singer,”[39:2] in honor and remembrance of the ancient Terpander; for the principle is the same. But you,[40:1] I suppose, think yourselves superior to other Boeotians, as being of the race of the Opheltiadae;[40:2] you make similar claims among the Phocians[40:3] by virtue of your descent from Daiphantus;[40:4] and you, indeed, were the first to stand by me and help me in preserving for the Lycormaeans and the Satilaeans[40:5] their hereditary honor, and the right to wear crowns in public which belongs to the posterity of Hercules,—maintaining that lasting honors and favors are due to those descended from Hercules, because he, though a great benefactor to the Greeks, never received his due of gratitude, or any fitting recompense.

You remind us, said TIMON, of a truly noble contest, and of one in which it was especially becoming for a philosopher to take part.

Relax then, my friend, said I, the severity of your accusation, and do not take it so hard if some of the descendants of wicked and depraved people are punished; or else do not welcome or commend the honor rendered to worthy parentage. For if we would retain the reward of virtue in the posterity of the virtuous, we cannot reasonably think that punishments for misdoings ought to fail and cease, but must suppose that they will run on at even pace with the rewards, giving retribution in each case in proportion to desert. But he who gladly sees the posterity of Cimon honored in Athens, yet is vexed and angry at the exile of the descendants of Lachares[41:1] or of Ariston,[41:2] is very stupid and feeble-minded, or rather has the presumption to take the place of a wrangler and railer against the Divine Being,—accusing him, forsooth, if the children’s children of an unrighteous and wicked man seem to prosper, and again accusing him if the posterity of bad ancestors are suffered to decline and to become extinct,—indeed, finding equal fault with God when the children of a good father or those of a bad father fare ill.

14. Let these considerations serve you as defences against those who are so excessively bitter and objurgatory. But taking up again the beginning of the thread in our discussion concerning God,—obscure, indeed, and with many turnings and windings,—let us direct our way discreetly and deliberately toward what is probable and credible. For not even in the things which we ourselves do can we always state with confidence the actual and true meaning. Thus we cannot tell why we order the children of those who die of phthisis or of dropsy to sit with their feet in water till the corpse is buried, though it is believed that in this case they neither contract the disease at the time nor are liable to it afterward. Nor, again, can we tell the reason why, when a goat takes into his mouth a piece of snakeroot,[42:1] the whole flock stand still till the goatherd comes and takes it out of his mouth. There are properties of various objects that are transfused or transmitted in ways incredible as to velocity and distance. In these cases we are indeed more surprised at remoteness of time than of space. Yet it is really more amazing that Athens should have been infected throughout with a pestilence[42:2] that began in Aethiopia, and that Pericles should have died of it, and Thucydides should have been attacked by it, than that, if the Delphians and the Sybarites have been wicked, protracted punishment should come upon their posterity. For all properties of objects have mutual action and reaction from their very beginning till now, and bear relations to one another of which, though we are ignorant of the cause, it none the less produces its appropriate effect.

15. Nevertheless, the public calamities of cities have obviously their reason in justice. For a city has unity and continuity like a living creature, not devesting itself of identity by the changes that occur at successive periods of its life, nor becoming a different being from its former self by the lapse of time, but always retaining a conscious selfhood with the peculiarities that belong to it, and receiving the entire blame or praise of whatever it does or has done in its collective capacity, so long as the community which constitutes it and binds it together remains a unit. But dividing it by successive periods of time so as to make of a single city many cities, or rather an infinite number of cities, is like making of one man many men, because he is now elderly, yet once was younger, and still earlier was a mere stripling. This might remind one of the Epicharmians, from whom the sophists derived the cumulative argument,[43:1] according to which he who used to be in debt now owes nothing, having become a different man, and he who was yesterday invited to supper to-day comes uninvited, being another person. However, different periods of life make greater changes in every one of us than they ordinarily make in cities. One who sees Athens would recognize it thirty years afterward; for the present manners, sports, industries, likings, and resentments of the people closely resemble those of former days. But after a considerable time, scarce a kinsman or friend would recognize a man’s countenance and form; while the change of manners readily brought about in a person by differing fashions of intercourse, employment, experience, and legal obligation look strange and new even to one who has always known him. But yet the man is said to be one and the same man from the beginning to the end. The city in like manner remaining the same, we regard it as involved in the disgrace of its ancestry by the very right by which it shares their glory and their power. Else we shall throw everything into the river of Heracleitus, into which, he says, no one can enter twice, because changing nature is transposing and altering all things.

