Chapter 3

§ XVII. We ought, at all hazards, to keep our boys also from association with bad men, for they will catch some of their villany. This was the meaning of Pythagoras' enigmatical precepts, which I shall quote and explain, as they give no slight momentum towards the acquisition of virtue: as, _Do not touch black tails_: that is, do not associate with bad men.[36] _Do not go beyond the balance_: that is, we must pay the greatest attention to justice and not go beyond it. _Do not sit on a measure_: that is, do not be lazy, but earn tomorrow's bread as well as to-day's. _Do not give everyone your right hand_: that is, do not be too ready to strike up a friendship. _Do not wear a tight ring_: that is, let your life be free, do not bind yourself by a chain. _Do not poke the fire with a sword_: that is, do not provoke an angry person, but yield to such. _Do not eat the heart_: do not wear away the heart by anxiety. _Abstain from beans_: that is, do not meddle in state affairs, for the voting for offices was formerly taken by beans. _Do not put your food in the chamber-pot_: that is, do not throw your pearls before swine, for words are the food of the mind, and the villany of men twist them to a corrupt meaning. _When you have come to the end of a journey do not look back_: that is, when people are going to die and see that their end is near, they ought to take it easily and not be dejected. But I will return from my digression. We must keep our boys, as I said, from association with all bad men, but especially from flatterers. For, as I have often said to parents, and still say, and will constantly affirm, there is no race more pestilential, nor more sure to ruin youths swiftly, than the race of flatterers, who destroy both parents and sons root and branch, making the old age of the one and the youth of the others miserable, holding out pleasure as a sure bait. The sons of the rich are by their fathers urged to be sober, but by them to be drunk; by their fathers to be chaste, by them to wax wanton; by their fathers to save, by them to spend; by their fathers to be industrious, by them to be lazy. For they say, "'Our life's but a span;'[37] we can only live once; why should you heed your father's threats? he's an old twaddler, he has one foot in the grave; we shall soon hoist him up and carry him off to burial." Some even pimp for them and supply them with prostitutes or even married women, and cut huge slices off the father's savings for old age, if they don't run off with them altogether. An accursed tribe, feigning friendship, knowing nothing of real freedom, flatterers of the rich, despisers of the poor, drawn to young men by a sort of natural logic,[38] showing their teeth and grinning all over when their patrons laugh,[39] misbegotten brats of fortune and bastard elements in life, living according to the nod of the rich, free in their circumstances, but slaves by inclination, when they are not insulted thinking themselves insulted, because they are parasites to no purpose. So, if any father cares for the good bringing-up of his sons, he must banish from his house this abominable race. He must also be on his guard against the viciousness of his sons' schoolfellows, for they are quite sufficient to corrupt the best morals.

§ XVIII. What I have said hitherto is _apropos_ to my subject: I will now speak a word to the men. Parents must not be over harsh and rough in their natures, but must often forgive their sons' offences, remembering that they themselves were once young. And just as doctors by infusing a sweet flavour into their bitter potions find delight a passage to benefit, so fathers must temper the severity of their censure by mildness; and sometimes relax and slacken the reins of their sons' desires, and again tighten them; and must be especially easy in respect to their faults, or if they are angry must soon cool down. For it is better for a father to be hot-tempered than sullen, for to continue hostile and irreconcilable looks like hating one's son. And it is good to seem not to notice some faults, but to extend to them the weak sight and deafness of old age, so as seeing not to see, and hearing not to hear, their doings. We tolerate the faults of our friends; why should we not that of our sons? often even our slaves' drunken debauches we do not expose. Have you been rather near? spend more freely. Have you been vexed? let the matter pass. Has your son deceived you by the help of a slave? do not be angry. Did he take a yoke of oxen from the field, did he come home smelling of yesterday's debauch? wink at it. Is he scented like a perfume shop? say nothing. Thus frisky youth gets broken in.[40]

§ XIX. Those of our sons who are given to pleasure and pay little heed to rebuke, we must endeavour to marry, for marriage is the surest restraint upon youth. And we must marry our sons to wives not much richer or better born, for the proverb is a sound one, "Marry in your own walk of life."[41] For those who marry wives superior to themselves in rank are not so much the husbands of their wives as unawares slaves to their dowries.[42]

