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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 JAMES McCALL 
 
 Class of 1885 
 
 1944 
 
3 1924 031 292 497 
 olin.anx 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031292497 
 
PLUTARCH 
 
 ON THE 
 
 DELAY OF THE DIYINE JUSTICE. 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES. 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW P. PEABODY. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1885. 
 
Copyright, 1885, 
 By Andrew P. Peabodt. 
 
 Wnttarsili! ^Bnss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Caubkicge. 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 § 1. The dialogue opens with comments on the cavils 
 against the Divine Providence hy a person who is 
 supposed to have just departed. 
 
 2. The alleged encouragement to the guilty by the delay 
 
 of punishment, while the sufferers hy the guilt of 
 others are disheartened by failing to see the wrong- 
 doers duly punished. 
 
 3. The guilty themselves, it is said, do not recognize 
 
 punishment when it comes late, but think it mere 
 misfortune. 
 
 4. Plutarch answers the objections to the course of Provi- 
 
 dence. In the first place, man must not be too con- 
 fident of his ability to pass judgment on things 
 divine. There are many things in human legislation 
 undoubtedly reasonable, yet with no obvious reason. 
 How much more in the administration of the uni- 
 verse by the Supreme Being I 
 
 5. God by the delay of punishment gives man the example 
 
 of forbearance, and rebukes his yielding to the first 
 impulses of anger and of a vindictive temper. 
 
 6. God has reference, in the delay of punishment, to the 
 
 possible reformation of the guilty, and to the services 
 which, when reformed, they may render to their 
 country or their race. Instances cited. 
 
 7. The wicked often have their punishment postponed till 
 
 after they have rendered some important service 
 
iv Synopsis. 
 
 in whioli they are essential agents, and sometimes 
 that, before their own punishment, they may serve 
 as executioners for other guilty persons or com- 
 munities. 
 § 8. There is frequently a peculiar timeliness and appro- 
 priateness in delayed punishment. 
 9. Punishment is delayed only in appearance, hut com- 
 mences when the guilt is incurred, so that it seems 
 slow because it is long. 
 
 10. Instances of punishment in visions, apprehensions, and 
 
 inward wretchedness, while there was no outward 
 infliction of penalty. 
 
 11. There is reallj' no need that punishment be inflicted ; 
 
 guilt is in the consciousness of the guilty its own 
 adequate punishment. 
 
 12. Objection is made by one of the interlocutors to the 
 
 justice of punishing children or posterity for the 
 guilt of fathers or ancestors, and he heaps up an 
 incongruous collection of cases in which he mingles 
 confusedly the action of the Divine Providence and 
 that of human caprice or malignity. 
 
 13. In answer to the objection, Plutarch first adduces as a 
 
 precisely parallel order of things, with which no one 
 finds fault, that by which children or posterity de- 
 rive enduring benefit and honor from a parent's or 
 ancestor's virtues and services. 
 
 14. There are alike in outward and in human "nature 
 
 occult and subtle transmissions of qualities and 
 properties, both in time and in space. Those in 
 space are so familiar that they excite no wonder ; 
 those in time, though less liable to attract notice, 
 are no more wonderful. 
 
 15. A city has a continuous life, a definite and permanent 
 
 character, and an individual unity, so that its moral 
 responsibility may long outlast the lives of those 
 who first contracted a specific form of guilt. 
 
Synopsis. v 
 
 16. The same is to be said of a family or a race ; and, 
 
 moreover, the punishment for inherited guilt may 
 often have a curative, or even a preventive efficacy, 
 so that children or posterity may refrain from guilt 
 because the ancestral penalty falls upon them before 
 they become guilty. 
 
 17. The immortality of the soul asserted, on the ground 
 
 that God would not have deemed a race doomed to 
 perish after a brief earthly life worth rewarding or 
 punishing. 
 
 18. Punishments in a future state of being are out of sight, 
 
 and are liable to be disbelieved. Therefore it is 
 necessary, in order to deter men from guilt, that 
 there should be visible punishments in this life. 
 
 19. The remedial efficacy of the penal consequences of 
 
 parental or ancestral guilt reaffirmed,' and illustrated 
 by analogies in the treatment of disease. 
 
 20. God often punishes latent and potential vice, visible 
 
 only to Omniscience. 
 
 21. If a child has no taint of a father's vices, he remains 
 
 unpunished. But moral qualities, equally with 
 physical traits, often lapse in the first generation, 
 and reappear in the second or third, and even later. 
 
 22. The story of Thespesius, who — apparentl}' killed, but 
 
 really in a trance, in consequence of a fall. — went 
 into the infernal regions, beheld the punishments 
 there inflicted, and came back to the body and its 
 life, converted from a profligate into a man of pre- 
 eminent virtue and excellence. 
 
INTRODUCTION.^ 
 
 Plutarch ^ was born, about the middle of the first 
 Christian century, at Cheroneia in Boeotia, where 
 he spent the greater part of his life, and where he 
 probably died. The precise dates of his birth and 
 death are unknown ; but he can hardly have been 
 born earlier than A. D. 45, and he must have lived 
 nearly or quite till A. D. 120, as some of his works 
 contain references to events that cannot have taken 
 place earlier than the second decade of the second 
 century. We know little of him from other sources, 
 much from his own writings. There may have been 
 many such men in his time; but antiquity has 
 transmitted to us no record like his. He reminds - 
 one of such men as were to be found half a cen- 
 tury ago in many of our American country towns. 
 Those potentially like them have now, for the most 
 part, emigrated to the large cities, and have become 
 very unlike their prototypes. Cheroneia, with its 
 great memories, was a small and insignificant town, 
 
 1 A large part of this Introduction is reprinted, by permission 
 of the editors, from an article of mine on " Plutarch and his 
 Times," in the Andover Review, November, 1884. 
 
 2 HKoirapxos. 
 
viii Introduction. 
 
 and Plutarch was a country gentleman, superior, 
 as in culture so in serviceableness, to all his fellow 
 citizens, holding the foremost place in municipal 
 affairs, liberal, generous, chosen to all local offices 
 of honor, and especially of trust and responsibility, 
 associating on the most pleasant terms with the 
 common people, always ready to give them his ad- 
 vice and aid, and evidently respected and beloved 
 by all. He belonged to an old and distinguished 
 family, and seems always to have possessed a com- 
 petency for an affluent, though sober, domestic 
 establishment and style of living, and for an un- 
 stinted hospitality. He was probably the richest 
 man in his native city ; for he assigns as a reason 
 for not leaving it and living at some centre of in- 
 tellectual activity, that Cheroneia could not afford 
 to lose the property which he would take with him 
 in case of his removal. 
 
 He had what corresponds to our university edu- 
 cation, at Athens, under the Peripatetic philosopher 
 Ammonius. He also visited Alexandria, then a 
 renowned seat of learning ; but how long he stayed 
 there, or whether he extended his Egyptian travel 
 beyond that city, we have no means of knowing. 
 There is no proof of his having been in Eome or in 
 Italy more than once, and that was when he was 
 about forty years of age. He went to Eome on 
 public business, probably in behalf of his native 
 city, and remained there long enough to become 
 acquainted with some eminent men, to make him- 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 self known as a scholar and an ethical philosopher, 
 and to deliver lectures that attracted no little 
 public notice. This visit seems to have been the 
 great event of his life, as a winter spent in Boston 
 or New York used to be in the life of one of our 
 country gentlemen before the time of railways. 
 
 He had a wife, who appears to have been of a 
 character kindred to his own ; at least five children, 
 of whom two sons, if not more, lived to be them- 
 selves substantial citizens and worthy members of 
 society ; and two brothers, who seem to have pos- 
 sessed his full confidence and warm affection. He 
 was singularly happy in his relations to a large 
 circle of friends, especially in Athens, for which he 
 had the lifelong love that students in our time 
 acquire for a university town. He was archon, or 
 mayor, of Cheroneia, probably more than once, — 
 the of&ce having doubtless been annual and elect- 
 ive, — and in this capacity he entered, like a 
 veritable country magistrate, into material details 
 of the public service, superintending, as he says, 
 the measuring of tiles and the delivery of stone and 
 mortar for municipal uses. He officiated for many 
 years as priest of Apollo at Delphi, and as such 
 gave several sumptuous entertainments. Indeed, 
 hospitality of this sort appears, so far as we can see, 
 to have been the sole or chief duty of his priestly 
 office. As an adopted citizen of one of the Athe- 
 nian tribes, he was not infrequently a guest at civic 
 banquets and semi-civic festivals. 
 
X Introduction. 
 
 As regards Plutarch's philosophy, it is easier to 
 say to which of the great schools he did not belong 
 than to determine by what name he would have 
 preferred to be called. He probably would have 
 termed himself a Platonist, but not, like Cicero, of 
 the New Academy, which had incorporated Pyrrho- 
 nism with the provisional acceptance of the Pla- 
 tonic philosophy. At the same time, he was a 
 closer follower and a more literal interpreter of 
 Plato than were the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, 
 who had not yet become a distinctly recognized 
 sect, and who in many respects were the precursors 
 of the mysticism of the Eeformation era. Plutarch, 
 with Plato, recognized two eternities : that of the 
 Divine Being, supremely good and purely spiritual ; 
 and that of matter, as, if not intrinsically evil, the 
 cause, condition, and seat of all evil, and as at least 
 opposing such obstacles to its own best ideal ma- 
 nipulation that the Divine Being could not embody 
 his pure and perfect goodness, unalloyed by evil, in 
 any material form. Herein the Platonists were at 
 variance with both the Stoics and the Epicureans. 
 The Stoics regarded matter as virtually an emana- 
 tion from the Supreme Being, who is not only the 
 universal soul and reason, but the creative fire, 
 which, transformed into air and water, — part of 
 the water becoming earth, — is the source of the 
 material universe, which must at the end of a cer- 
 tain cosmical cycle be re-absorbed into the divine 
 essence, whence will emanate in endless succes- 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 sion new universes to replace those that pass away. 
 The Epicureans, on the other hand, believed in the 
 existence of matter only, and regarded mind and 
 soul as the ultimate product of material organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 In one respect Plutarch transcends Plato, and, 
 so far as I know, all pre-Christian philosophers. 
 Plato's theism bears a close kindred to pantheism. 
 His God, if I may be permitted the phrase, is only 
 semi-detached. He becomes the creator rather by 
 blending his essence with eternal matter, than by 
 shaping that matter to his will. He is rather in all 
 things than above all things, rather the Soul of the 
 universe than its sovereign Lord. But in Plutarch's 
 writings the Supreme Being is regarded as existing , 
 independently of material things ; they, as subject 
 to his will, not as a part of his essence. 
 
 Plutarch was, like Plato, a realist. He regarded 
 the ideas or patterns of material things, that is, 
 genera, or kinds of objects, as having an actual 
 existence (where or how it is hard to say), as pro- 
 jected from the Divine Mind, floating somewhere in 
 ethereal spaces between the Deity and the material 
 universe, — the models by which aU things in the 
 universe are made. 
 
 As to Plutarch's theology, he was certainly a 
 monotheist. He probably had some vague belief 
 in inferior deities {daemons he would have called 
 them), as holding a place like that filled by angels 
 and by evil spirits in the creed of most Christians ; 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 yet it is entirely conceivable that his occasional ref- 
 erences to these deities are due merely to the con- 
 ventional rhetoric of his age. His priesthood of the 
 Delphian Apollo can hardly be said to have been a 
 religious office. It was rather a post of dignity and 
 honor, which a gentleman of respectable standing, 
 courteous manners, and hospitable habits might 
 creditably fill, even though he had no faith in 
 Apollo. But that Plutarch had a serious, earnest, 
 and efficient faith in the one Supreme God,_in the 
 wise and eternal Providence, and in the Divine 
 wisdom, purity, and holiness, we have in his writ- 
 ings an absolute certainty. Nor can we find, even 
 in Christian literature, the record of a firmer belief 
 than his in human immortality, and in a righteous 
 retribution beginning in this world and reaching on 
 into the world beyond death. 
 
 But Plutarch was, most of all, an ethical philoso- 
 pher. Yet here again he cannot be classed as be- 
 longing to any school. For Epicureanism he has 
 an intense abhorrence, and regards the doctrines 
 of that sect as theoretically absurd and practically 
 demoralizing. He maintains that the disciples of 
 Epicurus, as such, utterly fail in the quest of pleas- 
 ure, or what according to their master is still bet- 
 ter, painlessness : for the condition of those who, 
 as he says, " swill the mind with the pleasures of 
 the body, as hogherds do their swine," cannot en- 
 tirely smother the sense of vacuity and need; nor 
 is it possible by any appliances of luxury to cut off 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 even sources of bodily disc[uietude, which are only 
 the more fatal to the happiness of him who seeks 
 bodily well-being alone ; while tlie prospect of an- 
 nihilation at death deprives those necessarily un- 
 happy in this life of their only solace, and gives 
 those who live happily here the discomfort of an- 
 ticipating the speedy and entire loss of all that has 
 ministered to their enjoj'ment. 
 
 In Plutarch's moderation, his avoidance of ex- 
 treme views, and his just estimate of happiness as 
 an end, though not the supreme end, of being, he 
 is in harmony with the Peripatetics, among whom 
 his Athenian preceptor was the shining light of his 
 age ; but his ethical system was much more strict 
 and uncompromising than theirs, and I cannot find 
 that he quotes them or refers to them as a distinct 
 school of philosophy. In matters appertaining to 
 phj'sical science he indeed often cites Ai'istotle, but 
 not, I think, in a single instance, as to any question 
 in morals. 
 
 As regards the Stoics, Plutarch writes against 
 them, but chiefly against dogmas which in his time 
 had become nearly obsolete, — namely, that all acts 
 not in accordance with the absolute right are equally 
 bad ; that all virtuous acts are equally good ; that 
 there is no intermediate moral condition between 
 that of the wise or perfectly good man and that 
 of the utterly vicious ; and that outward circum- 
 stances neither enhance nor diminish the happiness 
 of the truly wise man. These extravagances do 
 
xiv Introduction. 
 
 not appear in the writings of Seneca, nor in Epicte- 
 tus as reported by Arrian, and Plutarch in reason- 
 ing against them is controverting Zeno rather than 
 his later disciples. He is in full sympathy with 
 the Stoics as to their elevated moral standard, 
 though without the sternness and rigidness which 
 had often characterized their professed beliefs and 
 their public teaching, yet of which there remained 
 few vestiges among his contemporaries. With the 
 utmost mildness and gentleness, he manifests every- 
 where an inflexibility of principle and a settled 
 conviction as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness 
 of specific acts which might satisfy the most rigid 
 Stoic, and in which he plants himself as firmly on 
 the ground of the eternal Eight as if his philosophy 
 had been founded on a distinctively Christian basis. 
 Indeed, Plutarch is so often decidedly Christian 
 in spirit, and in many passages of his writings there 
 is such an almost manifest transcript of the thought 
 of the Divine Founder of our religion, that it has 
 been frequently maintained that he drew from 
 Christian sources. This, I nmst believe, is utterly 
 false in the sense in which it is commonly asserted, 
 yet in a more recondite sense true. If Plutarch had 
 known anything about Christians or the Christian 
 Scriptures, he could not have failed to refer to them ; 
 for he is constantly making references to contem- 
 porary persons and objects, sects and opinions. 
 We know of no Christian church at Cheroneia in 
 that age, and indeed it is exceedingly improbable 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 that there should have been one in so small a town. 
 The circulation of thought, and consequently the 
 diffusion of a new religion from the great centres 
 of population to outlying districts or villages, was 
 iufinitesimally slow. Our word "pagan is an en- 
 during witness of this tardiness of transmission. 
 It had its birth (in its present sense) after Chris- 
 tianity had become the legally established religion 
 of the Empire, and had supplanted heathen temples 
 and rites in the cities, while in the ipagi, or villages, 
 the old gods were still in the ascendant. There 
 were indeed Christian' churches in Athens and in 
 Eome ; but they would most probably have eluded 
 the curiosity and escaped the knowledge of a tem- 
 porary resident, especially as most of their chief 
 members were either Jews or slaves. Yet I cannot 
 doubt that an infusion of Christianity had some- 
 how infiltrated itself into Plutarch's ethical opin- 
 ions and sentiments, as into those of Seneca, who 
 has been represented as an acquaintance and cor- 
 respondent of St. Paul, though it is historically 
 almost impossible that the two men ever saw or 
 heard of each other. 
 
 In one respect, the metaphor by which we call 
 the Author of our religion the Sun of Eighteousness 
 has a special aptness. The sun, unlike lesser lumi- 
 naries, lights up sheltered groves and grottos that are 
 completely dark under the full moon, and sends its 
 rays through every chink and cranny of roof or wall. 
 In like manner there seems to have been an indi- 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 rect and tortuous transmission of Christian thought 
 into regions where its source was wholly unknown. 
 In the ethical writings of the post-Christian philos- 
 ophers, of Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus 
 Aurelius, there may be traced a loftiness, precision, 
 delicacy, tenderness, breadth of human sympathy, 
 and recognition of holiness in the Divine Being as 
 the archetype of human purity, transcending all 
 that is most admirable in pre-Christian moralists. 
 Thus, while I cannot but regard Cicero's "De Of- 
 ficiis" as in many respects the world's master- work 
 in ethical philosophy, containing fewer unchristian 
 sentences than I could number on the fingers of one 
 hand, there is nothing in it that reminds me of 
 the Gospels; while these others often shape their 
 thoughts in what seem to be evangelic moulds. 
 
 N"ow I think that we may account for the large 
 diffusion of Christian thought and sentiment among 
 persons who knew not Christianity even by name. 
 The new religion was very extensively embraced 
 among slaves in all parts of the Eoman Empire, 
 and slave then meant something very different from 
 what it means now. It is an open question whether 
 there was not, at least out of Greece, more of learn- 
 ing, culture, and refinement in the slave than in the 
 free population of the Empire. We must remember 
 how many illustrious names in Greek and Eoman 
 literature — such names as those of Aesop, Terence, 
 Epictetus — belonged to slaves. Tiro, Cicero's slave, 
 was not only one of his dearest friends, but fore- 
 
Introduction. xvii 
 
 most among his literary confidants and advisers. 
 Most of the rich men who had any love of litera- 
 ture owned their librarians and their copyists, and 
 the teachers of the children were generally the 
 property of the father. Among Christian slaves 
 there were undoubtedly many who felt no call to 
 martyrdom, (which can have been incumbent on 
 them only when the alternative was apostasy and 
 denial of their faith,) who therefore made no open 
 profession of their religion, while in precept, con- 
 versation, and life they were imbued with its spirit, 
 — a spirit as subtile in its penetrating power as it 
 is refining and purifying in its influence. From the 
 lips of Christian slaves many children, no doubt, 
 received in classic forms moral precepts redolent 
 of the aroma breathed from the Sermon on the 
 Mount. If the social medium which Plutarch rep- 
 resents is a fair specimen of the best rural society 
 of the Empire in his time, there must have been a 
 ready receptivity for the highest style of ethical 
 teaching, — a genial soil for the germination of a 
 truly evangelic righteousness of moral conception, 
 maxim, and principle. 
 
