Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
THE SPEAKERS
PATROCLEAS, Plutarch’s son-in-law. PLUTARCH. TIMON, Plutarch’s brother. OLYMPICUS, a friend (see _Sympos._ 3, 6). I. Having spoken to this effect, Quintus, before any one [Sidenote: 548 B] replied—we had just reached the far end of the colonnade—Epicurus took himself off. We stopped our walk for a while, in silent surprise at the oddness of the man, then glanced at one another, turned back, and resumed it. Patrocleas was the first to speak: ‘Which is it to be,’ he said, ‘are you for dropping the inquiry, or shall we answer the argument as though the speaker of it were present, though he is not present?’ Timon interposed: ‘Well, suppose he had thrown a spear and gone away, it would not do quietly to let it lie. Brasidas,[201] we are [Sidenote: C] given to believe, drew the spear out of his wound, and with it struck and slew the thrower. Now perhaps it is no business of ours to punish those who have discharged a monstrous or a false argument at us; enough if we eject it from ourselves before it has taken hold.’ ‘Then what is it’, I asked, ‘which has moved you most, in what he said? for there were a number of things, a disorderly mass, which the man drew from all quarters, to let them off against Divine Providence in his rage and fury.’
_Justice shall never strike thee to the heart— Fear not her footfall—no, nor any man That does the wrong; with silent foot and slow, When the day comes, she’ll stalk the sinners down._ [Sidenote: B] The very phrases—are they not?—which bad men might use to give themselves encouragement and assurance to set hand to lawless acts, since they show injustice yielding her harvest ripe and ready, and punishment lagging late and far behind the enjoyment.’ III. When Patrocleas had done, Olympicus spoke next: ‘Take another point, Patrocleas; what a grave absurdity these delays and hesitations on the part of Heaven involve! The slowness takes away all assurance of a Providence; and when misfortune comes to bad men, not on the heels of each wicked [Sidenote: C] deed, but later on, they set it down to mischance, and call it a calamity, not a punishment; they do not profit by it, they are annoyed at the things which befall them, but do not repent of the things which they have done. It is so with a horse; the touch of whip or spur which follows immediately on a stumble or blunder sets him up and brings him to his duty; whereas tugs and checks and ratings later on, after an interval, seem to him to have some purpose which is not education, they irritate, but do not school him. And so with vice; if punishment [Sidenote: D] from switch or rein follow every trip and tumble, vice will have the best chance of becoming thoughtful and lowly, and getting the fear of God, as of a Judge who stands over men in their acts and their passions, and does not wait till the day after to-morrow. Whereas, the Justice which moves calmly, “with a slow foot”, as Euripides put it, and falls upon the wicked “when the day comes”, resembles an automaton rather than a Providence, in her vague, procrastinating, unmethodical procedure. Thus I do not see what use there is in those “mills of the Gods” which [Sidenote: E] “grind slowly”, we are told,[206] for they make the form of Justice dim, and the fears of the wicked evanescent.’
IV. When all this had been said, and while I was deep in thought, Timon said: ‘Shall I intervene and with my own hand add the crowning stone of difficulty to our argument, or shall I allow it first to win through for itself against what we have already heard?’ ‘What need’, I said, ‘to let in the “third wave” and sluice the argument anew, if it prove unable to force aside the first objections and escape them? In the first place, then, we will start from our own ancestral hearth, from the [Sidenote: F] reserve, I mean, which the philosophers of the Academy show in speaking of what is divine; and reverently clear ourself from any claim to speak with knowledge about these matters. It is a graver mistake than for unmusical persons to discuss music, or civilians a campaign, if we mere men are to scrutinize the things which belong to Gods and daemons; the inartistic trying to track the inner thought of the artist, by fanciful and random conjecture.
