By the sin of another alone — which is called “original” — we are all truly made sinners; but by the sins of others, however enormous, if to them nothing has been committed or omitted by us, we are never truly and properly polluted: yet by their temporal punishments we are truly and properly touched and tortured, as was said in the previous question. But the causes of this thing are [these]. First: The society, and the conjunction of certain men among themselves, which exists either from a certain natural bond — as between a father, children, and kinsmen — or from a moral, economic, and public [bond] — as between the same [persons as] citizens of a commonwealth and kingdom — or, finally, from a supernatural and Ecclesiastical [bond] — as between the same [persons as] Christians of the Church, sharers of the same religion, colleagues of the same college. For this consociation makes [it so] that a multitude of men is as it were one body, as the Apostle explains (1 Cor. 12 and Eph. 4); and likewise, among the profane [authors], Livy, [and] Maximus of Tyre (in orations 5 and 20). Now indeed, on account of the disease, wound, and ulcer of one member, we see the others languish, and all be tortured. What wonder, then, if, with one sinning, the others are reckoned in a manner to sin, who are of the same body with him, and on his account fall into certain evils and troubles? “It is shown,” says St. Augustine (q. 8), “how greatly connected this is, in the society of the people itself, [in] the universality — that they are reckoned not in themselves as individuals, but also as, [it were,] parts in a whole.” Secondly: The same conjunction effects [it] that, [seeing] we are partakers of the prosperity, joy, fame, and glory of those who are held in the same body with us, why then [should we] not [be partakers] also of [their] adversity, sadness, infamy, and disgrace? Thirdly: Through a communion of this kind of punishments, there is cast upon all that care and solicitude, that not only [each] himself may not sin, but that others too, joined by some bond, may not sin. For who would not gladly and studiously provide that [his] children, kinsmen, relatives-by-marriage, fellow-citizens, associates, fellow-soldiers, subjects, servants, parents, masters, Princes, Lords, Pastors — [men] finally of all orders — do not commit anything, if he understood himself to be called to punishment for their offenses, [and] about to fall in the same ruin with them? “Among them,” says St. Augustine in this place,
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(q. 8): “who fear such [things], discipline is established, that not only each be on guard for himself in the people, but that they mutually apply diligence to one another, and, as [members] of one body and of one man, some members be solicitous for others.” Fourth: In God’s power is the highest right over all our wealth and opportunities, the highest arbitration of our fame, honor, and glory, [and], finally, the highest power over the life and death of all. Therefore, by his own judgment, he can snatch these [things] from men in what way and when he wills, as [was] already touched above (q. 11): therefore he can do this most [rightly] then, when some cause underlies [it] which seems just and equitable not only to himself (which, whether known to us or not, [is] always best and most just) but also to our judgment — otherwise slight and feeble. But that we should participate in the prosperous and adverse [fortunes] of those who are more conjoined to us — is not [this], as I said a little before, upright and equitable? Fifth: The order of the whole world has this, that some things are for the sake of others, and for the safety and standing of one, another perishes and falls: with one perishing and falling, others perish, and more fall together. Why, then, should this not happen in [the case of] men too? Sixth: All good [men] are of that mind, that what of good they have, they would wish to be diffused to as many as possible; what of evil, to be contracted and to stick in themselves alone: but the evil, on the contrary, [wish] that what of good they have be contracted, and that what of evil be in themselves alone, [and] be spread to as many as possible. The Lord therefore sometimes accommodates himself to the will of both, embracing the good will and [that] of the good, and sometimes directing [it] more wisely: using well the evil will of the evil, and leading it over to a certain greater good, neither desired nor thought of by them. Seventh: The living sometimes inflict on the dead certain [things] which, by this extension of punishments to others, seem [more] bitter. Eighth: Mortals learn, from the punishment of the innocent, how great and how capital a plague to the [human] race sin is, [seeing] that it is thus punished not in one alone, who bound himself by it, but in many others too. Ninth: They learn also, if for the fault of one a multitude is punished, what if the whole multitude should sin? “It is signified,” says St. Augustine in the cited place, “how great an evil would be done, if that whole congregation had sinned, when not even one [man] could be so judged that from him the rest could be secure.” Tenth: In the evils which come upon the guiltless on account of the guilty, there is — either always, or certainly very often — a certain bite of grief, which purges and stings the guilty themselves more keenly. For [those] whom these evils involve, are either their sons and friends, whom they love, or others. If [they are] sons and friends, [it is] a trouble and grief to them, that they are tortured