 Probably no book except the Bible has had more 
 readers than Plutarch's Lives. These biographies 
 have been translated into every language of the 
 civilized world ; they have been among the earliest 
 and most fascinating books for children and youth 
 of many successive generations; and down to the 
 present time, when fiction seems to have almost 
 
xviii Jntroduction. 
 
 superseded history and biography, and to have de- 
 stroyed the once universal appetency for them 
 among young people, they have exercised to a 
 marvellous degree a shaping power over character. 
 They are, indeed, underrated by the exact historian, 
 because modern research has discovered here and 
 there some mistake in the details of events. But 
 such mistakes were in that age inevitable. Histor- 
 ical criticism was then an unknown science. Docu- 
 ments and traditions covering the same ground were 
 deemed of equal value when they were in harmony, 
 and when they differed an author followed the one 
 which best suited his taste, or his purpose for the 
 time being. Thus Cicero, in one case, in the same 
 treatise gives three different versions of the same 
 story. Thus, too, there were several stories afloat 
 aboiit the fate of Eegulus ; but Eoman writers took 
 that which Niebuhr thinks farthest from the truth, 
 yet which threw the greatest odium on the hated 
 name of Carthage. Now I have no doubt that, 
 whenever there were two or more versions of the 
 same act or event, Plutarch chose that which would 
 best point his moral. But it is only in few and un- 
 important particulars that he has been proved to 
 be inaccurate. 
 
 It has been also objected to Plutarch, that he 
 attaches less importance to the achievements of his 
 heroes in war and in civic life, than to traits and an- 
 ecdotes illustrative of their characters. This seems 
 to me a feature which adds not only to the charm 
 
Introduction. xix 
 
 of these Lives, but even more to their historical 
 value. The events of history are at once the out- 
 come and the procreant cradle of character, and we 
 know nothing of any period or portion of history 
 except as we know the men who made it and the 
 men whom it made. Biography is the soul; his- 
 toiy the body, which it tenants and animates, and 
 which, when not thus tenanted, is a heap of very 
 dry bones. The most thorough knowledge of the 
 topography of Julius Caesar's battles in Gaul, the 
 minutest description of the campaign that termi- 
 nated in Pharsalia, the official journal of the Senate 
 during his dictatorship, would tell us very little 
 about him and his time. But a vivid sketch of 
 his character, with well-chosen characteristic anec- 
 dotes, would give us a very distinct and realizing 
 conception of the antecedent condition of things 
 that made a life like his possible, and of his actual 
 influence for good and for evil on his country and 
 his age. 
 
 ISTor is the value of such a biography affected in 
 the least by any doubts that we may entertain as 
 to the authenticity of incidents, trivial except as 
 illustrative of character, which occupy a large space 
 in Plutarch's Lives. Indeed, the least authentic 
 may be of the greatest historical value. An anec- 
 dote may be literally true, and yet some peculiar 
 combination of circumstances may have led him of 
 whom it is told to speak or act out of character. 
 But a mythical anecdote of a man, coming down 
 
XX Introduction. 
 
 from his own time and people, must needs owe its 
 origin and complexion to his known character. 
 
 It is perfectly easy to see throughout these biog- 
 raphies the author's didactic aim. If I may use 
 sacred words, here by no means misapplied, his 
 prime object was "reproof, correction, and instruc- 
 tion in righteousness." He evidently felt and 
 mourned the degeneracy of his age, was profoundly 
 aware of the worth of teaching by example, and 
 was solicitous to bring from the past such elements 
 of ethical wisdom as the records of illustrious men 
 could be made to render up. True to this purpose, 
 he measures the moral character of such transac- 
 tions as he relates by the highest standard of right 
 which he knows, and there is not a person or deed 
 that fails to bear the stamp, clear-cut, yet seldom 
 obtrusive, of his approval or censure. 
 
 The Lives, though the best known of Plutarch's 
 writings, are but a small part of them, and hardly 
 half of those still extant. His other works are 
 generally grouped under the title of " Moralia," ^ or 
 Morals, though among them there are many trea- 
 tises that belong to the department of history or 
 biography, some to that of physics. Most of these 
 works are short; a few, of considerable length. 
 Some of them may have been lectures; some are 
 letters of advice or of consolation; some are in a 
 narrative form ; many are in the form of dialogue, 
 which, sanctioned by the prestige of Plato's pre- 
 
 1 1h riSiKd. 
 
Introduction. xx i 
 
 eminence, was very largely employed by philoso- 
 phers of later times, possessing, as it does, the great 
 advantage of putting opposite and diverse opinions 
 in the mouths of interlocutors, and thus giving to 
 the treatise the vivacity and the dramatic interest 
 of oral discussion. Some of these dialogues have a 
 symposium, or supper party, for their scene, and 
 introduce a numerous corps of speakers. In these 
 Plutarch himself commonly sustains a prominent 
 part, and the members of his family often have 
 their share in the conversation, or are the subjects 
 of kindly mention. In several instances the occa- 
 sion, circumstances, and conversation are described 
 so naturally as to make it almost certain that the 
 author simply wrote out from memory what was 
 actually said. At any rate, these festive dialogues 
 present very clearly his idea of what a symposium 
 ought to be, and in its entire freedom from excess 
 and extravagance of any kind it would bear the 
 strictest ordeal with all modern moralists, the ex- 
 treme ascetics alone excepted. 
 
 Had not the Lives been written, I am inclined 
 to believe that the Moralia alone would have 
 given Plutarch as high a place as he now holds, 
 not only in the esteem of scholars, but in the in- 
 terest and delight of all readers of good books ; and 
 I am sure that there is no loving reader of the 
 Lives who will not be thankful to have his atten- 
 tion drawn to the Moralia. They exhibit through- 
 out the same moral traits which their author shows 
 
xxii Introduction. 
 
 as a biographer. He treats, indeed, incidentally, 
 of some subjects which a purer ethical taste in 
 the public mind might have excluded. He rec- 
 ognizes the existence of immoralities, which, not 
 discreditable in the best society of unevangelized 
 Greece and Eome, have almost lost their place and 
 name in Christendom. Some of his dialogues have 
 among the interlocutors those with whom as good 
 a man as he would in our time associate only in the 
 hope of converting them. But his own opinion and 
 feeling on all moral questions are uniformly and 
 explicitly in behalf of all that is pure, and true, and 
 right, and reverent. 
 
 Many of these Moralia are on what are com- 
 monly, yet wrongly, called the minor morals, that is, 
 on the evils that most of all infest and destroy the 
 happiness of families and the peace of society, and 
 on the opposite virtues, — on such subjects, for in- 
 stance, as " Idle Talking," " Curiosity," " Self-Praise," 
 and the like. Others are on such grave topics as 
 "The Benefits that a Man may derive from his 
 Enemies," and " The Best Means of Self- Knowledge." 
 There is iu all these treatises a large amount of 
 blended common sense and keen ethical insight; 
 and so little does human nature change with its 
 surroundings that the greater part of Plutarch's 
 cautions, counsels, and precepts are as closely ap- 
 plicable to our own time as if they had been written 
 yesterday. 
 
 One of the most remarkable writings in this col- 
 
Introduction. xxiii 
 
 lection is Plutarch's letter to his wife on the death 
 of a daughter two years old, during his absence from 
 home. It not only expresses sweetly and lovingly 
 the topics of consolation which would most readily 
 occur to a Christian father ; it gives us also a charm- 
 ing picture of a household united by ties of spirit- 
 ual affinity, and living in a purer, higher medium 
 than that of affluence and luxury. A few sentences 
 may convey something of the tone and spirit of this 
 epistle. " Since our little daughter afforded us the 
 sweetest and most charming pleasure, so ought we 
 to cherish her memorj', which will conduce in many 
 ways, or rather many fold, more to our joy than our 
 grief" " They who were present at the funeral re- 
 port this with admiration, that you neither put on 
 mourning, nor disfigured yourself or any of your 
 maids, neither were there any cpstly preparations 
 nor magnificent pomp; but all things were man- 
 aged with silence and moderation, in the presence of 
 our relatives alone." " So long as she is gone to a 
 place where she feels no pain, why should we grieve 
 for her ? " " This is the most troublesome thing in 
 old age, that it makes the soul weak in its remem- 
 brance of divine things, and too earnest for things 
 relating to the body." "But that which is taken 
 away in youth, being more soft and tractable, soon 
 returns to its native vigor and beauty." " It is good 
 to pass the gates of death before too great a love 
 of bodily and earthly things be engendered in the 
 soul." " It is an impious thing to lament for those 
 
xxiv Introduction. 
 
 whose souls pass immediately into a better and more 
 divine state." " Wherefore let us comply with cus- 
 tom in our outward and public behavior, and let our 
 interior be more unpolluted, pure and holy." 
 
 Now, when I remember that in the pre-Christian 
 Greek and Eoman world the strongest utterances 
 about immortality had been by Socrates, if Plato 
 reported him aright, when he expressed strong hope 
 of life beyond death, yet warned his friends not to 
 be too confident about a matter so wrapped in un- 
 certainty, — and by Cicero, who, when his daughter 
 died, confessed that his reasonings had left no convic- 
 tion in his own mind, — I cannot doubt that some 
 Easter morning rays had pierced the dense Boeotian 
 atmosphere, and that the risen Saviour had in that 
 lovely Cheroneian household those whom he desig- 
 nates as " other sheep, not of this fold." 
 
 There is among the Moralia another letter of 
 consolation, to ApoUonius on the death of his son, 
 longer, more elaborate, and evidently intended as a 
 literary composition, to be preserved with the au- 
 thor's other works, which breathes tlie same spirit 
 of submission and trust. 
 
 Another of the Moralia, which has a special in- 
 terest as regards the author's own family, is on the 
 " Training of Children," — a series of counsels — 
 including the careful heed of the parents to their 
 own moral condition and habits — to which the ex- 
 perience of these intervening centuries has little to 
 add, while it could find nothing to take away. 
 
Introduction. xxv 
 
 In one sense, the miscellanies brought together 
 under the name of" Moralia " bear that title not inap- 
 propriately ; for, as I have intimated, Plutarch could 
 not but be didactic in whatever he wrote, and the 
 ethical feeling, spirit, and purpose are perpetually, 
 yet never ostentatiously or inappropriately, coming 
 to the surface on all kinds of subjects. But there 
 is a great deal in the collection not professedly or 
 directly ethical. There are many scraps of history 
 and biogi'aphy, and a very large number and variety 
 of characteristic anecdotes, both of well-known per- 
 sonages, and of others who are made known to us 
 almost as vividly by a single trait, deed, or saying 
 as if we had their entire life-record. There is an 
 invaluable series of "Apophthegms" ^ of kings and 
 great commanders,^ and another of "Laconic [or 
 Spartan] Apophthegms," which are much more than 
 their name implies, some of them being condensed 
 memoirs. There are, also, several papers that give 
 us more definite notions than can be found any- 
 where else of the science and natural history of 
 the author's time. Withal, we have here so many 
 references to manners, customs, and habits, such 
 pictures of home with all that could give it the 
 sweetness and grace that belong to it, such views 
 
 1 'AT0<p6eyiiara. 
 
 2 The genuineness of this series has been called in question ; 
 but the internal evidence seems decisive in its favor. It is, 
 throughout, so entirely in Plutarch's vein, that one is tempted 
 to ask. Who else could have written it ? 
 
xxvi Introduction. 
 
 of society, both in city and in country, in ordinary 
 intercourse and on festive occasions, that one can 
 learn more of life in that age in the Eoman Empire 
 from these volumes than from any other single au- 
 thor ; and the writer of a book like Becker's " Gal- 
 lus " might find here almost all the materials that 
 he would need, except for the delineatioa of the 
 night-side of Eoman extravagance, gluttony, drunk- 
 enness, debauchery, and depravity, which came not 
 within Plutarch's experience. 
 
 The most remarkable of all Plutarch's writings, 
 the most valuable equally in a philosophical and an 
 ethical point of view, and the most redolent of what-^ 
 we almost involuntarily call Christian sentiment, is 
 that " On the Delay of the Divine Justice," or, to 
 give a more literal translation of the original title, 
 " Concerning those who are punished slowly by 
 the Divine [Being]." ^ It treats of what from the 
 earliest time has been a mystery to serious minds, 
 and has been urged equally by malignant irreligion 
 and by honest scepticism against the supremacy of 
 the Divine justice in the government of the world ; 
 namely, the postponement of the penal consequences 
 of guilt, sometimes till there are no witnesses of 
 the crime left to behold the punishment, sometimes 
 till the offender himself has lost the thread between 
 the evil that he did and its retribution, sometimes 
 till the sinner has gone to the grave in peace, and 
 left innocent posterity to suffer for his sins. Plu- 
 
 ^ Ilepi tCjv virb toO delov ^pad^ujs TLfiopovfi.ii/iijv. 
 
Introduction. xxvii 
 
 tarch, with his unquestioning faith in immortality, 
 doubts not that guilt, unpunished in this life, will 
 he overtaken by just retribution in the life to come. 
 But, as he says, retribution, though it may be con- 
 summated only in the future life, is not delayed 
 till then. It seems late, because it lasts long. 
 The sentence is passed upon the guilt when it is 
 committed ; and, however its visible execution may 
 be postponed, the sinner is from that moment a 
 prisoner of the Divine justice, awaiting execution. 
 He may give splendid suppers, and live luxu- 
 riously; yet still he is within prison walls from 
 which there is no escape. 
 
 This is undoubtedly true, and yet there are many 
 cases, and those of the worst kind, in which it seems 
 to be not true. A moderately bad man, in most 
 instances, fedls profoundly the shame and misery 
 that he has brought upon himself. But a thor- 
 oughly wicked man takes contentedly a position 
 which we may fitly term sub-human. If we sup- 
 pose a man possessed of a magnificent house, luxuri- 
 ously and tastefully furnished, who yet chooses 
 never to ascend a stair, and lives in the basement 
 shabbily and meanly, with the coarsest appliances 
 of physical comfort, we might take him as the type 
 of not a few bad men who seem entirely at their 
 ease. They live in the basement. They have 
 thrown away the key to the upper rooms. They 
 have lost all appreciation of the higher, better 
 modes of human living, and they are contented and 
 
xxviii Introduction. 
 
 satisfied as a well-fed beast is, in the absence of all 
 spiritual cravings and ambitions. But this life, 
 poor and mean as it is at the best, becomes still 
 more narrow and sordid with the lapse of time. 
 Many have looked with envy on prosperous guilt 
 early or midway in its career ; none cau have wit- 
 nessed its lengthened age without pity and loathing. 
 Especially is this the case with the several forms 
 of sensual vice. As age advances, the power of 
 enjoyment wanes, while the morbid craving grows, 
 even under the consciousness of added misery with 
 its continued indulgence. The body becomes the 
 soul's dungeon, and its walls thicken inward and 
 close up the wonted entrances of enjoyment. The 
 senses, deadened on the side of pleasure, no longer 
 avenues of beauty or of harmony, seem to serve 
 only as means of prolonging a death in life, and as 
 open inlets of discomfort and pain. 
 
 But the suspense of sentence has in not a few 
 cases, according to Plutarch, a directly merciful 
 purpose. As the most fertile soil may before 
 tillage produce the rankest weeds, so in the soul 
 most capable of good there may be, prior to culture, 
 a noisome crop of evil, and yet God may spare 
 the sinner for the good that is in him, and for 
 the signal service which, when reclaimed, he may 
 render to mankind. Then, too, by the delay of 
 visible judgment G-od gives men in his own ex- 
 ample the lesson of long-suffering, and rebukes 
 their promptness in resentment and revenge. Still 
 
Introduction. xxix 
 
 further, when penalty appears to fall on the pos- 
 terity or successors of the guilty, and a race, a 
 people, a city, or a family seems punished for the 
 iniquity of its progenitors, Plutarch brings out very 
 fully and clearly the absolutely essential and ne- 
 cessary solidarity of the family or the community, 
 wliich can hardly fail so to inherit of its ancestors 
 in disposition and character as to invite upon itself, 
 to merit for itself, or at best to need as preventive 
 or cure, the penal consequences of ancestral guilt. 
 
 This essay is all the more valuable because not 
 written by a Christian. It shows that the intense 
 stress laid by Christian teaching on a righteous ret- 
 ribution lasting on beyond the death-change is not a 
 mere dogma of the sacred records of our religion, 
 but equally the postulete of the unsophisticated 
 reason and conscience of developed humanity. 
 
 My translation is not literal, in the common mean- 
 ing of that term. If it were so, it would be unin- 
 telligible ; for Plutarch's style lacks simplicity, and 
 his sentences, though seldom obscure, are often in- 
 volved and intricate, sometimes elliptical. I have, 
 however, given a faithful transcript in English of 
 what I understand Plutarch to have written, omit- 
 ting no thought or shade of thought that I suppose 
 to be his, and inserting none of my own. 
 
 I have used Wyttenbach's edition of the Moralia, 
 departing from his text in but a single instance. 
 
XXX Introduction.- 
 
 and that, one in which he pronounces the reading 
 in the text impossible, and suggests a conjectural 
 reading as necessary to the sense of the passage. I 
 have also made constant reference to the late Pro- 
 fessor Hackett's edition of this treatise, which it is 
 superfluous to commend where he was known ; for 
 not only was he confessedly among the foremost 
 scholars of his time, but his exacting conscientious- 
 ness would not suffer him to put less than his best 
 and most thorough work into whatever came from 
 his hands. 
 
PLUTARCH 
 
 ON THE DELAY OE THE DIVINE JUSTICE. 
 
 1. Epicurus/ having said such things, Cinius,^ 
 before any one could reply, while we were at the 
 farther end of the porch, went hastily away. But 
 we, somewhat amazed at the man's rudeness, stood 
 still, looking at one another without speaking, and 
 then turned and resumed our walk. 
 
 1 A name probably chosen for this retreating collocutor because 
 the dialogue is anti-Epicurean in its dogmas and its spirit, and 
 the supposed arguments to be refuted were therefore such as an 
 Epicurean would have urged. Epicurus denied the Divine Provi- 
 dence, and maintained that the gods did not concern themselves 
 with human affairs. 
 
 2 Some commentators suppose this to be the second part of a 
 dialogue, of which the first part is lost. But it is more probable 
 that the reader is, for dramatic effect, introduced into the midst of 
 a prepared scene. This was not an uncommon device in the philo- 
 sophical dialogues that have come down to us from early time. 
 Plato, Cicero, and Lucian furnish instances of it, and two other of 
 Plutarch's dialogues begin in a similar way. Cinius is a name 
 that occurs nowhere else. A purely conjectural emendation of a 
 single letter would give us the better known name, Quintus. The 
 scene of this dialogue is the temple of Apollo at Delphi, — the 
 temple in which Plutarch officiated as priest. 
 
 1 
 
2 Plutarch on the 
 
 Then Pateocleas^ commenced the conversa- 
 tion, saying, — What then ? Do you see fit to drop 
 the discussion ? or will you answer his argument 
 as if he were present, though he has taken himself 
 away? 
 
 TiMON^ then said, — If he threw a javelin^ at us 
 as he weut away, it certainly would not be well for 
 us to take no notice of the weapon still sticking 
 in our sides. Brasidas,* indeed, as we are told, 
 drew out the spear from his own body, and killed 
 with it the man who had hurled it at him. But it 
 is no concern of ours to retaliate on those who 
 fling at us misplaced and false reasoning; it is 
 enough for them if we reject their arguments be- 
 fore they affect our belief. 
 
 Then I said, — Which of the arguments that he 
 urged moved you the most ? For the man, as if 
 
 ^ Plutarch's son-in-law. 
 