If it is hard for a layman to guess at the reasoning which led a doctor to use the knife later and not sooner, or to apply a lotion to-day and not yesterday, surely it is not easy for a mortal to speak with any certainty about God, more than this—that [Sidenote: 530] he best knows the proper time for the curative treatment of vice, and applies the due punishment, as a medicine, to each man accordingly; for vice admits of no measure common to all, the proper time is not the same for every case. That the medical treatment of the soul which we call “Right” and “Justice” is of all arts the greatest, we have the testimony of thousands of witnesses, Pindar[207] among them. He acclaims the sovereign ruler of all the Gods as “in art most excellent”, because Justice is of his workmanship, and to her it pertains to determine the “when” and the “how” and the degree of punishment for every offender. And Plato[208] tells us that Minos, who is a son of Zeus, has become a learner of this art; showing that it is not possible for one who has not learnt, and acquired [Sidenote: B] the knowledge, to go straight in questions of right, or to apprehend the guiding principle.
Even the laws which men frame are not everywhere, and on the face of them, reasonable; some enactments appear simply ludicrous. In Lacedaemon, for instance, the Ephors, when they first enter office, make proclamation that no one is to grow a moustache, and that “men should obey the laws, that the laws may not be hard upon them”. The Romans, when they release slaves “into freedom” give them a tap with a light reed. When they draw a will, they make one set of persons “heirs” and “sell” the property to others, which appears strange. Strangest of all is the enactment [Sidenote: C] of Solon, that the man who takes neither side in a party contest, but stands out, should lose the franchise. One might go on to mention many legal absurdities, where the intention of the lawyers and the reason of the provisions are out of our knowledge. Then, if human codes are so inscrutable, what wonder that, in speaking of the Gods, we cannot lightly lay down the principle upon which they punish some offenders later, some sooner?
VI. ‘Let us now turn our attention to a second point, which is this: All kinds of human retribution deal out pain for pain and stop there. “Suffering for the doer”[213] is their principle, and beyond it they do not go. So they follow sin like a howling pack which hunts on the heels of the offences. Whereas God, we may suppose, when he sets his hand to punish a soul that is sick, [Sidenote: D] scrutinizes its passions, if perhaps they may be bent aside, and a way opened to repentance; he fixes a time, in cases where the wickedness seated within is not absolute or inflexible. He knows how large a portion of virtue, proceeding from himself, souls carry with them when they pass to birth, how powerful within the noble principle naturally is, and how ineffaceable; that it may flower into vice contrary to nature, when nurture and company are bad and corrupting, yet is afterwards cured in some persons and recovers its own proper state. And so he [Sidenote: E] does not bring down punishment equally upon all. What is incurable he at once removes out of the life and prunes away, because, happen what may, it is injurious to others, most injurious of all to a man’s self, to consort with wickedness all his time.
Where the sinful principle may be supposed to exist through ignorance of the good rather than from deliberate preference for the base, he gives them time for reformation; but if they persist, they, too, receive punishment in full; for he has no fear, we may be sure, lest they escape him at the last. Now consider how many changes take place in human character and life. And this is why that in them which changes is called “tropos” (turning) and “ethos” (_ēthos_), because habit (_ĕthos_) finds its way in so often, and masters them so mightily. I think [Sidenote: F] myself that the ancients called Cecrops “double-shaped”, not, as some say, because from a good king he became a very dragon of a tyrant, but, on the contrary, because he was, to begin with, perverse and terrible, and afterwards became a mild and humane ruler. This instance may be an uncertain one, but we know of Gelon at any rate, and Hiero in Sicily, and Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, how they won power by wickedness, but all used [Sidenote: 552] it virtuously; came to rule through unlawful ways, but turned out fair and patriotic rulers; introduced the reign of law and of careful agriculture, found their subjects men of jest and gossip, and made them sober and industrious.
