The pigmy[891] warrior in his puny panoply charges the swooping birds of Thrace, and the cloud that resounds with the clang of cranes. Soon, no match for his foe, he is snatched away by the curved talons, and borne off through the sky by the fierce crane. If you were to see this in our country, you would be convulsed with laughter: but there, though battles of this kind are sights of every day, no one even smiles, where the whole regiment is not more than a foot high.
"And is there, then, to be no punishment at all for this perjured wretch and his atrocious villainy?"
Well, suppose him hurried away at once, loaded with double irons, and put to death in any way our wrath dictates (and what could revenge wish for more?) still your loss remains the same, your deposit will not be refunded! "But the least drop of blood from his mangled body will give me a consolation that might well be envied. Revenge is a blessing, sweeter than life itself!" Yes! so fools think, whose breasts you may see burning with anger for trivial causes, sometimes for none at all. How small soever the occasion be, it is matter enough for their wrath. Chrysippus[892] will not hold the same language, nor the gentle spirit of Thales, or that old man that lived by sweet Hymettus'[893] hill, who, even amid those cruel bonds, would not have given his accuser one drop of the hemlock[894] he received at his hands!
Philosophy, blessed[895] power! strips us by degrees of full many a vice and every error! She is the first to teach us what is right. Since revenge is ever the pleasure of a paltry spirit, a weak and abject mind! Draw this conclusion at once from the fact, that no one delights in revenge more than a woman!
Yet, why should you deem those to have escaped scot-free whom their mind,[896] laden with a sense of guilt, keeps in constant terror, and lashes with a viewless thong! Conscience, as their tormentor, brandishing a scourge unseen by human eyes! Nay! awful indeed is their punishment, and far more terrible even than those which the sanguinary Cæditius[897] invents, or Rhadamanthus! in bearing night and day in one's own breast a witness against one's self.
The Pythian priestess gave answer to a certain Spartan,[898] that in time to come he should not go unpunished, because he hesitated as to retaining a deposit, and supporting his villainy by an oath. For he inquired what was the opinion of the deity, and whether Apollo counseled him to the act.
He did restore it therefore; but through fear,[899] not from principle. And yet he proved that every word that issued from the shrine was worthy of the temple, and but too true: being exterminated together with all his progeny and house, and, though derived from a wide-spreading clan, with all his kin! Such is the penalty which the mere wish to sin incurs. For he that meditates within his breast a crime that finds not even vent in words,[900] has all the guilt of the act!
What then if he has achieved his purpose? A respiteless anxiety is his: that ceases not, even at his hours of meals: while his jaws are parched as though with fever, and the food he loathes swells[901] between his teeth. All wines[902] the miserable wretch spits out; old Alban wine,[903] of high-prized antiquity, disgusts him. Set better before him! and thickly-crowding wrinkles furrow his brow, as though called forth by sour[904] Falernian. At night, if anxious care has granted him perchance a slumber however brief, and his limbs, that have been tossing[905] over the whole bed, at length are at rest, immediately he sees in dreams the temple and the altar of the deity he has insulted; and, what weighs upon his soul with especial terrors,[906] he sees thee! Thy awful[907] form, of more[908] than human bulk, confounds the trembling wretch, and wrings confession[909] from him.
These are the men that tremble and grow pale at every lightning-flash; and, when it thunders,[910] are half dead with terror at the very first rumbling[911] of heaven; as though not by mere chance, or by the raging violence of winds, but in wrath and vengeance the fire-bolt lights[912] upon the earth![913] That last storm wrought no ill! Therefore the next is feared with heavier presage, as though but deferred by the brief respite of this calm.
Moreover, if they begin to suffer pain in the side, with wakeful fever, they believe the disease is sent to their bodies from the deity, in vengeance. These they hold to be the stones and javelins of the gods!