§ XX. I shall add a few remarks, and then bring my subject to a close. Before all things fathers must, by a good behaviour, set a good example to their sons, that, looking at their lives as a mirror, they may turn away from bad deeds and words. For those fathers who censure their sons' faults while they themselves commit the same, are really their own accusers, if they know it not, under their sons' name; and those who live a depraved life have no right to censure their slaves, far less their sons. And besides this they will become counsellors and teachers of their sons in wrongdoing; for where old men are shameless youths will of a certainty have no modesty. We must therefore take all pains to teach our sons self-control, emulating the conduct of Eurydice, who, though an Illyrian and more than a barbarian, to teach her sons educated herself though late in life, and her love to them is well depicted in the inscription which she offered to the Muses: "Eurydice of Hierapolis made this offering to the Muses, having conceived a vast love for knowledge. For when a mother with sons full-grown she learnt letters, the preservers of knowledge."

To carry out all these precepts would be perhaps a visionary scheme; but to attain to many, though it would need a happy disposition and much care, is a thing possible to human nature.[43]

[3] Euripides, "Here. Fur." 1261, 1262.

[4] Euripides, "Hippol." 424, 425.

[5] Cleophantus is the name given to this lad by other writers.

[6] Compare Sophocles, "Oedipus Tyrannus," 112, 113.

[7] The Thessalians were very pugnacious. Cf. Isocrates, "Oratio de Pace," p. 316. [Greek: ohi men (Thettaloi) sphisin autois haei polemousin].

[8] A proverbial expression among the ancients for earliest childhood. See Erasmus, "Adagia."

[9] Plato, "Republic," ii. p. 429, E.

[10] See Erasmus, "Adagia."

[11] It is difficult to know how to render the word [Greek: paidagôgos] in English. He was the slave who took the boy to school, and generally looked after him from his seventh year upward. Tutor or governor seems the best rendering. He had great power over the boy entrusted to him.

[12] Plato, "Clitophon," p. 255, D.

[13] Compare Diogenes Laertius, ii. 72.

[14] Reading [Greek: koitophthorountes], the excellent emendation of Wyttenbach.

[15] From the heathen standpoint of course, not from the Christian. Compare the advice of Cato in Horace's "Satires," Book i. Sat. ii. 31-35. It is a little difficult to know what Diogenes' precept really means. Is it that vice is universal? Like Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," Act ii. Sc. ii. 5. "All sects, all ages smack of this vice."

[16] He was asked by Polus, see Plato, "Gorgias," p. 290, F.

[17] "Hippolytus," 986-989.

[18] Cf. Plato, "Cratylus," p. 257, E. [Greek: ô pai Hipponikou Hermogenes, palaia paroimia, oti chalepa ta kala estin opê echei mathein]. So Horace, "Sat." i. ix. 59, 60, "Nil sine magno Vita labore dedit mortalibus."

[19] "Midias," p. 411, C.

[20] _i.e._, occasionally and sparingly.

[21] Diogenes Laertius assigns the remark to Aristippus, while Stobæus fathers it on Aristo.

[22] A favourite thought with the ancients. Compare Isocrates, "Admonitio ad Demonicum," p. 18; and Aristotle, "Nic. Eth.," iv. 3.

[23] "Republic," vii. p. 489, E.

[24] A famous Proverb. It is "the master's eye" generally, as in Xenophon, "Oeconom." xii. 20; and Aristotle, "Oeconom." i. 6.

[25] "Works and Days," 361, 362. The lines were favourite ones with our author. He quotes them again, § 3, of "How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue."

[26] See Pausanias, ix. 9. Also Erasmus, "Adagia."

[27] A fragment from the "Protesilaus" of Euripides. Our "It takes two to make a quarrel."

[28] See Plutarch's Lysander.

[29] Or _symposium_, where all sorts of liberties were taken.

[30] I have softened his phrase. His actual words were very coarse, and would naturally be resented by Ptolemy. See Athenæus, 621, A.