by their [own] fault. “Very often,” says St. Gregory (bk. 15 Morals, ch. 31), “the Father is struck in [his] sons, that he may burn more keenly: and the grief of the Father is repaid to the flesh of the sons, in so far as, through the punishments of the sons, the iniquitous death of the father is suffered.” If [they are] others — is [it] not bitter and grievous [for them] to know that they, on account of evils of which they [are] the authors, are hateful and detestable to all? that they and theirs are held in hatred by all? that their name is torn by the voices and curses of all? that all their memory is cursed with dire [imprecations] by all? For it comes about, in a manner, always, that these [things] are either seen by the guilty [while] still living, or, if not yet seen, are felt beforehand in the mind and foretasted, or certainly are not unknown to [them when] dead. So that, if they are in the place of torments, they are tortured more; if [they are] among the blessed, [where] nothing of grief falls upon them, yet they pity the wretched more, and are busy to bring them greater help with God. And are not all these things done — is it not the best, wisest, [and] most just [thing]? Eleventh: Although — as the reasons hitherto adduced prove — God the Best and Greatest could, by his own right, for the sake of the highest good of the whole world, and especially of the men themselves, punish with temporary evils, [and] even with death itself, the upright and [those] altogether affine to no fault, for the favor of certain wicked [men]: yet it is the opinion of the noble Theologians that he never does this, unless in those very [persons] whom another’s sins and miseries implicate, there also be, or have been, some proper fault of their own, on account of which they are most worthy of those evils and miseries. First indeed, because it seems more consonant to the divine goodness that he deprive no one of his benefit, unless he deserve [it]. Second: Those who, on the occasion of another’s calamity, suffer something — either they are little infants, who by their own act can as yet sin nothing, or [they are] older [ones], who could now sin of their own accord. If [they are] little infants: [they] either have not yet expiated original sin through holy baptism, or [have] expiated [it]. If not yet expiated: death is owed to them under that name, not temporal or eternal life. “For the wages of sin [is] death” (Romans, ch. 6). If [they have] expiated [it], they are still worthy of the same, and of the other evils of this life. For by that sin, which is or was [theirs], man is always rendered liable, once he has not fully paid this debt. Hence St. Augustine (bk. 6 Against Julian, ch. 10) teaches [that], among the other evils of this life, even baptized little ones suffer the incursions of demons. St. Gregory (bk. 15 Morals, ch. 31): “What is it that little sons are very often snatched by demons, unless [it be] that the flesh of the son is punished by the father’s punishment?” If [they are] older: first, they are of the same condition as the little infants, as to the debt of original fault: then, of a much worse [condition]. Because they now add certain sins of their own, the least of which are not unworthy of the extreme discomforts and tortures of this life, [and] even of death itself, if it be considered how great and of what kind it is to offend the divine majesty in even the least matter, and how little and almost nothing it is, [that good] which it happens [one] loses of the good of this life. Rightly, therefore, does God always [act], when for the cause of the guilty he sometimes strikes his [own] guilty ones with [his] darts. Twelfth: But that all these things may cling to the mind more tenaciously, I will transcribe here the words of two writers, of whom the former [is] excellent among the Latins and Christians — [though] not professing Theology; the other, among the Greeks and Gentiles, following reason alone as [their] guide. I [the first]. From the second book of Justus Lipsius’s On Constancy (ch. 16): “But indeed some unmerited and innocent peoples are punished, thou sayest. For [this is] this second complaint of thine — or rather, let me call [it] a calumny. Incautiously, young man, dost thou so speak? Are the unmerited punished? Where in the world, then, [are] peoples found by thee without fault? [It] would be presumption — nay, rashness — to place that [innocence] in some single man: [and] dost thou nothing doubt to establish peoples and nations sinless? Most vainly. For we sin, and we all have sinned, I know: born in a stain, we live in a stain: and [there are] now the arsenals of heaven, that, to speak with that Satirist,
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the [arsenals of heaven] would be without a weapon, if thunderbolts were always sent [only] upon the deserving. For not as fishes, born and nourished in the brine, yet do not taste of the salt: so [neither] is it to be reckoned [that] men [are] in this dregs of the world, [and] themselves without dregs. But if all [are] in fault, where [are] those unmerited peoples? For punishment is always most justly the companion of fault. But that inequality, thou wilt say, displeases: that certain [men] are oppressed who have sinned lesser [things], [while] they flourish and reign who [have sinned] great [things]. This was it, was it not? Thou wilt, I suppose, snatch the balance of heavenly justice from [God’s] hands, and weigh it by a certain sense of thine own, and by thy weights. For to what else does this estimation of equal and unequal offenses look, than [that] which