Gelon, moreover, fought nobly at the head of his people, won a great battle against the Carthaginians, and refused them a peace when they sued for one, until he had bound them in a covenant to give up the practice of sacrificing their children to Cronus. Then, in Megalopolis, there was a tyrant Lydiadas, who changed [Sidenote: B] his ways in the actual course of his reign, and in disgust with his own injustice restored to the citizens their laws, and fell gloriously fighting for the country against its enemies. Suppose some one had slain Miltiades while tyrant in the Chersonese, as he first was, or had got a conviction for incest against Cimon, or had robbed Athens of Themistocles by a prosecution for his riotous passage through the market-place, as was done with Alcibiades later on, where would be our Marathons, our Eurymedons, that noble Artemisium, [Sidenote: C] _where Athens’ sons Set firm the shining base of Liberty?_[214]
For great natures produce nothing petty; their vehemence and energy cannot rest for very intensity, they toss about on the surge before they settle into their solid and abiding character. As then one ignorant of husbandry would not welcome the prospect of a piece of land full of thick undergrowth and weeds, with many wild creatures on it, and streams of water, and deep mud; whereas, to one who has learned to use his senses and to discriminate, those very things suggest strength and fatness and everything that is good in the soil, so it is with great natures. They break out early into many strange bad growths, [Sidenote: D] out of which we, in our intolerance, think it our duty to cut away and stunt all that is rough and prickly; but the Judge who is better than we and who sees the good and generous crop to come, waits for Time, the fellow-worker with Reason and Virtue, and that ripeness whereby Nature yields the proper fruit.
VII. ‘So much for this. Now do you not think that some of the Greeks are right in copying the Egyptian law which enacts that a pregnant woman who has been condemned to death should be kept in custody until she has borne a child?’ ‘Certainly’, they said. I went on: ‘Next, suppose a person not pregnant with children, but able, if time be given, to bring into [Sidenote: E] the light of the sun some secret action or design, either by denouncing a hidden evil, or by becoming the promoter of a salutary policy or the inventor of some needful expedient, is it not the better course to let punishment wait on convenience rather than to inflict it too soon? It seems to me to be so.’ ‘And to us’, said Patrocleas. ‘And rightly,’ said I, ‘for consider that if Dionysius had paid the penalty at the beginning of his reign, no Greek settler would have been left in Sicily, because the Carthaginians would have devastated it. So neither Apollonia, nor Anactorium, nor the Leucadian peninsula would have been occupied by Greeks if Periander had [Sidenote: F] been punished without such a long interval. I think that Cassander also had a respite in order that Thebes might be re-established.
_So sprung from meaner sire a nobler son, Skilled in all art and excellence._ Yet that son of Copreus has left us no brilliant or signal achievement, while the posterity of Sisyphus and Autolycus and Phlegyas burst into flower of glory and virtue in the persons of great kings. Pericles at Athens came of a house which was under a curse. Pompey the Great, at Rome, was the son of Strabo, whose corpse the Romans cast out and trampled [Sidenote: C] in their hatred. What is there strange then if God acts like the farmer, who does not cut down the thistle till he has picked the asparagus, or like the Libyans who do not burn the dry stalks before they have collected the gum; who spares to destroy a bad and rough-grown root of a noble race of kings till the due fruit has issued from it? For it were better for the Phocians that Iphitus should lose tens of thousands of cattle and horses, or that even more gold should leave Delphi, and silver too, than that Ulysses should never have been born, or Asclepius, or [Sidenote: D] the other brave men and mighty benefactors who have come of bad and vicious lines.
VIII. ‘But do you not all think it better that punishments should fall in the fitting time and manner than hastily and at once? There is the case of Callippus, who was slain by his friends with the very dagger which he had used to slay Dion in the guise of a friend. Again, there is Mitys[216] of Argos, killed in a party quarrel, whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on the murderer during a public performance and killed him. And I think you know all about Bessus the Paeonian, Patrocleas, and Ariston of Oeta, the commander of foreign troops?’ [Sidenote: E] ‘Indeed I do not,’ he replied, ‘but I want to hear.’ ‘Ariston,’ I said, ‘with the consent of the tyrants, took down the ornaments of Eriphyle, deposited here, and carried them off to his wife for a present. Then his son, enraged with his mother for some reason, set fire to the house, and burnt up all who were within it. Bessus, it appears, slew his own father, and for a long time escaped detection. Afterwards, having come to some friends for supper, he put his spear through a swallows’ nest and brought it down, and destroyed the young birds. All present exclaimed, as well they might: “Man, what has [Sidenote: F] possessed you to do such a monstrous thing?” To which he replied: “Have they not been telling lies against me this long time, shrieking that I have killed my father?” Astonished at such a speech, they informed the king, an inquiry was held, and Bessus suffered.