 2 Plutarch's brother. 
 
 » The figure by which arguments are called spears or javelins, 
 and are said to be hurled when uttered — in itself not unnatural 
 — occurs frequently in the ancient classics. Indeed, the most au- 
 thentic derivation of the Latin dicere, to speak, is from the Greek 
 SiKitv, to hurl. The French word trait offers an analogy in point. 
 
 * Brasidas, the most distinguished Spartan general, and the 
 leader of the Spartan forces, in the earlier part of the Peloponne- 
 sian war, was slain near Amphipolis, at the moment of victory. 
 Cleon, the Athenian general, was killed at the same time. The 
 incident referred to in the text has no record in history ; but a 
 scholiast on Aristophanes says that Cleon and Brasidas killed 
 each other, referring probably to the tradition that they both 
 were killed by Cleon's spear. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 3 
 
 inspired both by wratli and by scorn, brought to- 
 gether against the Divine Providence many things 
 heaped up in confusion, yet no well-ordered reasons, 
 but such miscellaneous cavils as could be gathered 
 here and there. 
 
 2. Pateocleas then said, — The slowness and 
 procrastination of the Deity in the punishment of 
 the wicked seem to me the most mysterious of all 
 things ; and now, under these arguments, I find my- 
 self a new and fresh adherent to the doctrine in 
 behalf of which they are urged. Indeed, I used a 
 long time ago to be vexed by that saying of Eu- 
 ripides : — 
 
 " He lingers ; such the nature of the gods." ^ 
 
 While in no respect, least of all toward wicked 
 men, is it fitting that God should be dilatory ; for 
 they are in no wise dilatory or slow in ill-doing, 
 but are hurried on to evil by their passions with the 
 utmost impetuosity. Indeed, as Thucydides says,^ 
 punishment close at hand bars the way to those 
 who most hope to gain by guilt. Moreover, no 
 debt overdue, equally with the delay of due punish- 
 ment, renders the person wronged utterly hopeless 
 and depressed, while it confirms the evil-doer in 
 boldness and audacity. On the other hand, pun- 
 
 1 A verse from the Orestes, — the reply of Orestes when asked 
 whether Apollo would give him no assistance in his troubles. 
 
 ^ In a speech of Cleon in favor of the slaughter of the men and 
 the enslavement of the women and children of Mytilene, for the 
 attempt to release themselves from the sway of the Athenians. 
 
4 Plutarch on -the 
 
 ishments directly inflicted on those who are bold in 
 evil are at once preventive of future crimes, and a 
 source of great consolation to those who have suf- 
 fered wrong. I am therefore troubled by the say- 
 ing of Bias,^ which often recurs to me, when he 
 told a man of bad character that he had no fear 
 that he would go unpunished, but feared that he 
 himself might not live to see him punished. What 
 good, indeed, did the punishment of Aristocrates ^ 
 do to the Messenians who were slain before it came 
 upon him ? He betrayed them in the battle of 
 Taphrus, yet, not being found out for twenty years, 
 he reigned over the Arcadians all that time, till at 
 length his treachery was discovered and met with 
 its due penalty ; but the victims of his crime had 
 ceased to be. Again, what comfort did any of the 
 Orchomenians ^ who lost children, friends, and kin- 
 
 ^ One of the seven wise men of Greece, as also of the smaller 
 number of four to whom alone the possession of pre-eminent 
 wisdom was ascribed by some authorities. He is said to have 
 been the author of the selfish maxim, that one should lore his 
 friends as if he were at some future time going to hate them. 
 
 2 Aristocrates, king of Orchomenus in Arcadia, joined the Mes- 
 senians in war against Sparta, and was bribed by the Lacedae- 
 monians to betray his allies In the battle of Taphrus. Many years 
 afterward, his treachery became known, and he was stoned to 
 death by his own subjects. 
 
 2 There is no historical vestige of this transaction, or of the king 
 implicated in it. The scene of the story was propably Orchomenus 
 in Boeotia, and Plutarch, as a Boeotian, would naturally have been 
 familiar with chapters of local history too remote in time or too 
 insignificant to have left any permanent record. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 5 
 
 dred by the treachery of Lyciscus derive from the 
 disease that many years afterward seized him and 
 consumed his body, while he, when he dipped and 
 washed his feet in the river, always prayed, with 
 oaths and curses, that his limbs might rot if he had 
 ever been guilty of treason and injustice ? Indeed, 
 not even the children's children of those who were 
 then murdered could have witnessed at Athens 
 the si#tching of the contaminated bodies of the 
 murderers from their graves, and their transporta- 
 tion beyond the boundaries of the state.^ Hence, 
 Euripides is absurd, when, to dissuade from crime, 
 he says : — 
 
 " No haste has Justice ; dread not her approach ; 
 She strikes no mortal heart with sudden blow ; 
 But noiseless, with slow step, she glides along. 
 To smite the guilty when their hour has come."^ 
 
 It seems to me that it is no other considerations 
 than these that lead bad men to encourage them- 
 selves, and to give themselves free scope for guilty 
 enterprise, inasmuch as the fruit of wrong-doing is 
 quickly ripe and in full sight, while punishment is 
 late, and lingers far behind the enjoyment derived 
 from the guilt. 
 
 1 Probably, if not Lyciscus, those implicated with him in his 
 crime took refuge in Athens, and many years afterward, at some 
 crisis which created superstitious alarm, their bodies were disin- 
 terred and transported beyond the limits of the state, — a not 
 unusual mode of lustration in the early time. 
 
 '^ This is from a lost tragedy. 
 
6 Plutarch on the 
 
 3. When Patrocleas had thus spoken, Olympi- 
 cus,i taking up the thread of his discourse, said, — 
 It should also be observed, Patrocleas, how exceed- 
 ingly great is the mischief resulting from the delay 
 and procrastination of the Deity about these mat- 
 ters, since the tardiness of retribution takes away 
 faith in Providence; and because chastisement for 
 the wicked does not ensue immediately upon the 
 performance of an evil deed, but comes upo|^ them 
 afterward, they place it to the account of misfor- 
 fune, call it ill-luck and not punishment, and so are 
 in no wise profited . by it, — being grieved indeed 
 for what befalls them, but not led to repentance for 
 their iU-doing. For as the punishment of the whip 
 and the spur immediately on a horse's stumbling or 
 shying corrects him and puts him on right behavior, 
 while beating and twitching of the reins and shout- 
 ing at him at a later period seem to him for some 
 other purpose than discipline, and thus annoy him 
 without teaching him, so guilt rebuked and checked 
 by punishment after each of its wrong-doings and 
 transgressions might gradually become conscience- 
 stricken, and be brought to the fear of God, as pre- 
 siding over the affairs and experiences of men with 
 a justice that does not linger ; but justice hesitat- 
 ing and slow-paced, as Euripides describes it, and 
 falling upon the wicked as if by chance, being vague, 
 untimely, and out of due order, seems like a merely 
 
 1 This name occurs as that of an interlocutor in one of the 
 Symposiaos. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 7 
 
 fortuitous event rather than ordained by Providence. 
 Thus, I do not see what use there is in those mills 
 of the gods said to grind so late ^ as to render pun- 
 ishment hard to be recognized, and to make wicked- 
 ness fearless. 
 
 4. These things having been uttered, and I being 
 wrapped in thought, TiMON said, — Shall I now put 
 the climax to this reasoning on the side of scepti- 
 cism, or shall I rather suffer Plutarch^ to argue 
 against what has already been brought forward ? 
 
 Then I said, — What need is there of bringing 
 on the third wave,^ and utterly whelming the sub- 
 ject in doubt and difficulty, if one is not able to 
 refute what was urged at the outset, and to set 
 aside the objections already offered,? First, then, 
 taking our start from the home-altar of reverence 
 for all that is divine, — the heritage of the philoso- 
 phers of the Academy, — we shall piously refrain 
 from speaking about these things as if we had cer- 
 
 ^ The reference here is, undoubtedly, to an hexameter verse 
 from some unknown poet, quoted by Sextus Empiricus in the 
 third century : — • 
 
 'Oi/^e $eStv aKeovai fivKoi, a\eovtn Se \eTTTa. 
 " The mills of the gods grind late, but they grind fine." 
 
 2 AutJii', evidently meaning Plutarch. 
 
 * I doubt whether there is reference here to every third wave as 
 having a fuller flow. Timon, though inclined at the outset to 
 the other side, is represented as so affected by the arguments of 
 Patrocleas and Olympicus that he is prepared to make a third 
 speech against the Divine Providence, yet is willing to yield place 
 to his brother ; and the speech which Plutarch supersedes is the 
 third wave. 
 
8 Fhitarch on the 
 
 tain knowledge of them. For it is less presumptuous 
 for one unslvilled in music to discourse about it, or 
 for one not versed in military science to give his 
 judgment in matters relating to the conduct of war, 
 than for us to pretend to look through the things 
 that appertain to God and to superior spirits, mere 
 men as we are, like unskilled observers who should 
 undertake to pass sentence on the skill of artists by 
 their own conjectures and surmises. It is not easy, 
 indeed, for a common person to comprehend a phy- 
 sician's reasons for using the knife later, and not 
 earlier, or for ordering a bath, not yesterday, but to- 
 day ; and still less is it easy or safe for a mortal to 
 say of God anything except that he, best knowing 
 the fit time for the curing of wickedness, applies to 
 every evil-doer punishmeirt as the appropriate medi- 
 cine, and this not of the same intensity, nor at one 
 and the same interval of time, for all. Now that 
 the medical treatment of souls, termed punishment 
 aiid justice, is the greatest of all arts, Pindar,^ with 
 myriads of others, testifies, calling God, the chief 
 and lord of all, the supremely good artificer, as 
 being the author of justice, to whom it belongs to 
 allot to each of the guilty the time, mode, and 
 measure of his punishment. Moreover, Plato says 
 that Minos, although the son of Zeus, became his 
 disciple in this art, so that it is not possible for one 
 who has not been a learner in it and acquired skill 
 in it, to proceed aright in the administration of 
 1 In some poem not now extant. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 9 
 
 justice, or to pass an intelligent judgment on its 
 administration by another. Even the laws which 
 men make do not always have a justifying reason 
 that is simple and generally manifest ; but some of 
 their enactments seem very ridiculous. Thus, in 
 Lacedaemon, the Ephori when they come into office 
 make immediate proclamation that no man shall let 
 the beard on the upper lip grow,^ and that the laws- 
 must be so obeyed that they shall never be annoy- 
 ing to the citizens. Thus too, the Eomans strike 
 the slaves whom they are going to emancipate with 
 a slender twig.^ They also, when they make their 
 wills, appoint certain persons their heirs, and sell 
 their property to other persons,^ which appears ab- 
 surd. But the most absurd of all seems that enact- 
 ment of Solon, that, in case of an insurrection in the 
 
 1 We have evidence from other sources that the Spartans were 
 accustomed to shave the upper lip, and in Sparta custom and law 
 were identical. 
 
 2 Slaves might be manumitted in Rome by having their names 
 inscribed on the roll of taxable citizens with permission of their 
 masters, in which case they must have been possessed of some 
 peculmm, — property of their own earning or given them by their 
 masters. They might also be made free by will. But the oldest 
 mode of manumission is that here referred to. The slave was 
 brought before the magistrate, whose liotor laid a rod or wand on 
 his head, after which ceremony the master pronounced him free. 
 
 3 In this, which was one of several modes in which wills were 
 made in Rome, the testator made a fictitious sale of his property 
 to a friend, who received his instructions as to the disposal of it. 
 The person thus made the purchaser filled very much the place 
 that with us is held by the executor of a vrill. 
 
10 Plutarch on the 
 
 city, he who does not attach himself to either party, 
 or act on either side, shall be branded with civic 
 infamy.i In fine, one who understood not the pur- 
 pose of the lawgiver, nor comprehended the reasons 
 for the individual statutes, might enumerate many 
 instances of foolish legislation. What wonder is it 
 then, if, while human affairs are so difficult to be un- 
 derstood, it is not easy to say concerning the gods why 
 they punish some transgressors later, some earlier ? 
 
 6. These things I say, not as a pretence for get- 
 ting rid of the subject, but as an apology for the 
 liberty which I crave in discussing it, that my dis- 
 course, as if looking to some ultimate harbor or 
 refuge,^ may proceed with the greater assurance to 
 resolve the doubt. But first see how, as Plato says, 
 God, making himself conspicuous as the example of 
 all things good, bestows human virtue, in some sort 
 his own likeness, on those who are able to be fol- 
 lowers of God. For nature throughout, being first 
 in a state of chaos, had the beginning of its change, 
 and of its becoming an orderly universe, by means 
 of a resemblance to and a participation in the 
 Divine idea and the Divine virtue. The same 
 
 1 Solon's theory was, that neutrality in a disturbed condition of 
 the state indicated either indilference to the public well-being or 
 the most sordid selfishness ; while sedition might be sometimes 
 justifiable, and at the worst was not inconsistent with honesty of 
 purpose. 
 
 ^ The "harbor or refuge" is man's inevitable ignorance of 
 Divine things, which is often a sufficient answer for doubts or 
 objections which man cannot solve or refute. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 11 
 
 author says that nature kindled sight in us, that 
 the soul by seeing and admiring the heavenly bodies, 
 accustoming itself to behold and admire what is 
 becoming and orderly, might hate unseemly and 
 vagrant passions, and might shun rash and hap- 
 hazard conduct, as the source of all wickedness and 
 vice. For it has fallen to man's lot to enjoy from 
 God no greater gift than the capacity of being 
 formed to virtue by the imitation of those things in 
 God that are beautiful and good. Thus also to bad 
 men he appoints punishment with a lingering and 
 leisurely stroke, not because he fears mistake or 
 reason for repentance were he to punish more 
 promptly, but in order to expel from us the brutish 
 and impetuous element that there is in punishment, 
 and to teach us not to fall upon those who have 
 injured us with anger, nor when 
 
 " Revenge, outleaping all restraint of reason," l 
 
 blazes and rages, as if we were bent on appeasing 
 thirst or hunger, but, imitating his clemency and 
 long-suffering, to proceed to chastisement deliber- 
 ately and cautiously, choosing, as helping us to take 
 the wiser counsel, the time that shall give us the 
 least reason for repentance. As Socrates said, it is 
 not so bad to drink turbid water to excess as for a 
 temper agitated and overwhelmed by anger and 
 rage, before it can be settled and clarified, to satiate 
 itself in the punishment of a kinsman or a neighbor. 
 
 1 From an unknown poet. 
 
12 Plutarch on the 
 
 For it is not, as Thucydides says, the retribution 
 nearest in time to tlie injury received, but that 
 which lies the farthest from it, that obeys the law 
 of fitness. As anger, according to Melanthius,^ 
 "By deeds depraved and dire casts reason out," 
 
 SO reason performs right and moderate deeds, put- 
 ting anger and resentment to flight. Hence it is 
 that men are made meek by the examples of other 
 men ; as when they hear how Plato, having lifted 
 his staff over his servant's head, stood still for a long 
 time, punishing his own anger, as he said ; and how 
 Archytas, learning of some misconduct and disorder 
 of his laborers in the field, conscious that he was 
 becoming resentful and bitter in his feeling toward 
 them, did nothing except to say, as he left them, 
 " It is fortunate for you that I am angry." But if 
 the reported sayings and doings of men can tone 
 down the harshness and severity of anger, how 
 much more fitting is it that we — seeing that God, 
 to whom there is no need of delay nor possibility of 
 repentance, yet puts off punishment into the future, 
 and awaits its fitting time — should ourselves be 
 circumspect in these matters, and should regard as a 
 Divine part of virtue the clemency and long-suffer- 
 ing which God manifests, reforming few indeed by 
 punishment, hut by the slowness of punishment 
 benefiting and admonishing many ! ^ 
 
 1 A tragedian, of whom only a few fragments are preserved. 
 
 2 This whole section looks almost like a paraphrase of St. Paul's 
 exhortation : " Be ye kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 13 
 
 6. Let us next consider, in the second place, that 
 punishments inflicted by men have no purpose 
 but retaliation, terminating in the suffering of the 
 wrong-doer, and going no farther. They thus fol- 
 low hard upon the offences, as a dog barking at the 
 offender's heels, and pursue evil deeds close in their 
 rear. But God probably sees through the disposi- 
 tions of the diseased souls to which he draws nigh 
 in judgment, knows whether they show an inclina- 
 tion to repentance, and grants time for reformation 
 to those whose guilt has not been excessive or irre- 
 claimable. For, aware what endowment of virtue 
 souls bring from him when they come into the 
 world, and how strong and imperishable in them is 
 this native nobleness, which, though — corrupted by 
 bad association and nurture — it may blossom into 
 evil contrary to nature, yet when cured restores 
 some men entirely to proper habits of life, he 
 therefore does not punish all alike ; but the incura- 
 ble he speedily takes out of being, and cuts them 
 off, inasmuch as it is not only harmful to others, 
 but, most of all, injurious to the sinner's own self, 
 to be always conversant with wickedness. On the 
 other hand, to those whose sins probably proceeded 
 rather from ignorance of the good than from prefer- 
 ence for what is vile, he gives time for a change of 
 character ; but if they continue as they are, he ex- 
 ecutes justice on them too, and there is no danger 
 
 eveu as God [for Christ's sake] hath forgiven you. Be ye there- 
 fore /oWoiiiers of God, as dear children ; and walk in love." 
 
14 Plutarch on the 
 
 of tlieir escaping. ISTow see what changes have 
 taken place in the habits and lives of men. There- 
 fore the changeable part of the life or character is 
 designated by a word denoting turn} and also by a 
 word denoting hahit^ because habit constitutes a 
 large part of the character, and, when adopted, has 
 commanding influence. I am inclined to thinly, 
 indeed, that the ancients ascribed to Cecrops*^ a 
 double nature, not, as some say, because from a 
 good king he became a fierce and dragon-like ty- 
 rant, but, on the other hand, because, having been 
 in the beginning perverse and an object of terror, 
 he afterward ruled with meekness and kindness. 
 But if this is an open question, we know con- 
 cerning Gelon * and Hierou ^ of Sicily, and Peisis- 
 
 1 Tp6vos, from rpeireiv, to turn. Our phrase turn of mind vir- 
 tually denotes a change, i. c. a direction of mind not native or 
 normal. 
 
 2 ■^Hflos, habit. Habits are not native, but always imply a 
 change from a previous state in which they had not begun to be. 
 
 ^ A man in the upper part of his body ; in the lower, a dragon. 
 
 * Gelon iirst obtained the sovereignty of Gela in Sicily, by 
 setting aside the minor sons of the late king, of whom he had been 
 appointed guardian. He subsequently availed himself of dissen- 
 sions in Syracuse, to obtain the sovereignty of that city, which 
 rose to great prosperity and wealth under his reign. 
 
