Plutarch's Morals
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