Chapter 35

§ 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 Lycormæ and Satilæi 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."

§ 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."

§ 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?"

§ 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 Nysæus 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."

§ 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 Tænarum, 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."

§ 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."

§ 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?"

§ 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.

§ XXI. Just now we were dissatisfied that the wicked were punished late and tardily, whereas at present we find fault with the deity for correcting the character and disposition of same before they commit crime, from our ignoring that the future deed may be worse and more dreadful than the past, and the hidden intention than the overt act; for we are not able fully to understand the reasons why it is better to leave some alone in their ill deeds, and to arrest others in the intention; just as no doubt medicine is not appropriate in the case of some patients, which would be beneficial to others not ill, but yet perhaps in a more dangerous condition still. And so the gods do not visit all the offences of parents on their children, but if a good man is the son of a bad one, as the son of a sickly parent is sometimes of a good constitution, he is exempt from the punishment of his race, as not being a participator in its viciousness. But if a young man imitates his vicious race it is only right that he should inherit the punishment of their ill deeds, as he would their debts. For Antigonus was not punished for Demetrius, nor, of the old heroes,[862] Phyleus for Augeas, or Nestor for Neleus, for though their sires were bad they were good, but those whose nature liked and approved the vices of their ancestors, these justice punished, taking vengeance on their similarity in viciousness. For as the warts and moles and freckles of parents often skip a generation, and reappear in the grandsons and granddaughters, and as a Greek woman, that had a black baby and so was accused of adultery, found out that she was the great granddaughter of an Ethiopian,[863] and as the son of Pytho the Nisibian who recently died, and who was said to trace his descent to the Sparti,[864] had the birthmark on his body of the print of a spear the token of his race, which though long dormant had come up again as out of the deep, so frequently earlier generations conceal and suppress the mental idiosyncrasies and passions of their race, which afterwards nature causes to break out in other members of the family, and so displays the family bent either to vice or virtue."