 ^ Hieron was the brother and successor of Gelon, who left an 
 infant son. Some accounts say that he assumed the sovereignty 
 in his nephew's name, and retained it as in his own right. He 
 was tyrannical in his rule, but was successful in war, and was 
 distinguished for his patronage of literature and of learned men. 
 Aeschylus and Pindar were among his invited and permanent 
 guests. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 15 
 
 tratus,^ the son of Hippocrates, that, getting posses- 
 sion of absolute power by foul means, they used it to 
 good purpose. Gaining the ascendency unlawfully, 
 they governed with moderation and for the public 
 welfare. Indeed, they made excellent laws, gave 
 great encouragement to agriculture, and converted 
 their subjects from scoffers and babblers into sober 
 citizens and industrious men. Gelou also, being an 
 excellent military commander and conquering the 
 Carthaginians in a great battle, refused to conclude 
 the peace which they sought, till he had procured 
 the insertion in the treaty of a promise on their 
 part to cease offering children to Cronus.^ Lydi- 
 ades ^ at first exercised a tyrannical sway in Mega- 
 lopolis ; but during his reign becoming a different 
 
 1 Peisistratus obtained supreme power in Athens no less than 
 three times, and always hy intrigue and violence. But his ad- 
 ministi-ation was wise and beneficent. He enriched Athens with 
 several of the most costly and tasteful public edifices. He was a 
 liberal patron of letters. He settled the poor of the city in the 
 outlying districts of Attica, and laid the foundation for the agri- 
 cultural prosperity of the state. 
 
 2 This treaty could have had only a temporary efiect ; for at a 
 subsequent period we read of two hundred children being burned 
 at the shrine of Cronus in Carthage, as a propitiatory sacrifice 
 when a successor of Gelon appeared in arms before the city. In 
 the Hebrew Scriptures we learn that this particular form of human 
 sacrifice was largely practised by the Canaanites, — the stock of 
 which the Phoenicians who settled Carthage were an offshoot. 
 
 ' Lydiades rose from an obscure condition to a despotic sov- 
 ereignty over Megalopolis, and probably with little scruple as 
 to the means of elevation ; but, becoming convinced that it was 
 for the interest of the city to join the Achaean league as a free 
 
16 Plutarch on the 
 
 man, and inspired with hatred for injustice, he re- 
 stored laws to the citizens, and then, fighting with 
 their enemies, fell gloriously in his country's cause. 
 If one had killed Miltiades ^ when he was a tyrant 
 in Chersonesus, or had prosecuted and slain Cimon 
 when he was living with his sister as his wife,^ or 
 had the people banished Themistocles ^ from the 
 city when he went about making riot and doing 
 mischief, and showed his insolence in the market- 
 state, he abdicated the crown, and was chosen commander of the 
 forces of the republic thus constituted. He died in battle. 
 1 We are reminded here of the stanza in Byron's song : — 
 
 "The tyrant of the Chersonese 
 
 Was freedom's "best and bravest friend ; 
 That tyrant was Miltiades. 
 
 O that the present hour might send 
 Another despot of the kind ! 
 Such chains as his were sure to bind.'* 
 
 " Elpinice, whose first husband was Cimon, was his father's 
 daughter ; but they had different mothers. In the earlier ages, 
 for obvious reasons, kindred was reckoned only on the mother's 
 side, and the intermarriage of the children of the same father and 
 different mothers was legal, and not unusual. "We find traces of 
 the lawfulness of such marriages in Hebrew history as late as the 
 time of David. Cimon's marriage was probably lawful ; but pub- 
 lic sentiment had then advanced so far as to render such a union 
 discreditable, if not absolutely infamous. It is worthy of remark 
 heT'e that the Greek names for brother and sister, dSeA^o's and 
 aS(Kipi), in their derivation and original use denote a relation on 
 the mother's side alone. 
 
 ^ The stories that have come down to us of the riotous living, 
 recklessness, and debauchery of Themistocles as a young man 
 almost transcend belief. It is related of him that he was once 
 drawn in a carriage through the thronged market-place by four 
 shameless women harnessed like horses. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 17 
 
 place, sentencing him to exile as Alcibiades was 
 afterward sentenced, would not the Marathons have 
 been lost to us ? and the Eurymedons ? and the 
 beautiful 
 
 " Euboean headland,* where the sons of Athens 
 Laid the fair corner-stone of liberty? "^ 
 
 Great natures, indeed, produce nothing small. 
 Because of the intensity of their impulses, what is 
 strong and efficient in them does not remain idle; 
 but they are tossed to and fro as on an ocean be- 
 fore attaining to a fixed and established character. 
 Therefore, as one unskilled in husbandry, seeing a 
 tract of country full of prickly shrubs and weeds, 
 abounding in vermin, and having much stagnant 
 water and a great deal of mud, would not make 
 choice of it, while to one who has learned to dis- 
 criminate and judge, these very things indicate 
 strength and all other good qualities in the soil, 
 and show that it can be ploughed without resist- 
 ance, so in like manner there are great natures 
 that bring forth many things annoying and blame- 
 worthy, the roughness and thorniness of which so 
 put us out of patience that we might think it best 
 to cut them off and to prevent all further growth ; 
 
 1 ' hprentaiov, Artemisium. The first naval battle between the 
 Grecian forces and Xerxes was fought off Artemisium. Themis- 
 tocles commanded the Athenian portion of the fleet, and the 
 splendid victory was ascribed, in great part, to his skill and 
 prowess. 
 
 2 From Pindar, — commemorative of this battle. 
 
 2 
 
18 Plutarch on the 
 
 while the better Judge, discerning from these very- 
 tokens the excellence and nobleness that lie be- 
 neath them, awaits maturity as the coadjutor of 
 reason and virtue, and the period when the nature 
 once so wild shall yield fruit that is not wild. 
 
 7. Enough has been said on this point. To pass 
 to another consideration, do you not think that it 
 was wise in some of the Greek states to copy the 
 Egyptian law, that a woman with child under sen- 
 tence of death shall have her sentence suspended 
 till her child is born ? 
 
 We think so, — they all said. 
 
 Then I continued, — If one cannot bear children, 
 yet will be able in process of time to bring forth 
 into the light some clandestine transaction or con- 
 spiracy, or will disclose some lurking evil, or will 
 become the author of some salutary counsel, or 
 will invent a supply for some urgent need, is not 
 he who awaits the benefit that will accrue from 
 delay in punishing such a man wiser than he who 
 would put the offender out of the way at once ? So 
 I think. 
 
 And so do we, said Pateocleas. 
 
 You are right, said I. For consider that, if 
 Dionysius ^ had been punished in the beginning of 
 
 1 Before Dionysius the elder obtained the undisputed sover- 
 eignty of Syracuse, Sicily had been devastated by the Carthagin- 
 ians, and several of its chief cities destroyed. In the first year of 
 his reign, the Carthaginian general, after a successful campaign, 
 offered him terms of peace, solely because his own army had 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 19 
 
 his tyrannical reign, none of Greek descent would 
 ever have lived again in Sicily after its devastation 
 by the Carthaginians. Nor, if Periander ^ had been 
 speedily punished, would Greeks have again in- 
 habited Apollonia, or Anactorium, or the peninsula 
 of the Leucadians.2 I think, too, that Gassander's 
 punishment was delayed, that Thebes might be 
 repeopled.^ The larger part of the strangers that 
 had plundered the temple,* and afterwards went to 
 
 suffered severely from pestilence. But in subsequent wars 
 Dionysius repeatedly defeated the Carthaginians, and, whatever 
 his demerits, he raised his kingdom to a high degree of prosperity, 
 and rendered it attractive to the emigrants whom the over- 
 peopled Greek cities were constantly sending to every region 
 where Greek enterprise, genius, and skiU could hope for recog- 
 nition and reward. 
 
 1 Periander was the tyrant of Corinth in the seventh century 
 hefore Christ. His history is obscure ; hut the traditions with 
 regard to him relate many acts of violence and cruelty, and also 
 very great misfortunes, and his domestic life was overshadowed 
 equally hy crime and by misery. The three places named in this 
 sentence were early Corinthian colonies, and they may have been 
 settled by Periauder's enterprise, or may have been places of 
 refuge from his caprice and oppression. 
 
 2 The island of Leucadia was a peninsula in Homer's time, 
 and was probably still so when the Corinthian colony was 
 established . 
 
 ' Alexander destroyed Thebes ; twenty years afterward Cas- 
 sander rebuilt it. Plutarch very probably refers to the tradition 
 that Cassander poisoned Alexander. Not that he was free from 
 other undoubted crimes ; for his whole life was marked by 
 sporadic acts of violence. He cannot be said to have received 
 any specific punishment ; but he was kept in perpetual harass- 
 ment by the quarrels among the successors of Alexander. 
 
 ♦ That is, this temple of Delphi, the scene of the dialogue. 
 
20 Plutarch on the 
 
 Sicily with Timoleon, perished wretchedly in their 
 guilt, but not till they had conquered the Cartha- 
 ginians, and put an end to their oppressive rule.^ 
 Indeed, the Deity uses some bad men as public 
 executioners to punish others, and then destroys 
 the executioners themselves. This, I think, has 
 been the case with most tyrants. For as the gall 
 of the hyena, and the saliva of the sea-calf, and 
 other parts of loathsome beasts, have a certain vir- 
 tue in the cure of diseases, so upon some who need 
 severe chastisement God inflicts the implacable 
 bitterness of a tyrant or the annoying oppression 
 of a chieftain, and removes not what pains and 
 troubles them tiU the disease is cured and purged 
 away. Such a medicine was Phalaris ^ to the peo- 
 ple of Agrigentum, and Marius to the Romans.* 
 God indeed expressly foretold to the people of 
 
 1 In the Phocian war two Phocian leaders with their associates 
 seized the treasure deposited in the temple at Delphi, and used it 
 to hire foreign mercenaries. Those concerned in the robbery 
 were wandering as outlaws in Peloponnesus, when Timoleon 
 enlisted them for service in Sicily against the Carthaginians. 
 They contributed largely to his success ; but after their dispersion 
 most of them encountered such disasters as were regarded as the 
 normal penalty of sacrilege. 
 
 2 So little is really known about Phalaris that he is almost a 
 mythical personage. His name, however, will always remain 
 associated with his brazen bull, and his trying his first experi- 
 ment with it by roasting In it its inventor, who certainly best 
 deserved the doom. 
 
 ' The readers of Roman history may doubt the medicinal virtue 
 of Marius, who certainly served as a Seton on the body politic. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 21 
 
 Sicyon that they would of necessity be severely 
 scourged, for seizing as of their own city Teletias, 
 a Cleonaean youth, who had been crowned in the 
 Pythian games, and then tearing him in pieces.^ 
 Accordingly Orthagoras, and after him Myron and 
 Cleisthenes and their satellites, put an end to their 
 lawlessness. But the Cleonaeans, not chancing to 
 have the same curative treatment, came to naught.^ 
 Hear also Homer, when he says, 
 
 " A son endowed with every virtue sprang 
 From parentage that gave no sign of virtue.'' 
 
 This son of Copreus, of whom he thus speaks, 
 achieved indeed no splendid or noble deeds ; but 
 the posterity of Sisyphus, and that of Autolycus, 
 and that of Phlegyas, bloomed forth in the glories 
 and virtues that belong to great kings. Pericles 
 sprang from an infamous Athenian family ,3 and 
 Pompey the Great in Eome was the son of Strabo,* 
 
 1 History throws no light on this specific crime ; but the 
 Sicyoniaus had the reputation of being a licentious and other- 
 wise vicious people. The curative process under Orthagoras and 
 the dynasty that he founded lasted a full century. 
 
 ^ Of Cleonae we know very little except that it was, and now 
 is not. Near its site is a hamlet of half a dozen houses that bears 
 the name of Clenes. Nemea, where the Nemean games were held, 
 was in its territory. 
 
 ' One of his maternal ancestors had been cursed, and banished 
 from Athens, a century and a half before his birth, for an insur- 
 rectionary enterprise. 
 
 * He was killed by lightning, which the people regarded as a 
 retributive bolt from heaven. He deserved hatred, Cicero says, 
 for his cruelty, treachery, and avarice. 
 
22 Plutarch on the 
 
 whom the Roman people so hated that they cast 
 his dead body out of doors and trod it under foot. 
 What wonder is it then, if, as the farmer does not 
 cut down the thorn-bush till he has taken from it 
 the green shoots which he uses as salad, nor do the 
 Libyans burn the cistus till they have collected the 
 balsam which it yields, so God does not destroy the 
 evil and thorny root of an honorable and royal race 
 tUl the appropriate fruit springs from it ? For it 
 was better for the Phocians to have lost ten thou- 
 sand of the cattle and horses of Iphitus, and a 
 larger amount of gold and silver than was ever 
 abstracted from Delphi, than that Odysseus^ or 
 Aesculapius^ should not have been born, or that 
 the world should have failed of the good and emi- 
 nently useful men who have been the sons of 
 wicked and depraved fathers. 
 
 8. But must we not think it better that punish- 
 ments should take place in fitting time and way, than 
 that they should be inflicted speedily and promptly ? 
 There was a fitness in the case of Callippus, who 
 with the very same dagger with which he had pro- 
 cured the death of Dion while feigning to be his 
 
 1 One tradition makes Odysseus the son of Sisyphus, and only 
 the step-son of Laertes, who, however, married Anticleia before 
 her son was horn. Autolycus was the father of Anticleia, and it 
 was he that stole the cattle of Iphitus. 
 
 ^ Aesculapius in Grecian fahle was the son of Apollo hy Coro- 
 nis, the daughter of Phlegyas, who, in what might seem righteous 
 indignation against the wanton god, set fire to his Delphian tem- 
 ple, having of course first ravaged it. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 23 
 
 friend was Mmself killed by the friends of Dion ; ^ 
 and in that of the murderer of Mitius of Argos, who 
 was killed in a riot, and whose brazen statue in the 
 market-place fell with fatal issue on the man who 
 had killed him. You, Patrocleas, must, I am sure, 
 know about Bessus the Paeonian, and Aristo the 
 Oetaean, the commander of the foreign soldiers. 
 
 No, by Zeus, said Pateocleas, I do not know, 
 but I want to know about them. 
 
 Aristo,^ said I, by leave of the tyrants,^ took away 
 the ornaments of Eriphyle deposited here,* and car- 
 ried them as a present to his wife; but his son, 
 being for some reason angry with his mother, set 
 
 1 Dion obtained supreme power in Syracuse, though not the 
 title of King, on the expulsion of Dionysius the younger. Callip- 
 pus, his professed friend, was the leader of the band of malcon- 
 tents that killed Diou, although he did not kill him with his own 
 hand, perhaps shrinking from the act of murder on account of an 
 oath which, when under suspicion, he had sworn at the altar of 
 Persephone, that he would remain faithful to his friend. His 
 aim was the place which Dion had held. It was his but a, little 
 while, and then, after a series of misfortunes and wanderings, he 
 was killed at Ehegium with the same weapon that had been em- 
 ployed in the murder of Dion. 
 
 ^ Eriphyle received a golden necklace as a reward for betraying 
 her husband Amphiaraus, who secreted himself to avoid going to 
 the Theban war in which it was predicted that he should perish. 
 His son Alcmaeon avenged his father by killing his mother, and 
 then made of the necklace a sacred deposit in the temple at Delphi. 
 Aristo was the commander of one of the bands of mercenaries hired 
 by the pillage of the temple. 
 
 5 The Phocian leaders who committed this sacrilege. 
 
 * In this temple. 
 
24 Plutarch on the 
 
 the house on fire, and burned all that were in it. 
 Bessus, it is said, killed his father, and escaped 
 detection for a long time. But at length, going to 
 supper among strangers, he shook down a swallow's 
 nest with his spear, and killed the young birds; 
 and when those present asked, as was natural, what 
 had provoked him to do so strange a thing, he said, 
 " Do they not, even of old, bear false witness against 
 me, and cry out that I killed my father ? " Those 
 who heard him, marvelling at what he said, told 
 the king, and, on investigation, Bessus suffered due 
 punishment. 
 
 9. What I have said thus far has been said on 
 the supposition that, as is generally thought, there 
 is an actual delay in the punishment of the wicked. 
 But as to what may yet be said on this point, it 
 may be well for us to listen to Hesiod, who main- 
 tains, not, with Plato, that punishment is a suffer- 
 ing that follows wrong-doing, but that it is a twin 
 birth with wrong-doing, springing from the same 
 soil and the same root ; for he says, 
 
 " Bad counsel does most harm to him wlio gives it," 
 
 and, 
 
 "Who does another wrong himself most wrongs." 
 
 The cantharis,^ by a certain contrast in the elements 
 of its physical structure, is said to contain within 
 itself the antidote for the wound which it makes. 
 
 1 The Spanish fly, which was used for medicinal purposes in 
 very early times, as it is now. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 25 
 
 But — the converse of this — guilt, bringing with 
 itseK into heing its own pain and punishment, not 
 subsequently to, but in the very act of wrong-doing 
 receives its penalty. The malefactor who is to be 
 crucified carries his cross with his own body ; and 
 in like manner wickedness creates from itself, to be 
 borne by itself, each several form of chastisement, 
 being, so to speak, an expert artificer of a wretched 
 life, attended by thronging fears and distressing 
 emotions, by ceaseless remorse and constant pertur- 
 bation. But some persons are like children, who, 
 often seeing in the theatres malefactors in gold- 
 embroidered tunics and purple mantles, crowned 
 and dancing, admire and applaud them as happy 
 beings, until they appear on the stage goaded and 
 scourged, and with fire streaming from their gay 
 and finely wrought apparel.^ For many of the 
 wicked, surrounded by large families, and possessed 
 of places of high command and extended authority, 
 are not visibly punished tiU they are seen slain or 
 hurled down a precipice, which ought to be called, 
 not punishment, but the end or consummation of 
 punishment. As Plato says that Herodicus, the 
 
 1 Such spectacles — never, so far as we know, witnessed in 
 Greece — were not uncommon in Eome. Christians were thus 
 exhibited and murdered on the stage in the sight of admiring and 
 applauding multitudes ; and we have no reason to doubt that 
 other reputed malefactors were similarly dealt with. This trea- 
 tise may have been written after Plutarch had been in Eome ; 
 at any rate, Eoman customs were well known throughout the 
 empire. 
 
26 Plutarch on the 
 
 Selymbrian, being attacked with phthisis, an incura- 
 ble disease, and being the first to unite gymnastics 
 with the healing art, made death long for himself 
 and for those similarly affected ; so too such of the 
 wicked as seem to escape immediate punishment 
 receive, not after a long time, but during a long 
 time, not a slower, but a longer punishment; nor 
 are they punished when they grow old, but they 
 grow old in a state of punishment. Yet it is only 
 to you that I speak of a long time ; for to the gods 
 any period of human life is as nothing, and " now, 
 not thirty years hence," is to them as it would be 
 to us for a malefactor to be put to torture or 
 hanged this evening, and not to-morrow morning. 
 Besides, one is kept in life as in a prison that has 
 no outlet or mode of escape; yet he may enjoy 
 frequent feasts, may transact business, may receive 
 presents and kindnesses, like the men who play 
 with dice or at draughts in prison, with the rope 
 hanging over their heads. 
 
 10. Indeed, why may I not say that those under 
 sentence of death are not punished till their heads 
 are cut off, — and that he who has been condemned 
 to drink hemlock, and then goes about and remains 
 unaffected till his legs grow heavy, is not punished 
 until he is overpowered by tlie deadening of the 
 muscles and the congealing of the blood, combined 
 with the loss of consciousness, — if we confine the 
 name of punishment to the last stage of punish- 
 ment, and leave out of the account the sufferings. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 27 
 
 and terrors, and apprehension, and remorse, which in 
 the mean while prey upon every guilty soul ? As 
 well might we maintain that a fish that has swal- 
 lowed the hook is not caught till we see it roasted 
 by the cook or cut up on the table. For every 
 wrong-doer is in the grasp of justice so soon as he 
 has swallowed as a bait the pleasure connected 
 with his sin, having a conscience resting heavily 
 upon him, and driven hither and thither in the 
 endeavor to expiate his guilt, 
 
 "As the impetuous tunny ploughs the sea." 
 