[31] See "Iliad," v. 83; xvi. 334; xx, 477.

[32] A fragment from the "Dictys" of Euripides.

[33] "Republ." v. 463, F. sq.

[34] Cf. Shakespeare's "Winter Tale," Act iii. sc. iii. 59-63.

[35] As Horace's father did. See "Satires," Book i. Sat. iv. 105-129.

[36] What we call _black sheep_.

[37] From Simonides. Cf. Seneca, "Epist." xlix. "Punctum est quod vivimus, et adhuc puncto minus."

[38] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: hôs ek logikês technês.]

[39] Like _Carker_ in Dombey.

[40] Compare the character of Micio in the "Adelphi" of Terence.

[41] This saying is assigned by Diogenes Laertius to Pittacus.

[42] Compare Plautus, "Asinaria," i. l. 74. "Argentum accepi: dote imperum vendidi." Compare also our author, "Whether Vice is sufficient to cause Unhappiness," § i.

[43] Wyttenbach thinks this treatise is not Plutarch's. He bases his conclusion partly on external, partly on internal, grounds. It is not quoted by Stobæus, or any of the ancients, before the fourteenth century. And its style is not Plutarch's; it has many words foreign to Plutarch: it has "nescio quid novum ac peregrinum, ab illa Plutarchea copia et gravitate diversum leve et inane." Certainly its matter is superior to its manner.

ON LOVE TO ONE'S OFFSPRING.

§ I. Appeals to foreign law-courts were first devised among the Greeks through mistrust of one another's justice, for they looked on justice as a necessity not indigenous among them. Is it not on much the same principle that the philosophers, in regard to some of their questions, owing to their variety of opinion, have appealed to the brute creation as to a strange state, and submitted the decision to their instincts and habits as not to be talked over and impartial? Or is it a general charge against human infirmity that, having different opinions on the most necessary and important things, we seek in horses and dogs and birds how to marry and beget and rear children, as though we had no means of making our own nature known, and appeal to the habits and instincts of the brute creation, and call them in to bear witness against the many deviations from nature in our lives, which from the first are confused and disorderly. For among the brutes nature remains ever the same, pure and simple, but in men, owing to reason and habit, like oil in the hands of the perfumers, being mixed up with many added opinions, it becomes various and loses its original simplicity. And let us not wonder that the brutes follow nature more closely than human beings, for in that respect even they are outstripped by inanimate things, which, being dowered neither with imagination nor any appetite or inclination contrary to nature, ever continue in the one path which nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, inventing different modes and fashions of life, has left no plain or evident trace of nature.[44]

