Note:—To translate Plutarch is a very different task from that of translating Seneca. The style of the latter is terse and epigrammatic; clauses and sentences often follow each other without connectives, and are in the main short. That of the former is the reverse. Most of his sentences are long, many of them very long. These, as well as clauses and words, are often strung together with the participles καὶ and γὰρ, or other connectives, until the reader sometimes wonders whether they will ever end. Seneca is full of pithy sayings well suited for quotation; in Plutarch they are rare. The style of both writers is highly rhetorical, but, if we except the evident striving after effect, they have little else in common.
As in the case of Seneca, it has been my aim to preserve for the English reader the peculiarities of the Greek, so far as possible. There is much to be said in favor of making a translation, above everything else, readable; but in the effort to do so, the translator is constantly exposed to the danger of displacing the style of the original with his own. I hope I have in a measure, at least, succeeded in putting before the English reader, not only what Plutarch said in the following Tract, but also how he said it.
“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”
CONCERNING THE DELAY OF THE DEITY IN PUNISHING THE WICKED.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
Plutarch. Patrocleas, his son-in-law. Timon, his brother. Olympichus.
The scene is the portico of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The tract is dedicated to a certain Quintus, whose name seems to indicate that he was a Roman, but of whom nothing definite is known.
When Epicurus had thus spoken, O Quintus, and before any one had replied, he went hurriedly away, as we were now at the end of the porch. We stood for some time in speechless wonder at the strange conduct of the man and looking at one another, then turned back to resume our walk. Thereupon Patrocleas first broke the silence: “Pray, what shall we do?” said he, “Shall we drop the inquiry, or shall we answer the arguments of the speaker who is not present as if he were?” “It would not be fitting to leave the dart he discharged, as he departed, sticking in the wound. Brasidas, as we are told, drew the shaft from his body, and with the same weapon slew the man who had hit him. It is not worth our while, of course, to defend ourselves against all those who assail us with ill-grounded or fallacious arguments, but it will suffice us if we cast them from us before they become firmly fixed in our minds.” “What was there then,” said I, “in what he said that most impressed you? For many things and without any order, one here, another there, the man kept charging against Providence, with anger and vituperation at the same time.”
2. Hereupon Patrocleas said: “The tardiness and delay of the Deity in punishing the wicked seems to me a matter of special importance; and now, by the arguments that have been advanced, I have been led anew and, as it were, a stranger, to the question; but long ago I was offended when I read in Euripides,
‘He procrastinates, and this is the manner of the Deity.’ Yet God ought, least of all things, to be slack towards the wicked, as they are neither slack nor dilatory about doing evil, but are impelled by their unrestrained passions to acts of injustice. And in truth, the retribution, which Thucydides says follows close upon the commission of a crime, forthwith bars the way for those who usually prosper in successful villainy. For there is no debt like overdue justice that makes him who has been wronged so faint-hearted and discouraged, while it emboldens the wicked man in his audacity and violence; but the punishments that follow close upon the commission of crimes are restraints upon those who are meditating wrongs against others, and there is the greatest consolation in this for those who have suffered injustice. So, then, the remark of Bias often troubles me when I reflect upon it; for he said, according to report, to a certain reprobate, that he did not fear lest he might not suffer the punishment of his misdeeds, but only that he might not himself (Bias) live to see it. What profit was it to the Messenians, who were long since dead, that Aristokrates was punished for betraying them at the battle of Taphros, when the matter remained undiscovered for more than twenty years, during which time he had been king of the Arcadians, though he was finally detected and punished, when they were no longer alive? Or what consolation was it to the Orchomenians who had lost children and friends and kinsmen through the treason of Lykiscus, that he was seized a long time afterwards by a disease which gradually ate up his body?—this man who was always dipping his feet into the river to wet them and calling down a curse upon himself, praying that he might rot if he had betrayed and wronged them. And the casting forth of the bodies of the accursed from Athens and their transportation beyond the boundaries was an act that not even the children of those who had been slain were permitted to behold. Wherefore, Euripides inappropriately uses these lines to deter men from the commission of crime, ‘Fear not lest injustice overtake thee and smite thee down, unjust man; but in silence and with slow step it will overtake the wicked when the time is ripe.’ For verily, no other consideration but just such as these, the bad will naturally use to encourage themselves and take as pledges of security in villainy, on the ground that wrong-doing brings forth early and evident fruit, while the penalty comes late, and long after the satisfaction (that arises from success in crime).”