 Up to the time when the crime is committed, the 
 well-known assurance and audacity of guilt are 
 strong and ef&cient; but afterward the excitement 
 subsides like a wind that dies away, and the mind, 
 enfeebled and dispirited, becomes subject to fears 
 and superstitions, — so that Clytemnestra's dream, 
 as related by Stesichorus, is in conformity with 
 experience and truth. The verses are : 
 
 " A dragon seemed to come with blood-smeared head, 
 And took the form of King Pleisthenides." i 
 
 Indeed, visions in sleep, noonday apparitions, oracles, 
 peals of thunder, and whatever events can seem to 
 take place by the agency of God, are fraught with 
 tempests and terrors for those who are in this con- 
 
 1 Agamemnon, the hushand of Clytemnestra, whom she mur- 
 dered on his return from Troy, was the son of Pleisthenes. Stesi- 
 chorus wrote a tragedy entitled Orestes, from which, undoubtedly, 
 these verses are taken. 
 
28 Plutarch on the 
 
 dition. Thus, it is said that ApoUodorus ^ once in 
 his sleep saw himself flayed by Scythians, then 
 boiled, and his own heart speaking out of the cal- 
 dron, and saying, "I have brought all this upon 
 thee " ; and again, that he saw his daughters on 
 fire, their bodies in flames, running round him in 
 a circle. It is said, too, that Hipparchus,^ the son 
 of Peisistratus, shortlj"- before his death, saw Aphro- 
 dite sprinkling blood upon his face from a vial. 
 The friends of Ptolemy surnamed Ceraunus^ saw 
 him summoned to the tribunal by Seleucus, with 
 vultures and wolves for his judges, while he was 
 distributing large portions of flesh to his enemies. 
 Pausanias,* having sent to seize by force Cleonice, 
 
 1 ApoUodorus, king of the small state of Cassan(Jreia, was 
 regarded as having been unsurpassed in tyranny, cruelty, and de- 
 bauchery. The mention of his daughters in this vision makes it 
 probable that he was guilty of some horrible outrage of violence 
 or lust of which they were the victims. 
 
 ^ The crime or type of depravity of which Hipparchus was 
 guilty can be inferred only from the vision here reported. 
 
 " Ptolemy Ceraunus was the eldest son of Ptolemy Soter ; but, 
 on account of his violent passions and moral obliquity, his father 
 designated «. younger son as his successor. Ceraunus then emi- 
 grated to Macedonia, became intimate with Seleucus, murdered 
 him treacherously, and himself assumed the sovereignty ; but in 
 less than a year he was defeated by the Gauls who then first 
 invaded that region, was taken prisoner, and was put to death 
 with the utmost barbarity. 
 
 * Plutarch tells this story with fuller details in his life of 
 Cimon. The Pausanias referred to is the Spartan viceroy and 
 general of that name. Byzantium, which had been a stronghold 
 of the Persians, was held by the Lacedaemonians, under Pausanias, 
 at the time of the retreat of the Ten Thousand. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 29 
 
 a free-born maiden in Byzantium, that he might 
 have her company by night, and then, in consequence 
 of some unaccountable mental disturbance or sus- 
 picion, killing her when she arrived, often saw her 
 in his dreams, saying to him, 
 
 "Come quick to judgment ; lust works woe to man." 
 
 The vision not being discontinued, it is said, he 
 set sail for the oracle of the dead at Heracleia, and 
 there, by fitting propitiatory sacrifices and libations, 
 he called up the maiden's soul;^ and she, coming 
 into his presence, told him that he should rest from 
 these troubles on his arrival at Lacedaemon. As 
 soon as he arrived there, he died. 
 
 11. Thus, if there is nothing for the soul after 
 death, that is, if death is the end of all reward and 
 punishment, one might be disposed to say that the 
 Deity deals indulgently and leniently with those of 
 the wicked who are soon punished and die early. 
 For were it maintained that in their lifetime the 
 wicked incur no other evil than the conviction that 
 wrong-doing is utterly fruitless and graceless, and 
 for the many and great conflicts of mind that it 
 costs confers no benefit nor anything worthy of 
 
 1 The rites differ ; but the belief in necromancy has undergone 
 no essential change from the days of the witch of Endor to the 
 present time, and there have probably been in every age, as now, 
 ceremonies which have brought credulous men and women into 
 imagined communion with departed spirits. The history of nec- 
 romancy shows many resemblances, and still more analogies, in 
 different countries, ages, and degrees of culture. 
 
30 Plutarch on the 
 
 endeavor, the perception of this alone is fatal to the 
 soul's happiness. It is with the evil-doer as wit\i 
 Lysimachus,^ who, compelled by thirst to surrender 
 his person and his command to the Getae, having 
 quenched his thirst and being at the same time 
 made a prisoner, exclaimed, " Alas for my guilt in 
 suffering myself to be deprived of so great a king- 
 dom for so brief a pleasure ! " It is, indeed, in a 
 case like this, exceedingly difficult to resist the ne- 
 cessity created by a natural appetite. But when a 
 man, either from inordinate desire for wealth, or 
 from envy of those possessed of civic honor and 
 power, or for the sake of some sensual gratification, 
 commits an unlawful and abominable deed, and, 
 after the thirst and madness of passion have sub- 
 sided, sees in due time the vile and fearful traits 
 of character which lead to crime established perma- 
 nently within him, while he can discern in himself 
 nothing useful, or serviceable, or profitable, is it 
 not probable that the thought often occurs to him 
 that for vainglory or for slavish and fruitless pleas- 
 ure, he has set at naught the greatest and best 
 things that are accounted right among men, and thus 
 whelmed his life in shame and trouble ? For as 
 Simonides ^ said in jest that he found the chest of 
 
 1 One of Alexander's generals, and after Alexander's death 
 king of Thrace. 
 
 ^ Simonides is said to have been the first poet who eulogized 
 the subjects of his verse from mercenary motives. As his pane- 
 gyrics had great poetical merit, and were much sought and well 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 31 
 
 money always full, that of thanks empty, so the 
 wicked, having a clear view of their own guilt, find it 
 — after the indulgence which yields for the moment 
 an empty pleasure — utterly devoid of hope, and 
 always laden with fears and griefs, with cheerless 
 memories, suspicion of what the future may bring, 
 and distrust of the present. Thus, as we hear Ino 
 say on the stage, repenting of what she has done, — 
 
 " Dear women, tell me how, as at tlie first, 
 As if this deed of mine wei-e uncommitted. 
 The house of Athamas may be my home," > — 
 
 so it is probable that the soul of every evil-doer 
 discusses these things within itself, and considers 
 how it can by any possibility evade the memory of 
 its misdeeds, cast out from itself the consciousness 
 of them, and, becoming pure, start as if from the 
 beginning on a new life. For wickedness manifests 
 neither courage, nor modesty, nor consistency, nor 
 steadfastness in the objects of its preference, — un- 
 less, by Zeus, we admit that evil-doers are wise; 
 
 paid for, yet with few expressions of gratitude, he was wont tg 
 say that his chest of money was full, the chest designed for 
 thanks empty. 
 
 ^ These verses are prohahly from a lost tragedy of Euripidqj. 
 The myths about Ino are various, and mutually inconsistent. 
 According to some she killed, according to others she endeavored 
 to kill, the children of her husband, Athamas, by a former wife. 
 Still others charge her with the murder of her own son or sons. 
 She at length leaped into the sea, and emerged a goddess, 
 under the name of Leucothea, — certainlj' a better name in 
 heaven than she could have borne on earth. 
 
32 Plutarch on the 
 
 but where avarice, and eager voluptuousness, and 
 implacable envy, are associated with malice and 
 depravity, there also, on examination, you may see 
 beneath the surface superstition, and effeminate 
 indolence, and dread of death, and an abrupt vacil- 
 lation of impulses, and an arrogant pretence to 
 undeserved honor. Men of this character fear 
 those who blame them, and at the same time dread 
 chose who praise them, as those whom they have 
 wronged by their hypocrisy, and as persons espe- 
 cially hostile to the wicked, as is evinced in their 
 cordial commendation of those who seem to be good. 
 Indeed, the hardness in depravity, as in bad iron, 
 is brittle, and what seems in it to have the great- 
 est power of resistance is easily broken in pieces. 
 Hence, in process of time, as bad men come to the 
 knowledge of themselves, they are depressed, and 
 grow peevish, and hold their own manner of life in 
 abhorrence. When a mean man restores a deposit 
 intrusted to his care, or gives security for a friend, 
 or with honorable ambition confers gifts and ser- 
 vices on his country, and immediately repents and 
 is in trouble for what he has done, because of the 
 utter instability and vacillation of his mind, — and 
 'when some who are applauded in the theatre for 
 their generosity groan as their love of glory is 
 merged in their love of money, — can it be that 
 those who, like Apollodorus,^ sacrifice men in the 
 
 ' Apollodorus is said to have 'bouiid his associates in some 
 movement for his own aggrandizement by bringing them together 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 33 
 
 interest of their tyrannies and conspiracies, or like 
 Glaucus/ the son of Epicydes, plunder the prop- 
 erty of their friends, do not feel remorse, nor hate 
 themselves, nor suffer grief, for the crimes that they 
 have committed ? I, indeed, if it is not irreverent 
 thus to speak, do not think that those who work 
 iniquity need any avenger among gods or men ; 
 but their own life suffices for their punishment, 
 being utterly corrupted and kept in constant agi- 
 tation by their guilt. 
 
 12. Consider now whether our discussion has 
 exceeded a reasonable time. 
 
 TiMON replied,^ — Perhaps so, with reference to 
 the time that will yet be required ; for I am going to 
 bring forward the last doubt as a combatant held in 
 reserve, since the others have been fairly conquered. 
 What Euripides with the utmost boldness of speech 
 
 at a festival, and at its close giviag them evidence tliat they had 
 been feeding on human victims. 
 
 1 Glaucus, a Lacedaemonian, had a high reputation for integ- 
 rity, and on the ground of it received from a foreigner a deposit 
 of a large sum of money. When the owner's sons claimed the 
 deposit, he disclaimed all knowledge of it. But a threat of the 
 Delphian oracle led him to make restitution afterward. Xev- 
 ertheless the threat took effect, and he and his whole family 
 perished. 
 
 2 In this section Timon seems to cite indiscriminately the 
 cases of delayed or protracted punishment by men which are 
 confessedly foolish or wicked, and alleged instances of delayed 
 punishment on the part of the gods. The gravamen of the 
 objection is, " How can that be just or right for the gods to 
 do, which when men do they encounter either ridicule or 
 condemnation ? " 
 
 3 
 
34 Plutarch on the 
 
 inveighs against the gods for doing, namely, visiting 
 the sins of the fathers upon the children, account 
 us as tacitly charging upon them. Certainly, if 
 those who have done wrong were themselves pun- 
 ished, there is no justice in chastising those who 
 have done no wrong ; for it is not right to punish 
 even the evil-doers in their own person twice for 
 the same offence ; and if the gods, in their remiss- 
 ness failing to punish the guilty, afterward inflict 
 penalties on the innocent, they do not fittingly 
 make amends for their slow doing by unrighteous 
 doing. Take the case of Aesop.'' It is said that he 
 came hither with money furnished by Croesus, in- 
 tending to offer a magnificent sacrifice to the god of 
 the temple, and to distribute among the citizens of 
 Delphi four minas ^ apiece. But, as it is reported, 
 having become disaffected toward the people here 
 
 ^ That Aesop was killed by the Delphians for the cause here 
 stated there seems to be no doubt ; nor yet that Idmon, a de- 
 scendant of the man of the same name who had owned and 
 emancipated Aesop, received a large sum of money from the 
 Delphians by way of expiation for their crime, to which they 
 had probably in the mean time ascribed every bad harvest and 
 every epidemic. It must be remembei'ed that, before the rotation 
 of crops became the habit of agriculturists, bad harvests were very 
 frequent, and that, in the absence of sanitary rules and precau- 
 tions, dangerous epidemics prevailed at short intervals in all the 
 cities of the old world. It was not unnatural that these calami- 
 ties should have been regarded as retributive judgments where a 
 gross crime had been committed. 
 
 2 A mina was about the metallic equivaleut of twenty dol- 
 lars, but of course with a much larger purchasing power. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 35 
 
 on account of some affront or quarrel, he made the 
 sacrifice indeed, but sent the rest of the money- 
 back to Sardis, not thinking the men of Delphi 
 worthy of the gift. They then raised against him 
 the charge of sacrilege, and put him to death by 
 throwing him from yonder cliff, which they call 
 Hyampeia. From that time it is said that the god 
 was angry with them, and made their soil un- 
 fruitful, and sent among them all kinds of strange 
 diseases, so thab they went round among the public 
 assemblies of the Grecian cities, proclaiming with 
 earnest entreaty that whoever would demand jus- 
 tice of them in behalf of Aesop should receive fuU 
 satisfaction. But not until the third generation 
 came Idmon, the Samian, not related to Aesop, 
 except as the descendant of those who had bought 
 him at Samos, and to him the Delphians made 
 satisfaction in the ways prescribed, and were freed 
 from their calamities. It was on that account, it 
 is said, that the people changed the place of pun- 
 ishment for sacrilege from Hyampeia to the cliff 
 called Nauplia. Now those who hold the memory 
 of Alexander in the fondest regard, of whom I am 
 one, do not approve of his sacking the city of Bran- 
 chidae,^ and destroying its inhabitants of all ages, 
 
 1 A small town in Central Asia, built by the Branchidae, who 
 were priests and custodians of the temple of Apollo Didymeus in 
 an Ionian city bearing their name, near Miletus. The temple was 
 burned by Darius, was rebuilt, and was burned again by Xerxes, 
 on his retreat from Greece. The priests surrendered the treasures 
 
36 Plutarch on the 
 
 because their great-grandfathers had treacherously- 
 delivered up the temple of Miletus. So Agatho- 
 cles, the tyrant of Syracuse, derided and teased the 
 Corcyraeans,^ when they asked him why he ravaged 
 their island, saying, " By Zeus, because your fathers 
 showed hospitality to Odysseus.'' Again, when the 
 people of Ithaca complained that his soldiers were 
 stealing their sheep, he replied, " Your king not 
 only did the like, but put out the shepherd's ^ eye." 
 But is not Apollo more unreasonable than these 
 men whom I have named, if he is now ruining the 
 Pheneatae by stopping up the outlet of their streams, 
 and putting their whole country under water,^ be- 
 cause Hercules is said a thousand years ago to have 
 
 under their charge to Xerxes, followed him in his flight to escape 
 punishment for sacrilege, and built the town which Alexander 
 destroyed. His alleged motive for his cruel treatment of the 
 Branchidae was revenge for the sacrilege and treason of their 
 ancestors. 
 
 1 It was at Scheria, according to Homer, that Odysseus was 
 kindly received by Nausicaa, entertained sumptuously by King 
 Alcinous, her father, and provided with the ship on board of 
 which he reached Ithaca. The inhabitants of Corcyra maintained 
 that their island was the Homeric Scheria, which very probably 
 never existed except in the poet's brain. 
 
 ^ Polyphemus. 
 
 ^ The territory of Phenens is so situated at the confluence of 
 two mountain streams as to be of necessity liable to inundation. 
 There was an old canal, said to have been constructed by Her- 
 cules, and designed to carry off any abnormal excess of water ; 
 but it had early become obstructed and useless, and Pliny says 
 that there had been no less than five periods when the region 
 had been entirely devastated by the overflow of the rivers. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 37 
 
 stolen the oracular tripod and carried it to Pheneus ? 
 And was he less unreasonable in announcing to 
 the Sybarites that they should see the end of their 
 calamities, when by three destructive visitations 
 they should have appeased the wrath of the Leuca- 
 dian Hera ? ^ ISTor is it so very long a time since 
 the Locrians ceased sending virgins to Troy. 
 
 " With naked limbs, tare feet, and servile guise, 
 At early dawn they sweep Athene's temple, 
 Unveiled, while age remorseless steals upon them." 
 
 And all this because of the licentiousness of Ajax.^ 
 Now where is the reasonableness or rightfulness of 
 
 1 There were three occasions on which the Sybarites incurred 
 the special anger of Hera. Her statue was overturned iu some 
 civic commotion. Afterward the people of Sybaris killed thirty 
 members of a delegation from their neighbors of Crotona, and 
 cast out their bodies to be devoured by wild beasts. On this occa- 
 sion, the goddess was seen by night with an angry and threaten- 
 ing mien. In the third place, a slave who had taken refuge at 
 her altar, was pursued and scourged by his master, who held his 
 father's tomb as so much more sacred than her temple that he 
 ceased beating the slave when he sought refuge there. JSybaris 
 is known to have been twice destroyed before Plutarch's time. 
 There may have been a third destruction of which we have no 
 record ; but there is nothing in the text to forbid our so constru- 
 ing it as to leave the threat still hanging over the city, and the 
 third destruction still impending. 
 
 2 The tradition was that Ajax was guilty of an outrage on 
 Cassandra, the priestess of Athene. He on his return voyage was 
 destroyed by shipwreck, and the Locrians were supposed to have 
 suffered on account of his crime visitations of pestilence and other 
 dire calamities. When they consulted the oracle, the reply was, 
 that the guilt of Ajax could be expiated only by their sending 
 annually to Troy, for a thousand years, two virgins to perform 
 
38 Plutarch on the 
 
 these things ? Equally little can we commend the 
 Thracians ^ for still tattooing their wives, to avenge 
 Orpheus ; or the barbarians about the Po, who 
 wear black, as they say, in mourning for Phaethon, 
 which seems all the more ridiculous when we con- 
 sider that, while those who lived when Phaethon 
 perished cared nothing at all about the matter, 
 their posterity of the fifth or the tenth generation 
 are changing their garments and mourning for him.^ 
 Yet this is merely foolish, not atrocious or intolera- 
 ble. But on what justifiable ground does the anger 
 of the gods, suddenly disappearing, as some rivers 
 do, break out again in a different place, on other 
 people than the evil-doers, terminating only in ex- 
 treme calamity ? 
 
 13. As soon as Timon came to a pause, fearing 
 that with a fresh start he might bring forth more 
 and greater absurdities, I instantly asked him, — 
 Do you really think that all these things are true ? 
 
 If not all, said he, yet if some of them be true, 
 do you not think that the discussion labors under 
 the same difficulty ? 
 
 menial service in the temple of Athene. The hero, the crime, 
 and the expiation are, more probably than not, all mythical. 
 
 1 The Thracian men were tattooed as well as the women, and 
 it was probably for both men and women a preferred mode of 
 ornament. 
 
