"As through the sea the impetuous tunny darts."
For the recklessness and audacity of vice is strong and rampant till the crime is committed, but afterwards, when the passion subsides like a storm, it becomes timid and dejected and a prey to fears and superstitions. So that Stesichorus in his account of Clytæmnestra's dream may have represented the facts and real state of the case, where he says, "A dragon seemed to appear to her with its lofty head smeared all over with blood, and out of it seemed to come king Orestes the grandson of Plisthenes." For visions in dreams, and apparitions during the day, and oracles, and lightning, and whatever is thought to come from the deity, bring tempests of apprehension to the guilty. So they say that one time Apollodorus in a dream saw himself flayed by the Scythians, and then boiled, and that his heart out of the caldron spoke to him in a low voice and said, "I am the cause of this;" and at another time he dreamed that he saw his daughters running round him in a circle all on fire and in flames. And Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus, a little before his death, dreamt that Aphrodite threw some blood on his face out of a certain phial. And the friends of Ptolemy Ceraunus dreamed that he was summoned for trial by Seleucus, and that the judges were vultures and wolves, who tore his flesh and distributed it wholesale among his enemies. And Pausanias at Byzantium, having sent for Cleonice a free-born maiden, intending to outrage her and pass the night with her, being seized with some alarm or suspicion killed her, and frequently saw her in his dreams saying to him, "Come near for judgement, lust is most assuredly a grievous bane to men," and as this apparition did not cease, he sailed, it seems, to Heraclea to the place where the souls of the dead could be summoned, and by propitiations and 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 Lacedæmon, and directly he got there he died."[831]
§ 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 Getæ 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."
§ 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 Æsop's coming to this very spot,[837] with money from Crœsus, to offer a splendid sacrifice to the god, and to give four minæ 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 Æsop's death. And three generations afterwards came Idmon[838] a Samian, no relation of Æsop's, but a descendant of those who had purchased Æsop 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 Branchidæ 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 Corcyræans 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 Phäethon. And I think it would be still more ridiculous if the people living at the time Phäethon 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?
§ 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 Bœotians 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 Lycormæ and Satilæi 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."
§ 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 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."