IX. ‘So far’, I said, ‘we have been speaking, as was agreed, upon the assumption that some respite is really granted to wicked men. For what remains, you must suppose that you are listening to Hesiod,[217] laying down, not with Plato[218] that punishment is [Sidenote: 554] “suffering which waits on wrongdoing”, but that it is a contemporary growth, springing up with sin, from the same place and the same root, _Bad counsel to the counsellor is worst_, and _Who plots ’gainst others, plots his heart away._ The corn-beetle is said to carry in herself an antidote compounded on a principle of opposites, but wickedness as it grows breeds its own pain and punishment, and suffers the penalty, not by and by, but in the very moment of insolence. In the body, every criminal who is punished[219] carries forth his own [Sidenote: B] cross; but vice fabricates for herself, out of herself, all the instruments of her chastisement; she manufactures a terrible life, piteous and shameful, with terrors and cruel pains, with regrets and troubles unceasing. But there are persons just like children, who see evildoers on the stage crowned and caparisoned, as often happens, in gold and purple, and dancing heartily; and gape and gaze, as though these men were happy indeed; until they are seen goaded and lashed, and fire issuing out of those gay and costly robes. Most bad men are wrapped as in a vesture [Sidenote: C] of great houses, and eminent offices and powers; and so it is unperceived that they are being punished, until, before you can think, they are stabbed or hurled down a rock, which is not to be called punishment, but the end or consummation of punishment.
For as Herodicus of Selymbria, who fell into a hopeless decline, and, for the first time in human history, combined gymnastics with medicine, made death, in Plato’s[220] words, “a long affair for himself”, and for similar invalids, so has it been with bad men. They thought to escape the blow at the time; the penalty comes, not after more time, but over more time, and is lengthened, not retarded. They were not punished after they [Sidenote: D] came to old age, but became old under punishment. I speak of length of time in a sense relative to ourselves, since to the Gods any span of human life is as nothing. “Now”, instead of “thirty years ago”, for the torture or hanging of a criminal, is as though we were to speak of “afternoon” not “morning”; the rather that he is confined in life, a prison where is no change of place, no escape, yet many feastings the while, and business affairs, and gifts, and bounties, and amusements, just as men play dice or draughts in jail, with the rope hanging over their heads.
_She thought a serpent came on her, his crest Dabbled with gore, and, lo, from out it peered, Child of the race of Pleisthenes, the King._ For phantoms of dreams, and visions of midday, and oracles, and thunderbolts, and whatever has the appearance of being caused by a God, bring storms and terrors upon those who are in such a mood. So it is told that Apollodorus, in his sleep, saw [Sidenote: B] himself being flayed by Scythians and then boiled, and that his heart murmured out of the cauldron the words, “I am the cause of this to thee.” And, again, he saw his daughters all on fire, and running around him with their bodies burning. Then Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, a little before his death, saw Aphrodite throwing blood at his face out of a sort of bowl. The friends of Ptolemy “Thunderbolt”[223] beheld him called to justice by Seleucus before a jury of vultures and wolves, and [Sidenote: C] dealing out large helpings of flesh to his enemies. Pausanias had wickedly sent for Cleonice at Byzantium, a maiden of free birth, that he might enjoy her person in the night, then, as she approached, he killed her out of some panic or suspicion; and he would often see her in his dreams, saying to him: _To judgement go; man’s lust works woe to man._
_Say, maidens, how may I start clear, and dwell Here in the house of Athamas, as though I had done nothing of the deeds I did?_ Such thoughts we may suppose that the soul of every bad man rakes up within itself, while it calculates how it may escape [Sidenote: B] from the memory of its misdoings, and cast out conscience, and become pure, and lead another life as from the beginning. There is no confidence, nothing free from caprice, nothing permanent or solid, in the designs of wickedness, unless, save the mark! we are to call wicked-doers philosophers of a sort! But where love of wealth or pleasure, as of great prizes, and envy undiluted, are lodged by the side of hate and ill-temper, there, if you look deep, you will find superstition seated, and softness to meet toil, and cowardice to meet death, and a rapid shifting of impulses, and a vain-gloriousness which comes of arrogance. They fear those who censure them, and equally fear those who [Sidenote: C] praise, as being victims whom they have deceived, and who are the bitterest enemies of the bad, just because they praise so heartily those whom they take to be good. For hardness in vice, as in bad steel, is unsound, its rigidity is soon broken. Hence more and more, as time goes on, they discover their own condition; they are vexed and discontented, and spurn their own life away.