 2 I can find nowhere else any reference to this observance ; but 
 nothing is more probable than that Phaethon's name should have 
 been attached to some religious anniversary in the region in 
 which he was said to have perished. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 39 
 
 Perhaps, said I ; and so to persons in a high 
 fever, whether they chance to wear one garment, 
 or to be wrapped in many, the burning heat is 
 nearly or quite the same, and yet it contributes 
 to their relief to remove the multitude of coverings. 
 But if the patient is unwilling to have this done, 
 let him have his own way. Yet most of these 
 stories seem like myths and fictions. But recall 
 to mind the religious festival lately held here, when 
 you saw the magnificent portion of the A'iands^ 
 which the heralds took from the table, proclaiming 
 that it was due to the posterity of Pindar, and 
 remember how soleum and sweet this token of 
 honor seemed to you. 
 
 But, said he, who would not be delighted by the 
 gracefulness of a commemoration so entirely Gre- 
 cian and so simply archaic ? unless he had, to bor- 
 row Pindar's own words, a black heart forged in a 
 cold fire. 
 
 There is then no need, said I, of my citing a 
 similar proclamation made in Sparta, "After the 
 Lesbian singer," ^ in honor and remembrance of the 
 
 1 " Of tlie viands" is an interpolation of. my own. At a feast 
 a, "portion" was "carried off'," and I know not what it could 
 have been, if not a part of the food and wine on the table. If 
 there were none of Pindar's posterity at hand to receive the por- 
 tion, there were undoubtedly hungry officials ready in this be- 
 half to represent them. 
 
 2 I suppose that the first place at a Spartan civic festival was 
 formally assigned to Terpander, long dead, and that the most dis- 
 tinguished living guest was made to regard himself as second in 
 honor. 
 
40 Plutarch on the 
 
 ancient Terpander; for the principle is the same. 
 But you,^ I suppose, think yourselves superior to 
 other Boeotians, as being of the race of the Ophel- 
 tiadae ; ^ you make similar claims among the 
 Phocians ^ by virtue of your descent from Daiphan- 
 tus;* and you, indeed, were the first to stand by 
 me and help me in preserving for the Lycormaeans 
 and the Satilaeans ^ their hereditary honor, and the 
 right to wear crowns iu public which belongs to 
 the posterity of Hercules, — maintaining that last- 
 ing honors and favors are due to those descended 
 from Hercules, because he, though a great benefac- 
 tor to the Greeks, never received his due of grati- 
 tude, or any fitting recompense. 
 
 You remind us, said Timon, of a truly noble con- 
 test, and of one in which it was especially becoming 
 for a philosopher to take part. 
 
 Eelax then, my friend, said I, the severity of 
 your accusation, and do not take it so hard if some 
 of the descendants of wicked and depraved people 
 
 1 'Tjuets. Plutarch is here addressing, not Timon alone, tut 
 two or all three of his interlocutors. 
 
 2 Descendants of Opheltes. He came from Thessaly to Thehes, 
 and brought with him a body of armed adherents. He founded a 
 royal line in Boeotia. 
 
 2 Delphi being in Phocis, the claims on the score of Daiphantus 
 would be availing in all processions and festivities connected with 
 the temple service. 
 
 * A victory that the Phocians under Daiphantus had gained 
 five hundred years before was still celebrated in Plutarch's time. 
 
 6 I can find elsewhere no notice of these races, or families. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 41 
 
 are punished ; or else do not welcome or eommeud 
 the honor rendered to worthy parentage. For if we 
 would retain the reward of virtue in the posterity 
 of the virtuous, we cannot reasonably think that 
 punishments for misdoings ought to fail and cease, 
 but must suppose that they will run on at even 
 pace with the rewards, giving retribution in each 
 case in proportion to desert. But he who gladly 
 sees the posterity of Cimon honored in Athens, yet 
 is vexed and angry at the exile of the descendants 
 of Lachares^ or of Ariston,^ is very stupid and 
 feeble-minded, or rather has the presumption to 
 take the place of a wrangler and railer against the 
 Divine Being, — accusing him, forsooth, if the chil- 
 dren's children of an unrighteous and wicked man 
 seem to prosper, and again accusing him if the pos- 
 terity of bad ancestors are suffered to decline and 
 to become extinct, — indeed, finding equal fault 
 with God when the children of a good father or 
 those of a bad father fare ill. 
 
 14. Let these considerations serve you as de- 
 fences against those who are so excessively bitter 
 
 1 Lachares was a demagogue who early iu the third century 
 B. 0. obtained virtually supreme power in Athens, plundered the 
 Parthenon, stripped the statue of Athene of its ornaments, com- 
 mitted numerous acts of high-handed tyranny, and was finally 
 expelled from the city on the charge of having taken measures for 
 betraying it into the hands of Antiochus. 
 
 ^ Ariston was an Epicurean philosopher, who raised himself to 
 a virtual tyranny in Athens, but surrendered to Sulla when he 
 besieged the city. 
 
42 Plutarch on the 
 
 and objurgatory. But taking up again the begin- 
 ning of the thread in our discussion concerning 
 God, ■ — obscure, indeed, and with many turnings and 
 windings, — let us direct our way discreetly and 
 deliberately toward what is probable and credible. 
 For not even iu the things which we ourselves do 
 can we always state with confidence the actual and 
 true meaning. Thus we cannot tell why we order 
 the children of those who die of phthisis or of 
 dropsy to sit with their feet in water till the corpse 
 is buried, though it is believed that in this case 
 they neither contract the disease at the time nor 
 are liable to it afterward. Nor, again, can we tell 
 the reason why, when a goat takes into his mouth 
 a piece of snakeroot,i the whole flock stand still tiU. 
 the goatherd comes and takes it out of his mouth. 
 There are properties of various objects that are 
 transfused or transmitted in ways incredible as to 
 velocity and distance. In these cases we are in- 
 deed more surprised at remoteness of time than of 
 space. Yet it is really more amazing that Athens 
 should have been infected throughout with a pes- 
 tilence ^ that began in Aethiopia, and that Pericles 
 should have died of it, and Thucydides should have 
 been attacked by it, than that, if the Delphians and 
 the Sybarites have been wicked, protracted punish- 
 
 1 ^UpvyyiT-qv, eryngium, now the name of a genus containing 
 several species of snakeroot. 
 
 2 The plague that raged in Athens early in the Peloponnesian 
 ■war, of which Thucydides gives so remarkable an account. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 43 
 
 ment should come upon their posterity. For all 
 properties of objects have mutual action and re- 
 action from their very beginning till now, and bear 
 relations to one another of which, though we are 
 ignorant of the cause, it none the less produces its 
 appropriate effect. 
 
 15. Nevertheless, the public calamities of cities 
 have obviously their reason in justice. For a city 
 has unity and continuity like a living creature, not 
 devesting itself of identity by the changes that 
 occur at successive periods of its life, nor becoming 
 a different being from its former self by the lapse 
 of time, but always retaining a conscious selfhood 
 with the peculiarities that belong to it, and receiv- 
 ing the entire blame or praise of whatever it does 
 or has done in its collective capacity, so long as the 
 community which constitutes it and binds it to- 
 gether remains a unit. But dividing it by succes- 
 sive periods of time so as to make of a single city 
 many cities, or rather an infinite number of cities, 
 is like makiug of one man many men, because he 
 is now elderly, yet once was younger, and still 
 earlier was a mere stripling. This might remind 
 one of the Epicharmians, from whom the sophists 
 derived the cumulative argument,^ according to 
 
 ^ Plutarch gives an early specimen of this argument in his life 
 of Theseus : "The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens 
 returned [from Crete] was preserved hy the Athenians down even 
 to the time of Demetrius Phalereus ; for they took away the old 
 planks as they decayed, putting new and stronger timher in 
 
44 Plutarch on the 
 
 which he who used to be in debt now owes noth- 
 ing, having become a different man, and he who 
 was yesterday invited to supper to-day comes un- 
 invited, being another person. However, different 
 periods of life make greater changes in every one 
 of us than they ordinarily make in cities. One 
 who sees Athens would recognize it thirty years 
 afterward; for the present manners, sports, indus- 
 tries, likings, and resentments of the people closely 
 resemble those of former days. But after a con- 
 siderable time, scarce a kinsman oi* friend would 
 recognize a man's countenance and form ; while the 
 change of manners readily brought about in a per- 
 son by differing fashions of intercourse, employ- 
 ment, experience, and legal obligation look strange 
 and new even to one who has always known him. 
 But yet the man is said to be one and the same 
 man from the beginning to the end. The city in like 
 manner remaining the same, we regard it as involved 
 in the disgrace of its ancestry by the very right by 
 which it shares their glory and their power. Else 
 we shall throw everything into the river of Hera- 
 cleitus, into which, he says, no one can enter twice, 
 because changing nature is transposing and altering 
 all things. 
 
 16. But if a city is one continuous entity, equally 
 
 their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example 
 among the philosophers for the logical question, as to things that 
 grow ; one party holding that the ship remained the same, and the 
 other contending that it was not the same." 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 45 
 
 so is a race that springs from one original stock 
 and carries along with it certain common tenden- 
 cies derived from that stock; and that which is 
 born is not, like a manufactured article, separated 
 from him who produced it ; for it exists from him, 
 not merely by him, so that it possesses and bears 
 within itself some part of him, which is properly 
 the object of chastisement or of commendation. 
 Not in mere sport I would say that it was more 
 unjust for the Athenians to destroy the brazen 
 statue of Cassander,^ and for the people of Syracuse 
 to cast beyond their borders the body of Dionysius,^ 
 than for the posterity of those men to suffer punish- 
 ment. For there was nothing of the nature of Cas- 
 sander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had 
 already left the corpse ; but in Nisaeus,^ and Apol- 
 locrates,* and Antipater and Philip,^ and equally in 
 
 1 Athens had been under the government of men who had 
 heen virtually Cassander's viceroys. The city after his death 
 came under the rule of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and it was prob- 
 ably by his order that the statue of Cassander was destroyed. 
 
 2 Dionysius the elder. 
 
 * Nisaeus was the son of Dionysius the elder, and was sover- 
 eign of Syracuse for a short time while his brother Dionysius the 
 younger was in exile. Aelian names him in a chapter specially 
 devoted to eminent <pi\cmiTai, i. e. drunkards. 
 
 * ApoUocrates was the son of Dionysius the younger, and 
 grandson of the elder. His father in going into exile left him in 
 command of the citadel of Syracuse, which he was soon com- 
 pelled to surrender. He holds the third place, as Nisaeus the 
 second, in Aelian's list of distinguished drunkards. 
 
 6 These were both sons of Cassander. Philip succeeded his 
 father as king of Macedonia, but died almost immediately upon 
 
46 Plutarch on the 
 
 other sons of wicked parents, there was implanted, 
 and remains continuously, the part of their parents 
 that had the mastery over their lives, and in the 
 children this is not quiescent or inactive, but they 
 live by it, and are nourished by it, and order their 
 conduct by it, and think as it prompts. Nor is it 
 at all marvellous or absurd that, being the children 
 of such men, they should possess their qualities. In 
 fine, I would say that, as in the healing art, what- 
 ever is beneficial is therefore right, and as lie would 
 be ridiculous who should think it wrong in a case 
 of hip-disease to cauterize the thumb, and when the 
 liver is ulcerated to scarify the upper part of the 
 abdomen, and when the hoofs of oxen are tender to 
 anoint the tips of their horns,^ equally is he ridic- 
 ulous who thinks in the matter of punishment that 
 anything else than the cure of wickedness is right, 
 and who is vexed when the remedy is applied to 
 some parts rather than to others, after the manner 
 of those who open a vein to cure ophthalmia. Nor 
 
 his accession to the throne, leaving prohably memory of his vices, 
 of which Phitarch had knowledge, but no record of which has 
 come down to our time. Antipater, his next younger brother, iji 
 some sort succeeded him, first murdering his mother, who favored 
 the claims of her still younger son. He himself was murdered 
 before he could obtain undisturbed possession of his kingdom. 
 
 1 These obsolete modes of medical practice can now only pro- 
 voke a smile ; but the argument is complete, if we will substi- 
 tute for them the treatment cited at the close of the sentence, 
 — blood-letting for ophthalmia, which, if not in rule now, was so 
 thirty years ago. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 47 
 
 does such a person seem to look beyond the range 
 of his bodily senses ; nor does he bear it in mind 
 that a teacher in whipping one boy admonishes all, 
 and that a general in the capital punishment of one 
 out of ten brings all the guilty men under his com- 
 mand back to their duty. In truth not only is 
 one part of the body cured through another part, 
 but there are certain dispositions of mind and con- 
 duct, ec[ually those that are evil and those that 
 tend to reformation, as to which sonl is influenced 
 by soul more than body is affected by body. For 
 from body to body the same affection and the same 
 change seem to be transmitted ; while in the case 
 under consideration the soul, through the influ- 
 ence of the imagination, becomes worse or better 
 in a degree corresponding to the intensity of hope 
 or fear. 
 
 17. While I was still speaking, Olympicus in- 
 terrupted me, saying, — You seem to have, un- 
 derlying this reasoning of yours, an hypothesis of 
 prime importance, — the continued existence of the 
 sbul. 
 
 Yes, said I, inasmuch as you yourselves admit 
 it, or rather did admit it; for the argument from 
 the very beginning proceeded from the supposi- 
 tion that God deals with men according to their 
 merits. 
 
 Olympicus replied, — Do you think that it fol- 
 lows from God's dealing with us according to our 
 merits, that souls are either absolutely incorruptible. 
 
48 Plutarch on the 
 
 or destined at least to continue in being for a cer- 
 tain period after death ? ^ 
 
 I replied, — No, my good friend. God, forsooth, 
 is so petty and so trifling,^ that — as if we had 
 nothing of the divine in us, nor anything closely 
 resembling him, and stable and firm, but were, as 
 Homer says, mere leaves, like those that wither and 
 perish altogether — he makes such account of us 
 as the women do of their gardens of Adonis,^ which 
 they tend and cultivate in earthen pots, — souls 
 lasting for a day, blooming in a frail flesh that has 
 no strong root of life, then at once extinguished by 
 any casualty that may chance to occur. But if you 
 choose, making no mention of other gods, look at 
 this one of ours here, and say whether you sup- 
 pose that he, knowing that the souls of the dying 
 are instantly destroyed when they are exhaled from 
 their bodies, like clouds or smoke-wreaths, should 
 demand so many propitiations for those who die, 
 and such tokens of great reverence and honor for 
 
 1 The reference in this last clause is to the opinion largely 
 held hy the Stoics, that the soul is not immortal, but is des- 
 tined to survive the body, and to live till the consummation of 
 the existing universe, which, after completing a cycle of many, 
 thousands of years, will be destroyed by fire. 
 
 2 This sentence is, as I believe, ironical. Some editors and 
 translators make it interrogative ; but the grammatical construc- 
 tion, as it seems to me, is opposed to this view. 
 
 3 This term, as applied to vessels or shallow earth-beds, where 
 what is sown can only spring up and wither without coming 
 to seed, occurs in Plato's Phaedrus. The very brief life and 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 49 
 
 the dead, thus deceiving and deluding those who 
 believe in him. I therefore would not deny the 
 continued existence of the soul, unless some one, 
 like Hercules, should carry off the tripod of the 
 Pythian priestess, and abolish and destroy the ora- 
 cle. For while even down to our own time many 
 such things are foretold by the oracle as are said 
 to have been announced to Corax of Naxos,^ it is 
 unholy to deem the soul capable of dying. 
 
 Then Patrocleas said, — What was that pre- 
 diction, and who was that Corax ? Both the story 
 and the name are unfamiliar to me. 
 
 By no means, said I; but I was to blame in 
 using a by-name instead of the real name. For he 
 who killed Archilochus in battle was named Ca- 
 londas, as they say, and had Corax for a surname. 
 He, having been first driven out of the temple by 
 the Pythian priestess because he had killed a man 
 sacred to the Muses, then employing prayers and 
 entreaties with a statement of the case in his own 
 
 untimely end of Adonis may perhaps account for this peculiar use 
 of his name. 
 
 1 Several hundred years ago. Archilochus, the earliest Ionian 
 lyric poet, flourished, and was killed in battle, in the seventh 
 century B. c. This entire passage may he regarded as an ar- 
 guTnentum de concessis, and as such it is perfectly legitimate. 
 The inspiration of the Delphian oracle and priestess was be- 
 lieved in by many of those for whom Plutarch wrote ; and to 
 them he said, " Can you believe that all these oracular utter- 
 ances about expiations for the dead and posthumous honors to 
 be paid to them have had reference to beings that ceased to exist 
 when they ceased to breathe ?" 
 
 4 
 
50 Plutarch on the 
 
 justification, was ordered to go to the residence of 
 Tettix,^ in order to propitiate the soul of Archi- 
 lochus. This place was Taenarus ; ^ for there it is 
 said that Tettix the Cretan arrived with a fleet, 
 built a city, and established himself hard by the 
 oracle of the dead. In like manner, the Spartans 
 were ordered by the oracle to propitiate the soul 
 of Pausanias, and they sent for necromancers from 
 Italy, who by their sacrifices drove the apparition 
 of Pausanias from the temple.^ 
 
 18. There is then, said I, one course of reasoning 
 which confirms equally the providence of God and 
 
 1 Or, " the home of the grasshopper " ; for tettix (TeVrii) means 
 grasshopper. The oracle, as usual, was ambiguous. Calondas, 
 alias Corax, is represented as not understanding it at first, hut 
 finding out afterward that a Cretan named Tettix had settled at 
 Taenarus, or Taenarum, he inferred that his home was designated 
 by the oracle. 
 
 ^ This place was on the southernmost cape of Greece, now 
 Cape Matapan. The peninsula which fonns this cape had a 
 famous temple of Poseidon, was sacred to the infernal gods, and 
 was the site of an avenue, through a cave, to and from the in- 
 fernal regions, — the avenue by which Hercules dragged Cerberus 
 to the light of day. 
 
 ^ Pausanias, the Spartan, after a career of mingled glory and 
 shame, being detected in treasonable intrigues, took refuge in the 
 temple of Athene. When he was nearly exhausted by hunger 
 the Ephori dragged him out of the temple, and he died at its 
 threshold. For their sacrilege the Delphian oracle ordered that 
 he should be re-interred on the spot where he died, and that two 
 brazen statues should be erected in honor of the goddess in her 
 temple at the public charge. Very naturally, his ghost was sup- 
 posed to haunt the sacred enclosure whence he had been taken 
 to die. See p. 28, n. 4. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 51 
 
 the continued life of the human soul, and neither 
 can remain credible if the other is taken away. 
 But to the soul existing after death there is a 
 stronger probability that rewards and punishments 
 are rendered, than there is that they should be fully 
 rendered in this life.^ Tor during this life the 
 soul is, like an athlete, in perpetual conflict ; but 
 when the conflict is over, then what the soul has 
 deserved is allotted to it. Yet whatever favors or 
 whatever chastisements the soul, being there by 
 itself, receives, are of no concern to us living here, 
 nay, they are disbelieved and they are out of the 
 field of our knowledge; but these penalties that 
 pass on through children and remoter posterity, 
 being manifest to men living here, check and re- 
 strain many of the wicked. There is, indeed, no 
 punishment more shameful or more sorrowful than 
 for men to see their posterity suffering on their 
 account. Were the soul of an impious and lawless 
 man to behold after death, not his statues over- 
 thrown, or any honors that he had received can- 
 celled, but his children, or friends, or kindred, or 
 family, suffering great misfortunes and receiving 
 punishment on his account, such a soul would not 
 choose again to be depraved and profligate, — no, 
 not even to obtain honors like those which belong 
 
 1 The clause,. " than there is that they should he fully rendered 
 in this life," has nothing in the original to correspond to it ; but 
 it is necessary in order to convey the obvious meaning of the 
 sentence. 
 
