Plutarch's Morals
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