_The parents’ trips upon their offspring turned_, and take it that we too who have so far been silent adopt his arraignment. If, on the one hand, the doers paid the penalty [Sidenote: F] themselves, then there is no need to punish those who did no wrong, seeing that justice does not allow even the doers to be punished twice for the same offences. If, on the other, the Gods, out of indolence, have allowed the punishment to drop, as against the wicked, and then exact it late in the day from the guiltless, the set-off of tardiness against injustice is all wrong. You will remember the story of what happened to Aesop in this place; how he came with gold from Croesus, to sacrifice to the God magnificently, and make a distribution among the Delphians, four minae apiece. There was some angry difference, it appears, between him and the brotherhood; so he [Sidenote: 556] performed the sacrifice, but sent the money back to Sardis, judging the men unworthy of the bounty. They worked up a charge of sacrilege against him, thrust him down from the rock called Hyampeia, and killed him.
_Who with no trailing robes, feet bared, as slaves, At early dawn must sweep Athene’s fane, No veils, though grievous eld were drawing near_,[231] because of the misbehaviour of Ajax. Where do you find the reasonableness and justice here? Certainly we do not praise the Thracians, because they still brand their own wives to avenge Orpheus, or the Barbarians living about the Eridanus for wearing black, in mourning for Phaethon as they say. It would have been still more ridiculous, I think, if the men living when Phaethon perished thought nothing about it, and then those [Sidenote: E] born five generations or ten generations after the sad occurrence began to change into mourning clothes for him! Yet there is nothing but stupidity in that, nothing terrible or beyond cure; but the angers of the Gods pass underground at the time, like certain rivers, then afterwards breakout to injure quite different persons, and bring the direst ruin at the last. What reason is there in that?’
XIV. ‘There,’ I said, ‘let all this serve for so many dykes or barriers against those bitter and aggressive assailants! Now, let us go back, and pick up the end of the thread in this dark place with its windings and wanderings; I mean our argument about the God. Let us guide ourselves with quiet caution towards what is likely and reasonable, since certainty and truth are beyond us, even as to our own actions. For instance, why do we order the children of persons who have died of consumption [Sidenote: E] or dropsy to sit with both feet dipped into water until the corpse is consumed? The idea seems to be that, if this is done, the disease does not shift its seat or approach them. Or again, why is it that, if one goat have taken the herb eryngium[234] into her mouth, the whole flock halts until the goatherd comes and takes it out? And there are other occult properties, with ways, whether of contact or of dissemination, by which they pass, with incredible speed and over incredible intervals, through one to another. Yet we find intervals of time wonderful, but [Sidenote: F] not those of place; although it is really more wonderful that a disease which began in Aethiopia[235] infected Athens, where Pericles died and Thucydides took it, than that, when Delphians and Sybarites had been wicked, the punishment circled round to attack their children. There is correspondence of forces from last to first, and there are connecting links, the cause of which, unknown, it may be, to us, produces in silence its proper effect.[236]
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.