52 Plutarch on the 
 
 to Zeus. To stow this I have a story to tell, which 
 I lately heard ; but I hesitate, lest you may think 
 it a myth, while I want to confine myself to what 
 is reasonable. 
 
 Do not hesitate by any means, said Olympicus, 
 but tell the story. 
 
 The others made the same request. 
 
 Then, said I, permit me to finish my reasoning, 
 and afterward we will take up the myth, if indeed 
 it be a myth. 
 
 19. Bion ^ says that God in punishing the chil- 
 dren of the wicked is more ridiculous than a physi- 
 cian who should administer medicine to a grandson 
 or a son for his grandfather's or his father's illness. 
 But the two things are in some respects unlike, 
 though in others alike and similar. It is true, in- 
 deed, that one person's being medically treated does 
 not remove another's illness, nor is one who is suf- 
 fering from ophthalmia or from fever relieved by 
 seeing another person anointed or plastered; but 
 the punishments of the wicked are inflicted in the 
 sight of all, because it is the office of justice rea- 
 sonably administered to restrain some by means 
 of the penalties endured by others. But the point 
 
 1 Probably, as it seems to me, not Bion the poet, but a philoso- 
 pher of that name, — a man of infamous character, an atheist in 
 his professed belief, and remarkable for pithy and epigrammatic 
 sayings, full of bitter humor and biting sarcasm, some of which 
 are still extant. Horace speaks of those who find pleasure in 
 Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigra. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 53 
 
 in which Bion's comparison really applies to the 
 subject under discussion escaped his discernment. 
 When a man seized with a stubborn, but not neces- 
 sarily incurable illness, yields up his body to the 
 disease by intemperance and effeminacy, and dies 
 in consequence, if his son, though not seeming to 
 be ill, yet barely has a tendency to the same disease, 
 his physician, or kinsman, or apothecary, or judi- 
 cious master, putting him upon a rigid diet, taking 
 from him stimulants, delicacies, strong drinks, and 
 opportunities for sensual indulgence, employing 
 medicaments continiially, and disciplining his body 
 by gymnastic exercises, excludes and expels the 
 disease, not suffering the minute seed of a grievous 
 bodily affection to grow into an appreciable magni- 
 tude. Do we not thus give our advice, thinking 
 it fitting for the children of diseased fathers and 
 mothers to take care of themselves, to be on their 
 guard, and not to lose thought of their inherited 
 hability to disease, but promptly taking the inborn 
 malady in hand, to expel it at the beginning, while 
 it is easily removed and has no fixed seat ? 
 
 This is perfectly true, they say. 
 
 You grant then, I continue, that we do, not what 
 is absurd, but what is necessary, — not what is 
 ridiculous, but what is beneficial, — when we pre- 
 scribe gymnastic exercises, diet, and medicine for the 
 children of epileptics, or of hypochondriacs, or of 
 sufferers from the gout, not because they are ill, but 
 to prevent them from being ill. For a body born 
 
54 Plutarch on the 
 
 of a diseased body is deserving, not indeed of pun- 
 ishment, but of medical treatment and of vigilance, 
 which if any one sees fit to call the punishment of 
 timidity and feebleness, his opinion is of no account. 
 If then it is worth our while to cherish and to pre- 
 serve the body born of a diseased body, ought we 
 to permit the congenital likeness of wickedness to 
 spring up and come to growth in a young character, 
 and to wait till, having its issue in vicious passions, 
 it becomes openly manifest, and, as Pindar says, 
 displays the malignant fruit of the inmost soul ? 
 
 20. In this matter God in his wisdom does not 
 even transcend the sentiment expressed by Hesiod,^ 
 
 " From suppers of the gods the marriage-bed 
 Approach, and not from rites funereal," 
 
 implying that not only wickedness or virtue, but 
 sadness, and happiness, and all other properties 
 whatsoever, are transmitted from parents, so that 
 those who would be responsible for bringing chil- 
 dren into the world should be cheerful, and sweet- 
 tempered, and genial However, it is not the result 
 of Hesiod's maxim nor the work of human wisdom, 
 but of God, to discern and discriminate likenesses 
 
 1 Or, " Is not God wiser than Hesiod ?" With this interroga- 
 tive construction, which the sentence will bear, the sense is, — 
 "Hesiod teaches the hereditary transmission of character as a 
 fact ; God, still more, traces these inherited traits before they ap- 
 pear to human view." According to the rendering that I have 
 given, the sense is, — " The transmission of character from father 
 to son is recognized not only by God in his providence, but equally 
 by wise men, as, for instance, by Hesiod." 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 55 
 
 and differences, before they become conspicuous by 
 men's falling through the force of passion into great 
 transgressions. The young of bears and wolves and 
 monkeys, indeed, show at once their inborn dis- 
 position, without cover or concealment. But a 
 man's nature, conforming to customs, opinions, and 
 laws, conceals what in it is evil, and often imitates 
 the good, in such a way as either altogether to wipe 
 off and get rid of the native plague-spot of wicked- 
 ness, or else to keep it long concealed, craftily veil- 
 ing itself and escaping our notice, so that we are 
 scarcely aware of his depravity when assailed as 
 with a blow or sting by successive instances of 
 his wrong-doing, — imagining, as is our wont, that 
 men become wholly unrighteous when they first 
 perform an unrighteous act, or licentious when they 
 first gratify lust unlawfully, or cowards when they 
 first flee from danger, — a simplicity that may be 
 compared to one's thinking that the stings of scor- 
 pions grow when they first use them, or that the 
 poison is generated in vipers at the moment when 
 they bite. No bad man becomes and first appears 
 bad at the same time ; but one has the evil in him 
 from the beginning, and puts it into practice, avail- 
 ing himself of opportunity and ability, the thief in 
 stealing, the tyrant in exercising despotic rule. 
 But God is not ignorant of any man's disposition 
 and nature, inasmuch as he discerns the soul even 
 more than the body; nor does he wait to punish 
 tiU violence has been committed by the hands. 
 
56 Plutarch on the 
 
 effrontery uttered by the voice, or lasciviousness 
 actualized in fleshly deed. For he does not avenge 
 himself on the wrong-doer as himself suffering wrong, 
 nor is he angry with the robber as having been him- 
 self robbed, i}or does he hate the adulterer as injured 
 in liis own honor ; but he often punishes beforehand 
 the adulterers, and the avaricious, and the unright- 
 eous, to cure them, thus removing guilt, as physi- 
 cians attempt to cure epilepsy, before the fit seizes 
 the patient. 
 
 21. We were scandalized a little while ago be- 
 cause the .punishment of the wicked is late and 
 slow; yet now we equally call the Divine Provi- 
 dence in question, because for some it checks the 
 vicious temperament and disposition before they 
 become guilty ; leaving it out of mind that the po- 
 tential evil might be worse and more fearful than 
 the crimes that are actually committed, and that 
 which is concealed, than that which is in open 
 view ; and unable to comprehend the reasons why 
 it is better to suffer some to do wrong, and to 
 forestall others who are also evilly disposed, — 
 just as medicines are unsuitable for some sick 
 persons, while they are beneficial to some even who 
 are not ill, yet in a more perilous condition than 
 those who are. Nor do the gods visit all the trans- 
 gressions of the fathers on the children ; but if a 
 good man is the son of a bad man, as one in sound 
 health may be the son of an invalid, he is released 
 from the penalty due to his race, as one taken by 
 
Delay oftlie Divine Justice. 57 
 
 adoption out of a guilty .family. But for a youth 
 who becomes conformed to the likeness of a de- 
 praved race, it is certainly fitting that he should 
 receive the punishment of guilt as a due heritage. 
 On the other hand, Antigonus was not punished for 
 the sins of Demetrius,^ iior, to cite other cases of 
 bad men, was Phyleus made to pay the penaltj'^ for 
 Augeas,^ nor Nestor for Neleus;^ for they, though 
 the children of bad men, were good men. But as 
 for those whose nature loves and cherishes the 
 inborn evil, justice has its course, pursuing with 
 penalty the sinful likeness that is in them. More- 
 
 ^ Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Macedonia, who was guilty of 
 great crimes, and in a not over- virtuous age was distinguished 
 for unbounded licentiousness. He died in captivity, having 
 surrendered to Seleucus, king of Syria, after expulsion from his 
 own kingdom and a series of consequent disasters. Antigonus, 
 his son, was a man of eminent virtue, had a diversified, but on 
 the whole a prosperous career, and died at the age of eighty, 
 after a reign of nearly half a century. 
 
 ^ Augeas, having made a contract with Hercules by which a 
 tenth part of his cattle were to be the price for cleansing his 
 stables in a day, refused to pay the price ; and Hercules waged 
 with him a war in which he and all his sons but Phyleus per- 
 ished. Hercules placed Phyleus on his father's throne, as king 
 of the Epeians in Elis. The father's story is, of course, myth- 
 ical, and the son hardly falls within the domain of authentic 
 history. 
 
 * The chief offence charged in Grecian myth against Neleus 
 was his refusing to perform expiatory rites for Hercules after he 
 had killed Iphitus, whose father was the friend of !^f eleus. Her- 
 cules, accerding to some traditions, made war on Pylos, the king- 
 dom of Neleus, and killed him, with all his sons except Nestor. 
 
58 Plutarch on the 
 
 over, as the warts and birth-stains and freckles of 
 fathers, not appearing in their own children, crop 
 out again in the children of their sons and daugh- 
 ters ; as a certain Greek woman, giving birth to a 
 black child, when accused of adultery, discovered 
 that she was descended in the fourth generation 
 from an Aethiopian ; as among the children of 
 Pytho the Nisibian, said to belong to the Sparti,^ 
 the one who died lately bore the impress of a spear 
 on his body, — a race-mark after so many ages rising 
 and emerging as from the depths of the sea, — so 
 not infrequently earlier generations conceal and 
 merge ancestral habits and dispositions, while after- 
 ward and through later generations the inherited 
 nature comes to flower, and reproduces the family 
 tendency to vice or to virtue.^ 
 
 1 Sparti, from inrelpa), the sown men, i. e. the armed men that 
 sprang from the teeth of the dragon sown by Cadmus, from 
 whom the oldest families in Thebes — a large part of the Boeotian 
 aristocracy — were said to have descended. Something like this 
 mythical birthmark had probably made its appearance on the body 
 of a member of one of these ancient families. Kisibis was a 
 Syrian city with an extensive commerce, with many Greek, and 
 probably some Boeotian immigrants. 
 
 ■' It may be that, in cases where the inheritance of a morbid 
 physical constitution, or of proclivity to moral evil, seems to lapse 
 in the first generation and to reappear in the second, the children 
 of the diseased or depraved father have the physical or moral 
 traits of their father, but are made and kept vigilant and 
 faithful in self-care and self-discipline by the memory of their 
 father's infirmities or sins ; while their children have the inher- 
 itance without the warning. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 59 
 
 22. After saying these things, I was silent. But 
 Olympicus, smiling, said, — We are not ready to 
 express our parting commendation of your rea- 
 soning, lest we may. seem fully satisfied with 
 your arguments, and lose the story. When we 
 have heard that, we will pronounce our final sen- 
 tence. 
 
 Then I spoke as follows : ^ — The Solian,^ Thes- 
 pesius, an associate and friend of that Protogenes 
 who was here with us,^ having led a very dissipated 
 life in his youth, and in a short time squandering 
 his property, for a while on account of his impov- 
 erished condition became desperately wicked, and, 
 repenting of his wastefulness, sought in evil ways 
 to become rich again, like those profligates who, 
 when they have wives, do not keep them, but after 
 divorcing them endeavor to corrupt them when 
 they are married to other men. Abstaining from 
 nothing vile that promised pleasure or profit, he got 
 together in a short time a property by no means 
 large, and the most ample reputation for depravity. 
 But he was most widely known in connection with 
 a certain response that was brought from the oracle 
 
 1 If Plutarch, made this story, as he probably did, it was un- 
 doubtedly suggested by the story, unlike in its details, yet with 
 not dissimilar purpose, which Plato tells of Ei', the Pamphilian, 
 in the tenth book of The Bepuhlic. 
 
 2 Soli was a considerable city in Cilicia. 
 
 * Me9' niMs, after us, is the reading in all the manuscripts 
 and older editions ; /leff fiixav, with us, is a conjectural emenda- 
 tion which the sense seems to require. 
 
60 Plutarch on the 
 
 of Amphiloclius.^ He sent thither, it is said, to ask 
 the god whether he should be better off^ for the 
 rest of his life. The reply was that he would do 
 better after he died. And this event in some sort 
 happened to him not long afterward. Falling from 
 a precipice and striking his neck on the ground, 
 receiving no wound, but only a shock, he became as 
 one dead, and the third day had already arrived for 
 his funeral. But then, being suddenly aroused from 
 his swoon and returning to himself, he made an 
 incredible change in his manner of life; for the 
 CHicians know of no other person in his time more 
 honest than he in keeping his engagements, more 
 religiously devout, more resolutely hostile to his 
 enemies,^ or more loyal to his friends, so that those 
 about him wanted to know the cause of the change, 
 
 1 AmpMlochus was one of the heroes of the Trojan war. He 
 was the son of a seer, and was believed to be endowed with the 
 gift of prophecy. The oracle bearing his name at Mallos in 
 Cilicia was said to have been founded by him, and it had a 
 wider and more enduring reputation for veracity than any other 
 ancient oracle. 
 
 2 El ^(Ktiov $t<ia-eTai. The question related to his property, 
 — to his means of comfortable living. I therefore use in trans- 
 lating it the familiar colloquialism, better off. The answer has a 
 moral signiiicance. BeKrtov is an ambiguous word, — applicable 
 equally to condition and to character. 
 
 2 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy," 
 was sound ethical doctrine, equally with Gentile and with Jew, 
 until men saw in the divine humanity of Jesus Christ the 
 qualities of character which had been most despised, transfigured 
 and glorified. 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 61 
 
 thinking that such a revolution in one's habits 
 could not have taken place by chance. And they 
 were right, as he told his story to Protogenes and 
 to other equally intimate friends. When his body 
 became unconscious, the feeling at first was such as 
 a pilot would have if he were hurled from his ship 
 into the sea. Then, being somewhat recovered, he 
 seemed to breathe with entire freedom, and to look 
 round in every direction, as if his soul had been 
 a single open eye. He saw nothing that he had 
 ever seen before; but he beheld immensely large 
 stars, at vast distances from one another, emitting 
 a lustre marvellous in tint, and shooting forth 
 rays, on which the soul was borne on the light 
 as in a chariot, in perfect quietness, easUy and 
 swiftly. 
 
 But — omitting the greater part of what he saw 
 — he said that the souls of the dying rose from 
 beneath like fiery bubbles through the parted air. 
 Then, the bubbles gradually bursting, they came 
 forth, having a human form, but of diminutive size. 
 But they did not move alike; for some sprang 
 forth with wonderful agility, and mounted straight 
 upward, while others, whirling round in a circle 
 like spindles, tending now downward and then 
 again upward, were borne with a complicated and 
 confused movement that could hardly be arrested 
 even in a very long time. He did not, indeed, 
 know who many of these souls were; but seeing 
 two or three whom he recognized, he tried to join 
 
62 Plutarch on the 
 
 them and talk with them. They, however, neither 
 heard him, nor were in possession of their right 
 mind ; but, demented and shy, shrinking from sight 
 and touch, they at first flitted round by themselves ; 
 then, meeting many souls in the same condition and 
 mingling with them, they moved in all directions 
 without aim or purpose, and gave utterance to inar- 
 ticulate sounds like battle-cries mingled with strains 
 of lamentation and terror. Others from above, in 
 the zenith of the circumambient heavens, appeared 
 refulgent, and often approached one another in a 
 kindly way, yet avoiding those troubled souls ; and 
 they seemed to signify annoyance by shrinking 
 within themselves, and pleasure and approval by 
 the expansion and enlargement of the forms in 
 which they moved. 
 
 Among these he said that he saw the soul of 
 a kinsman of his, yet at first was not sure of 
 his identity, as he himself was but a boy when 
 this man died; but the soul, drawing near him, 
 said, "Hail, Thespesius." When he marvelled 
 at this, and replied that his name was not Thes- 
 pesius, but Aridaeus, the soul said, "It was Ari- 
 daeus, but from henceforth it is Thespesius ; ^ 
 for you are not yet dead; but by a certain allot- 
 ment of the gods you come hither with your per- 
 ceptive faculties, while you have left the rest of 
 your soul, like an anchor, in your body. Let it 
 be a token of this to you, both now and hereafter, 
 
 ' Thespesius means divine. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 63 
 
 that the souls of the dead neither cast a shadow 
 nor wiuk."^ 
 
 Thespesius on hearing this became more self- 
 collected in mind, and, taking a closer look, he saw 
 that there moved along with him a certain dim 
 and shadowy line, while those about him were sur- 
 rounded with light, and transparent within. How- 
 ever, they were not all equally so. Some, indeed, 
 like the clearest full moon, emitted continuously a 
 uniform and unflickering light; but of the others, 
 some had their bodies streaked with what looked 
 like scales and flabby scourge-marks; some were 
 very much discolored, and disgusting to the sight, 
 like snakes branded all over with black spots ; and 
 others, still, had slight scars. The kinsman of Thes- 
 pesius (for there is nothing to forbid one's giving 
 human titles to disembodied souls), explaining these 
 appearances one by one, told him that Adrasteia, 
 daughter of Necessity ^ and Zeus, holds the highest 
 place of all, ordaining punishment for wrong-doings 
 of every kind, and that of the guilty there was 
 never either great or small that could escape her, 
 whether by craft or by force. But a different mode 
 of punishment is assigned to each of the three 
 custodians and executive ministers that have the 
 
 1 Plutarch (Greek Questions, 39) writes : " The Pythagoreans 
 say that the souls of the dead neither give a shadow nor wink. '' 
 
 " 'Pi.vi.yKri. This mythical parentage may account for the name 
 of Adrasteia, which is probahly derived from SiSpd(rKeiv, to escape, 
 with the a privative, and thus means miescapaile. 
 
64 Plutarch on the 
 
 guilty in charge. The first of these, swift Poena,^ 
 takes in hand those who are punished at once while 
 in the body and by means of their bodies, yet in a 
 somewhat mild way, and passing over many things 
 that need cleansing. Those the cure of whose 
 guilt is a heavier task the Deity gives over after 
 death to Dice.^ But as for those whom she rejects 
 as utterly incurable, Erinnys,^ the third and sternest 
 of Adrasteia's subordinate ministers, chasing them 
 as they wander and flee in different directions, re- 
 moves them all from sight in misery and wretched- 
 ness, and plunges them into a destiny too horrible 
 to be told or seen. Of the other chastisements, he 
 compared that of Poena in the earthly life to cer- 
 tain modes of punishment practised by barbarians. 
 For as among the Persians they strip off and beat 
 the clothes and the turbans of those that are pun- 
 ished,* while the culprits beg with tears that the 
 
 1 Punishment. 
 
 2 Justice, 
 
 ' One of the Eriimyes, or Furies. There are different myths 
 as to tlieir number, though there were commonly said to he three. 
 Their name is probably derived from ipivieiv, to ie in u, rage. 
 They were in Grecian fable the type of implacable anger and un- 
 relenting vengeance. 
 