16. But if a city is one continuous entity, equally so is a race that springs from one original stock and carries along with it certain common tendencies derived from that stock; and that which is born is not, like a manufactured article, separated from him who produced it; for it exists from him, not merely by him, so that it possesses and bears within itself some part of him, which is properly the object of chastisement or of commendation. Not in mere sport I would say that it was more unjust for the Athenians to destroy the brazen statue of Cassander,[45:1] and for the people of Syracuse to cast beyond their borders the body of Dionysius,[45:2] than for the posterity of those men to suffer punishment. For there was nothing of the nature of Cassander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had already left the corpse; but in Nisaeus,[45:3] and Apollocrates,[45:4] and Antipater and Philip,[45:5] and equally in other sons of wicked parents, there was implanted, and remains continuously, the part of their parents that had the mastery over their lives, and in the children this is not quiescent or inactive, but they live by it, and are nourished by it, and order their conduct by it, and think as it prompts. Nor is it at all marvellous or absurd that, being the children of such men, they should possess their qualities. In fine, I would say that, as in the healing art, whatever is beneficial is therefore right, and as he would be ridiculous who should think it wrong in a case of hip-disease to cauterize the thumb, and when the liver is ulcerated to scarify the upper part of the abdomen, and when the hoofs of oxen are tender to anoint the tips of their horns,[46:1] equally is he ridiculous who thinks in the matter of punishment that anything else than the cure of wickedness is right, and who is vexed when the remedy is applied to some parts rather than to others, after the manner of those who open a vein to cure ophthalmia. Nor does such a person seem to look beyond the range of his bodily senses; nor does he bear it in mind that a teacher in whipping one boy admonishes all, and that a general in the capital punishment of one out of ten brings all the guilty men under his command back to their duty. In truth not only is one part of the body cured through another part, but there are certain dispositions of mind and conduct, equally those that are evil and those that tend to reformation, as to which soul is influenced by soul more than body is affected by body. For from body to body the same affection and the same change seem to be transmitted; while in the case under consideration the soul, through the influence of the imagination, becomes worse or better in a degree corresponding to the intensity of hope or fear.

17. While I was still speaking, OLYMPICUS interrupted me, saying,—You seem to have, underlying this reasoning of yours, an hypothesis of prime importance,—the continued existence of the soul.

Yes, said I, inasmuch as you yourselves admit it, or rather did admit it; for the argument from the very beginning proceeded from the supposition that God deals with men according to their merits.

OLYMPICUS replied,—Do you think that it follows from God’s dealing with us according to our merits, that souls are either absolutely incorruptible, or destined at least to continue in being for a certain period after death?[48:1]

I replied,—No, my good friend. God, forsooth, is so petty and so trifling,[48:2] that—as if we had nothing of the divine in us, nor anything closely resembling him, and stable and firm, but were, as Homer says, mere leaves, like those that wither and perish altogether—he makes such account of us as the women do of their gardens of Adonis,[48:3] which they tend and cultivate in earthen pots,—souls lasting for a day, blooming in a frail flesh that has no strong root of life, then at once extinguished by any casualty that may chance to occur. But if you choose, making no mention of other gods, look at this one of ours here, and say whether you suppose that he, knowing that the souls of the dying are instantly destroyed when they are exhaled from their bodies, like clouds or smoke-wreaths, should demand so many propitiations for those who die, and such tokens of great reverence and honor for the dead, thus deceiving and deluding those who believe in him. I therefore would not deny the continued existence of the soul, unless some one, like Hercules, should carry off the tripod of the Pythian priestess, and abolish and destroy the oracle. For while even down to our own time many such things are foretold by the oracle as are said to have been announced to Corax of Naxos,[49:1] it is unholy to deem the soul capable of dying.

Then PATROCLEAS said,—What was that prediction, and who was that Corax? Both the story and the name are unfamiliar to me.

By no means, said I; but I was to blame in using a by-name instead of the real name. For he who killed Archilochus in battle was named Calondas, as they say, and had Corax for a surname. He, having been first driven out of the temple by the Pythian priestess because he had killed a man sacred to the Muses, then employing prayers and entreaties with a statement of the case in his own justification, was ordered to go to the residence of Tettix,[50:1] in order to propitiate the soul of Archilochus. This place was Taenarus;[50:2] for there it is said that Tettix the Cretan arrived with a fleet, built a city, and established himself hard by the oracle of the dead. In like manner, the Spartans were ordered by the oracle to propitiate the soul of Pausanias, and they sent for necromancers from Italy, who by their sacrifices drove the apparition of Pausanias from the temple.[50:3]

18. There is then, said I, one course of reasoning which confirms equally the providence of God and the continued life of the human soul, and neither can remain credible if the other is taken away. But to the soul existing after death there is a stronger probability that rewards and punishments are rendered, than there is that they should be fully rendered in this life.[51:1] For during this life the soul is, like an athlete, in perpetual conflict; but when the conflict is over, then what the soul has deserved is allotted to it. Yet whatever favors or whatever chastisements the soul, being there by itself, receives, are of no concern to us living here, nay, they are disbelieved and they are out of the field of our knowledge; but these penalties that pass on through children and remoter posterity, being manifest to men living here, check and restrain many of the wicked. There is, indeed, no punishment more shameful or more sorrowful than for men to see their posterity suffering on their account. Were the soul of an impious and lawless man to behold after death, not his statues overthrown, or any honors that he had received cancelled, but his children, or friends, or kindred, or family, suffering great misfortunes and receiving punishment on his account, such a soul would not choose again to be depraved and profligate,—no, not even to obtain honors like those which belong to Zeus. To show this I have a story to tell, which I lately heard; but I hesitate, lest you may think it a myth, while I want to confine myself to what is reasonable.

Do not hesitate by any means, said OLYMPICUS, but tell the story.

The others made the same request.

Then, said I, permit me to finish my reasoning, and afterward we will take up the myth, if indeed it be a myth.