§ II. Consider in their marriages how much the animals follow nature. For they do not wait for any legislation about bachelor or late-married, like the citizens of Lycurgus and Solon, nor do they fear penalties for childlessness, nor are they anxious for the _jus trium liberorum_,[45] like many of the Romans, who only marry and have children for the privileges it bestows, not to have heirs, but to be qualified for succeeding themselves to inheritances. Then, again, the male animal does not go with the female at all times; for its aim is not pleasure but procreation: so in the season of spring, the most appropriate time for such pairings,[46] the female being submissive and tender attracts the male by her beautiful condition of body, coming as she does from the dew and fresh pastures, and when pregnant modestly retires and takes thought for the birth and safety of her offspring. We cannot adequately describe all this, but every animal exhibits for its young affection and forethought and endurance and unselfishness. We call the bee wise, and celebrate its "making the yellow honey,"[47] flattering it for its tickling sweetness; but we neglect the wisdom and ingenuity of other creatures, both as regards the birth and bringing up of their young. For example, the kingfisher after conception weaves its nest with the thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter it, they even say that it does not admit the sea, or even the very smallest things. And cats, when they breed, very often let their kittens go out and feed, and take them back into their entrails again.[48] And the bear, a most savage and ugly beast, gives birth to its young without shape or joints, and with its tongue as with an instrument moulds its features, so that it seems to give form as well as life to its progeny. And the lion in Homer, "whom the hunters meet in the wood with its whelps, exulting in its strength, which so frowns that it hides its eyes,"[49] does it not intend to bargain with the hunters for its whelps? For universally the love of animals for their offspring makes timid ones bold, and lazy ones energetic, and greedy ones unselfish. And so the bird in Homer, feeding its young "with its beak, with whatever it has captured, even though it goes ill with itself,"[50] nourishes its young at the cost of its own hunger, and when the food is near its maw abstains from it, and holds it tightly in its mouth, that it may not gulp it down unawares. "And so a bitch bestriding her tender pups, barks at a strange man, and yearns for the fray,"[51] making her fear for them a sort of second anger. And partridges when they are pursued with their young let them fly on, and, contriving their safety, themselves fly so near the sportsmen as to be almost caught, and then wheel round, and again fly back and make the sportsmen hope to catch them, till at last, having thus provided for the safety of their young, they lead the sportsmen on a long way. As to hens, we see every day how they watch over their chicks, dropping their wings over some, and letting others climb on their backs, or anywhere about them, and clucking for joy all the time: and though they fly from dogs and dragons when only afraid for themselves, if they are afraid for their chicks they stand their ground and fight valiantly. Are we to suppose then that nature has only implanted these instincts in fowls and dogs and bears, anxious only about their offspring, to put us mortals out of countenance and to give us a bad name? considering these examples for us to follow, while disgrace justly attaches to our inhumanity, for mankind only is accused of having no disinterested affection, and of not knowing how to love except in regard to advantage. For that line is greatly admired in the theatres, "Man loves man only for reward," and is the view of Epicurus, who thinks that the father so loves his son, the mother her child, children their parents. Whereas, if the brutes could understand conversation, and if anyone were to introduce horses and cows and dogs and birds into a common theatre,[52] and were to change the sentiment into "neither do dogs love their pups, nor horses their foals, nor birds their young, out of interest, but gratuitously and by nature," it would be recognized by the affections of all of them to be a true sentiment. Why it would be disgraceful, great God, that birth and travail and procreation should be gratis and mere nature among the beasts, while among mankind they should be merely mercenary transactions!

§ III. But such a statement is not true or worthy of credit. For as nature, in wild growths, such as wild vines, wild figs, or wild olives, makes the fruit imperfect and inferior to the fruit of cultivated trees, so has she given to the brutes an imperfect affection for their kind, one neither marked by justice nor going beyond commodity: whereas to man, a logical and social animal, she has taught justice and law, and honour to the gods, and building of cities, and philanthropy, and has contributed the noble and goodly and fruitful seeds of all these in love to one's offspring, thereby following the very first elements that are found in the construction of the body. For nature is everywhere perfect and artistic and complete, and, to borrow the expression of Erasistratus, has nothing tawdry about her: but one cannot adequately describe all the processes appertaining to birth, nor would it be perhaps decent to pry too closely into such hidden matters, and to particularize too minutely all their wondrous ingenuity. But her contrivance and dispensation of milk alone is sufficient to prove nature's wonderful care and forethought. For all the superfluous blood in women, that owing to their languor and thinness of spirit floats about on the surface and oppresses them, has a safety-valve provided by nature in the menses, which relieve and cleanse the rest of the body, and fit the womb for conception in due season. But after conception nature stops the menses, and arrests the flow of the blood, using it as aliment for the babe in the womb, until the time arrives for its birth, and it requires a different kind of food. At this stage the blood is most ingeniously changed into a supply of milk, not diffused all over the body, but externally in the breasts, so that the babe can with its mouth imbibe the gentle and soothing nutriment.[53] But all these various processes of nature, all this economy, all this forethought, would be useless, had not nature also implanted in mothers love to their offspring and anxiety for their welfare.

"For of all things, that on the earth do breathe Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest."[54]

And the poet's words are especially applicable to a newborn babe. For there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul as a newborn babe: to whom almost alone nature has given an impure outlet to the light of day: being kneaded with blood, and full of defilement, and like one killed rather than born: which no one would touch, or lift up, or kiss, or embrace, but from natural affection. And that is why all the animals have their udders under the belly, women alone have their breasts high on their bodies, that they can lift up their babes to kiss, to dandle, and to fondle: seeing that their bearing and rearing children comes not from necessity but love.