 * Plutarch in his Apophthegms, says of Artaxerxes Longima- 
 nus, who was not an unwise, but an over-indulgent king : "He 
 first ordained as a punishment for his nobles who had offended, 
 that they should be stripped and their garments scourged instead 
 of their bodies ; and whereas their hair should have been plucked 
 out, that the same should be done to their turbans." We do not 
 learn that his example was followed by any of his successors, or 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 65 
 
 scourge may be laid aside, — so punishment by loss 
 of wealth or by bodily suffering has not an intensely 
 penetrating power, nor does it lay hold on the guilt 
 in its own interior seat, but is inflicted generally 
 for appearance's sake, and to make an impression 
 on the bodily senses.^ But him who comes hither 
 from these punishments uncorrected and uncleansed 
 Dice takes in hand, open and naked as he is in 
 soul, having nothing whereby to conceal or hide or 
 cover his depravity, but beheld in every direction 
 and by all and in his entire selfhood, and shows 
 him first to his good parents, if good they are, as 
 being despicable to his progenitors and unworthy 
 of them. If they too are bad, he, seeing them pun- 
 ished, and being seen by them, is released only 
 after having long expiated every one of his crimes 
 by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and 
 severity exceed those which come through the body 
 alone, as much as reality is more substantial than 
 a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after 
 punishment remain in some more conspicuous ; in 
 others, less so. " See," said he, " those motley col- 
 ors of every kind in the souls, — that dark and 
 squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice, 
 — that blood-red and fiery hue, of cruelty and bit- 
 terness ; where there is a bluish tint, intemperate 
 
 that he employed this method as to criminals in general. But 
 the illustration is a happy one. 
 
 1 In these forms of punishment, it is the soul's clothes, i. e. 
 the body, not the soul itself, that is punished. 
 
 5 
 
66 Plutarch on the 
 
 indulgence in sensual pleasure has as yet hardly 
 been rubbed off; while the malevolence that is 
 united with envy discharges that violet-colored and 
 ulcerous secretion, as the cuttle-fish emits his ink. 
 For, as on the earth the wickedness of the soul 
 controlled by the passions, while the soul controls 
 tlie body, produces certain shades of complexion, so 
 here such tints mark the last stage of the process of 
 cleansing and correction, by which, the evil affec- 
 tions being altogether expelled, the soul becomes 
 of clear complexion and of a uniform color. But so 
 long as these evil affections remain in a man, cer- 
 tain revivals of the passions take place, accom- 
 panied by palpitation and excitement, in some souls 
 slight and soon quenched, in others intensely strong. 
 Of these last some, punished again and again, at 
 length attain a suitable habit and disposition; but 
 others by the force of ignorance and the fascination 
 of sensual pleasure are carried back earthward into 
 the bodies of beasts. For they are inclined to seek 
 this new and lower birth by the predominance of 
 the physical tendency, while reason is feeble, and 
 their mental vision dull. Having in their spiritual 
 state no longer the organs reqiiisite for vicious in- 
 dulgence, they still crave to satisfy their desires by 
 sensual pleasure, and to give them full play by 
 means of a body.^ Here, indeed, there is nothing 
 but a certain fruitless shadow and dream of sensual 
 pleasure which has no realization." 
 1 The tody of a brute. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 67 
 
 When the friend of Thespesius had thus spoken, 
 he led him rapidly to a certain place that appeared 
 immense, toward which he moved directly and 
 easily, transported on light-beams as on wings, — 
 until, coming to a large and deep cavern, he was 
 deserted by the force that had borne him, and he 
 saw other souls there in a like condition. Clustering 
 together like birds, they flew round the chasm in 
 a circle, but did not dare to cross it. Within, it 
 resembled the caves of Bacchus/ like them diver- 
 sified with boughs of trees, and living green, and 
 flowers of every hue ; and it exhaled a soft and 
 mild breeze, wafting up odors of wonderful sweet- 
 ness, and producing an effect similar to that which 
 wine has on those who drink it freely. The 
 souls filled with these sweet perfumes were dis- 
 solved in mirth, and kept embracing one another, 
 and jollity and laughter, and every Muse of sport 
 and gladness, had possession of the place all around. 
 The spirit said that by this opening Dionysus ^ 
 went up to the gods, and afterward led Semele up 
 by the same way, and that the place is called 
 
 1 There were in Naxoa, on Parnassus, and elsewhere various 
 caves dedicated to Bacchus, i. e. to mirth and jollity ; and the 
 months of these caves were, of course, decked with all of verdure 
 and hloom that could make them charming and attractive. 
 
 2 Dionysus as the son of Zeus had a right to leave the abode 
 of the dead, and to claim his seat on Olympus. His mother 
 Semele, being a mortal woman, had no such right ; but he rescued 
 her from the dead, and bore her to Olympus, where she became a 
 goddess under the name of Thyone. 
 
68 Plutarch on the 
 
 Lethe.^ He did not suffer Thespesius to remain 
 there, though he wanted to stay, but took him 
 away by force, teaching him at the same time, 
 and telling him how the mind is melted and 
 soaked by sensual pleasure, while the unreasoning 
 and body-like part of the soul, being thus nourished 
 and made fleshly, calls up the remembrance of the 
 body, and from that remembrance wakes a desire 
 and longing that draw it toward another birth, or 
 genesis,'^ which is so called as being an inclination 
 toward the earth in the soul that is thus weighed 
 down and water-logged. Then, passing in another 
 direction by as long a route as that previously 
 traversed, Thespesius seemed to see from afar a vast 
 basin, and rivers pouring into it, one whiter than 
 the sea-foam or snow, another purple like that 
 which Iris paints on the rainbow, others still with 
 various tints, which, as beheld from a distance, had 
 each its own peculiar lustre. But when he drew 
 near, the circumambient air being more rarefied and 
 the colors fading, the basin lost all of its surpassing 
 beauty except its whiteness. He then saw three 
 daemons sitting together in a triangle, mixing the 
 rivers with one another in certain proportions. 
 
 The spirit-guide of Thespesius told him, that Or- 
 pheus advanced thus far when he was seeking his 
 
 ^ Oblivion. 
 
 ^ Tiveais. According to this derivation yivea-is comes from 
 yri, the earth, and vsinv, to incline toward, — a fanciful deriva- 
 tion, the genuineness of which there is good reason to doubt. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 69 
 
 ■wife's soul, and, failing in memory, carried back 
 to men a false report that there was in Delphi an 
 oracle that was the common property of Apollo and 
 Night, while in fact Night has nothing in common 
 with Apollo. " But the oracle here," said the spirit, 
 " is common to Night and the Moon, having no 
 earthly limits, hut wandering everywhere among 
 men in visions and spectres. From this are dis- 
 persed dreams, mingled, as you see, blending the 
 simple and the true with the false and the gro- 
 tesque. But you do not see," said he, " the oracle 
 of Apollo, nor can you see it ; for the earthly part of 
 your soul cannot release or loose itself for an up- 
 ward flight, but tends downward as not yet wholly 
 undetached from the body." At the same time, his 
 guide, leading him on, attempted to show him the 
 tripod, shining upon Parnassus through the bosom 
 of Themis ; ^ yet, though he wanted to see it, he 
 could get no distinct view of it because of its in- 
 tense brilliancy. But, in passing, he heard the 
 shrill voice of a woman, littering in rhythm among 
 other things what sounded to him like the predic- 
 tion of the time of his own death. The spirit 
 said that it was the voice of a Sibyl,^ who, borne 
 
 1 Themis preceded Apollo as the inspirer of the Delphian 
 oracle. 
 
 2 The ancients imagined, as we easily may, something ,like the 
 outlines of a human face in the disk of the moon, and among their 
 myths, or rather poetical fancies, was this of a Sibyl revolving 
 with the moon, and singing, as she rides across the firmament, 
 the fate of men and nations. 
 
70 Plutarch on the 
 
 round on the face of the moon, sang of things to 
 come. Then he, while he wished to hear more, 
 was forcibly driven, as on successive eddies, in a 
 direction opposite to that in which the moon was 
 rushing on her course. But among tlie predictions 
 which he caught in passing was one about Vesu- 
 vius,^ and about the destruction of Dicaearchia^ 
 by fire, and also a scrap of verse about the then 
 reigning Emperor,^ — 
 
 "Good though he be, disease shall soon dethrone him." 
 
 After this, they turned to the inspection of those 
 undergoing punishment, and indeed from the very 
 outset they had only mournful and pitiable spec- 
 tacles. Thespesius, without expecting it, happened 
 among friends and kinsmen and associates under 
 punishment, who in horrible suffering, and under 
 penalties equally shameful and painful, addressed 
 to him their lamentations and wailings. 
 
 At length his eyes fell on his own father, coming 
 up from an abyss, covered with scars and scourge- 
 marks, stretching out his hands to him, and not 
 permitted to keep silence, but forced by those pre- 
 siding over his punishment to confess his blood- 
 guiltiness in the case of certain guests of his who 
 had money, and whom he had killed by poison. 
 There, on earth, he had concealed the deed from 
 
 1 The great eruption of A. D. 79. 
 
 ^ The earlier name of Piiteoli. 
 
 ' Vespasian, who died in A. D. 79. 
 
Delay of the Divine Justice. 71 
 
 all ; but being here convicted, he was now endur- 
 ing such sufferings as his son saw, and they were 
 leading him where he would suffer still more. 
 From amazement and dread, Thespesius dared not 
 offer supplication or intercession for his father ; and 
 desiring to return and flee, he no longer saw his 
 gentle and familiar guide. But, forced forward by 
 certain fearful-looking beings, as if it were neces- 
 sary for him to advance, he saw that the shades 
 of those who had been openly wicked or who had 
 been punished in this world were not so severely 
 dealt with as others, nor in the same way, having 
 been made aimlessly and slavishly vicious by the 
 unreasoning and passion-driven element of. the soul ; 
 while as for such as had lived all their days in 
 secret vice, disguised under the pretence and repu- 
 tation of virtue, others standing round them, as min- 
 isters of justice, compelled them with toil and pain 
 to make the soul's interior outermost, which they 
 did, wriggling and twisting themselves in unnatu- 
 ral ways, as the sea-polyps, when they have swal- 
 lowed the hook, turn themselves inside out. Some 
 of them the tormentors flayed, and then laid them 
 open, showing them inwardly ulcerated and scarred 
 with the depravity in their minds and in the govern- 
 ing principles of their lives. Thespesius said that he 
 saw other souls interwreathed like vipers, two, three, 
 or more together, and devouring one another from 
 remembered enmity and ill will for what they had 
 suffered or done in life. 
 
72 Plutarch on the 
 
 There were also lakes lying side by side, one 
 of boiling gold, one of lead intensely cold, another 
 of rough iron ; and certain daemons, like metal- 
 workers, with their instruments took up and thrust 
 in the souls of those who had been guilty through 
 greed and cupidity. When in the gold they had 
 become fiery and transparent by burning, these 
 daemons plunged them into the lake of lead ; and 
 when they had there become frozen like hail, they 
 were transferred to the lake of iron. There they 
 were made horribly black, and were so fractured 
 and bruised by the hardness of the iron, as to look 
 like different beings; and then in this deformed 
 condition they were carried again to the lake of 
 gold, enduring intense torment in these successive 
 transportations. But those suffered most horribly 
 of all who thought that they had been at length 
 released from the hands of justice, yet who were 
 again apprehended for fresh punishment. These 
 were they the punishment of whose guilt passed on 
 to some of their children or descendants. When 
 one of these comes and meets them, he falls upon 
 them with anger, and cries out against them, show- 
 ing the tokens of his sufferings, reviling and pur- 
 suing the souls that long to escape and hide, yet 
 are unable so to do ; for the ministers of justice run 
 after them to subject them to fresh chastisement, 
 and push them on, while they from the beginning 
 lament bitterly, well knowing the punishment that 
 awaits them. He said too that some, indeed many, 
 
Belay of the Divine Justice. 73 
 
 of the souls of the descendants of bad men clustered 
 together, sustained in this posture like bees or bats, 
 and venting in shrieks their indignation at the re- 
 membrance of what they had suffered on account 
 of their p;irents or ancestors. 
 
 Last of all, he saw the souls destined to a sec- 
 ond birth, by main force, bent and transformed 
 into all sorts of beasts by artificers who fashioned 
 them by appropriate tools and by blows as upon an 
 anvil, compressing all their parts, reversing some, 
 planing down some, and utterly destroying some, 
 so as to fit them for habits and modes of life other 
 than human. Among these appeared the soul of 
 Nero, having already endured other torments, and 
 now pierced with red-hot nails. The artificers had 
 taken this soul in hand, and given it the form of 
 Pindar's viper,^ a form in which the creature after 
 being conceived eats its way to life through its 
 mother's bowels ; when, as Thespesius said, a light 
 suddenly shone forth, and from the light came a 
 voice commanding that he should be transformed 
 into another more gentle brute, — one of those 
 croaking creatures that burrow about swamps and 
 ponds ;^ for though he had been punished for his 
 
 1 Nero's matricide is liere referred to. Plutarch, no doubt, had 
 in his mind some then well-known figure or description in a poem 
 of Pindar now lost. 
 
 ^ Some interpreters suppose that this creature is a swan. I 
 have no doubt that it is a frog. Even had not the empire passed 
 entirely out of the possible reach of the Caesars, I do not believe 
 
74 Plutarch on the Belay of the Divine J-astice. 
 
 ■wrong-doings, yet something of mercy was due to 
 him from the gods, because he had emancipated 
 the Greelcs,^ of all his subjects the best race and 
 dearest to the gods. 
 
 Thus far Thespesius saw ; but when he was about 
 to return to the earth, he was in utter desperation 
 through terror. For a certain woman, of marvellous 
 form and stature, laying hold of him, said, " Come 
 hither, that you may remember these things the 
 better," and she was about to strike him with a 
 red-hot wand such as the encaustic painters use, 
 when another woman prevented her. Then he, as 
 if suddenly forced- through a tube by an intensely 
 strong and powerful wind, alighted on his own 
 body, and awoke hard by his own tomb. 
 
 that Plutarch would have shown any tenderness to Nero's mem- 
 ory, and certainly there was no conceivable motive for it under 
 the reign of Titus or Domitian. There is a fine satire in this final 
 destiny of Nero. He has been horribly punished, and has been 
 tortured into the likeness of the reptile regarded by the ancients 
 as the only matricide in their zoology ; and now for the one good 
 act of his reign a little mercy is shown him. He had prided him- 
 self and annoyed his subjects as it singer, and now he is trans- 
 formed into the singer that is a perpetual annoyance to all dwellers 
 near swamps and ponds. 
 
 1 He freed the province of Achaia from taxes, and endowed it 
 with certain political rights and privileges. Vespasian restored 
 the province to its previous condition. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adeasteia, presiding over the punishment of disembodied 
 
 souls, 63. 
 Aesculapius, sprung from a vicious stock, 22. 
 Aesop, murder of, 34. 
 Ajax, crime of, 37 n. 
 Alexander, revenge of, on the Branchidae for the guilt of their 
 
 ancestors, 35. 
 Amphilochus, oracle of, 60 n. 
 Apollodorus, the prey of terrific visions, 28. 
 
 serving a cannibal feast to his associates in crime, 32. 
 Arohytas, forbearance of, 12. 
 Aristo, punished for sacrilege, 23. 
 Aristocrates, treachery of, 4. 
 Artaxerxes Longimauus, penal discipline of, 64 n. 
 
 Besstts, the parricide, betraying his crime from remorse, 24. 
 Bion, the philosopher, cavils of, at the reality of inherited punish- 
 ment, 52. 
 character of, 52 n. 
 Brasidas, death of, 2. 
 
 Callippur, kUled by the dagger with which he had procured 
 
 Dion's death, 22. 
 Calondas, expiating the slaughter of Archilochus, 49. 
 Cassander, not punished till he had restored Thebes, 7. 
 Character, hereditary, 44. 
 
76 Index. 
 
 Children, inheriting the rewards and punishments due to their 
 
 fathers, 39. 
 Cimon, infamy and fame of, 16. 
 
 DiONYSius, left unpunished for the good that he might do, 18. 
 
 FoKBEAKANCE, the Divine, affording space for repentance, 13. 
 
 Gelon, reformation of, 14. 
 
 Glaucus, fraud and punishment of, 32. 
 
 God, in his slowness to punish, an example to man, 11. 
 
 Hereditary transmission of punishment no more mysterious . 
 
 than transitions in space, 42. 
 Heritage of moral qualities lapsing in the first, and reappearing 
 
 in some subsequent generation, 58. 
 Hieron, reformation of, 14. 
 Hipparchus, punishment of, anticipated in vision, 28. 
 
 Immortality, made probable by God's retributive providence, 48. 
 
 Laws, human, often unintelligible, 9. 
 
 Lethe, cavern of, 67. 
 
 Lyciscus, treachery of, 5. 
 
 Lydiades, a tyrant, and afterward a patriot, 15. 
 
 Miltiades, a tyrant, yet a patriot, 16. 
 Mitius, the murderer of, punished, 23. 
 Municipal life and character, continuous, 43. 
 
 Nero, doom of, 73. 
 
 ODYSSEns, redeemed by his own virtues from the curse resting on 
 his father, 22. 
 
 Pausanias, haunted by the apparition of a victim of his lust and 
 cruelty, 29. 
 haunting the temple near which he died, 50. 
 
Index. 77 
 
 Peisistratus, a usurper, yet a beneficent ruler, 15. 
 
 Periander, puniskment of, deferred that he might first render 
 
 service, 17. 
 Pericles, of an accursed and infamous race, 28. 
 Plato, f^uoted as making God an example to man, 10. 
 
 forbearance of, 12. 
 Plutarch, birthplace and residence of, vii. 
 
 education of, viii. 
 
 family of, ix. 
 
 philosophy of, x. 
 
 theology of, xi. 
 
 ethics of, xii. 
 
 relation of, to Christianity, xiv. 
 
 "Lives" of, xvii. 
 
 " Moralia" of, xx. 
 
 letter of, to his wife on the death of their child, xxii. 
 
 "Apophthegms " of, xxv. 
 
 treatise of, on the Delay of the Divine Justice, xxvi. 
 Pompey the Great, son of a worthless father, 21. 
 Providence, the Divine, beyond man's full comprehension, 8. 
 Ptolemy Ceraunus, punishment of, foretold in dreams, 28. 
 Punishment, alleged to be not recognized as such, when de- 
 layed, 6. 
 for the children of bad men, preceding and prevent- 
 ing guilt, 55. 
 
 Sibyl in the moon, predictions of, 69. 
 
 Sicyon, the people of, punished for wantonness and cruelty, 21. 
 
 Slowness of retribution, alleged to be disheartening to those who 
 
 suffer wrong, 3. 
 Souls cast no shadow, 63. 
 Sybaris destroyed for the guilt of its inhabitants, 37. 
 
 Themistocles, early profligacy and subsequent public services 
 
 of, 16. 
 Thespesius, story of, 59. 
 Transformation of men into beasts, 71. 
 
78 Index. 
 
 Wicked men, preserved for services that they may render, 18. 
 
 employed by God as executioners before their own 
 
 destruction, 20. 
 punished not late, but long, 24. 
 punished most severely of all In their children, 51. 
 
 University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 
 

 
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