thou takest upon thyself before God? But consider two [things] here, Lipsius. The first: that another’s faults cannot, [and] ought not, be estimated by a man. For how [could they]? Wilt thou, [poor] little man, weigh sins equitably, thou who dost not even attend [to them]? Wilt thou lawfully discern them, thou who dost not [even] see [them]? For [that] which thou easily grantest me — [namely] that it is the mind which sins: through the body indeed, and these instruments of the senses, but so that all the moment and weight of the crime is from itself [the mind]. Which is so true that, if thou determinest someone to have sinned unwilling, he has not sinned. But if this is [so]: how, I pray, wilt thou see through the sin itself, thou who [seest] neither its couch nor its seat? For thou canst not see a mind [so] foreign, any more than thine own. Great, therefore, is this vanity — or rather temerity — of thine, [in] claiming a censorship and estimation in a matter neither fully seen nor to-be-seen, nor known nor to-be-known. Secondly: consider that, though it be most [entirely] so, yet there is nothing evil here, nor iniquitous. Not evil, because it is for the good of those very [persons] who are chastised at once even in the least faults. That [is] a Divine love: and by right always suspect [is] the slowness to which a graver punishment adheres. Likewise not iniquitous: because we have all deserved punishment, as I said; nor ever, even in the best, [is] that purity [such] that some stain does not remain, to be washed off, as it were, by this salt water of disasters. Wherefore, young man, dismiss this most intricate suit concerning the estimation of faults, as a terrestrial and lowly delegate Judge: leave [it] to God, who will take cognizance of it far more equitably, and more certainly, from a higher tribunal. He alone [is] he who can weigh merits: he, who, without any paint or ceruse of dissimulations, sees virtue and vice in its own true face. Who could impose upon him, who searches out external [things] and likewise internal [things]? who sees the body, and the mind? who [sees] tongues, and fibers? [things] finally open and hidden? and who sees not the deeds themselves alone, but their causes, and progressions, in clear light. Thales, once asked εἰ λήθοι θεοὺς ἄνθρωπος ἀδικῶν [ei lēthoi theous anthrōpos adikōn, “whether a man doing wrong could escape the notice of the gods”], answered truly, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ διανοούμενος [all’ oude dianooumenos, “nay, not even [when merely] intending [it]”]. But we, on the contrary, [are] here in a cloud; who not only do not see hidden crimes, but [those which are] committed under the tunic (as they say) and in the bosom — [these] we scarcely [see even] once they are laid open and dragged into the light. For we discern not the fault itself, and its force, but certain external footprints of [the deed] committed and already fleeing. Often the best to us [are those] who [are] worst to God: and, on the contrary, the rejected [are those] who [are] chosen by Him. Close, therefore, if thou art wise, [thy] mouth and eyes concerning the deserving or undeserving. A cause so obscure is not well known off-hand [de plano].”
From the same [work], ch. 17. “But the third [objection] too — [that of] Justice cast upon thee — is a fog to be wiped away: [the objection] concerning the Substitutes. ‘For God,’ they say, ‘transfers punishments too unjustly: and grandsons ill atone for the faults of [their] elders.’ Ha? Is this so new or wonderful? Nay, I marvel [that] those mock-heroes marvel: since daily they themselves do this in their own land. Tell [me], prithee, [do] not the benefits which are given to the elders by a Prince, on account of [their] virtue, pass to the grandsons? Surely they pass. Nor otherwise [is it], I think, in the fines and punishments which are imposed on the same [descendants] for a crime. Behold, in the crimes of high treason or [lèse-]majesty, manifestly some are in the fault, others in the punishment. And human severity so aims at this, that laws are passed which punish innocent children with eternal want — that death be to them a solace, and life a punishment.
“It is the malignity of your minds! You wish [that] this be lawful to some King or dynast, [but] you do not wish [it lawful] to God? To whom, nevertheless, if thou examinest, [there is] the cause of this severity not a little more just. For we have sinned, and rebels to this great King we all [were] in one [man]; and through so many propagations of the stock, that first stain [was] propagated to the unhappy offspring. So there is a certain nexus and chain of these crimes before God: nor [is it] a fresh sinning, so to speak. My father, or thine, has now begun [it], but [before them] all the fathers of the fathers. What wonder, then, if he punishes in the descendants not properly diverse offenses, but [ones] joined by a certain communion of seed, and never intermitted? But that I may omit these sublime [matters], and treat with thee by a more popular way of reasonings: know this. [That] God conjoins [things] which we, through weakness or inexperience, separate: and [that he views] families, towns, kingdoms, not as some various or confused thing, but as one body and nature. That [family] of the Scipios or the Caesars is, to him, one [thing]: the Roman or the Attic city, through all its age, [is] one: one likewise [is] the Roman Empire. By right. For there is a certain bond, and a society of laws and right, which binds these great bodies; and effects [it] that among [men] sundered by [distance of] age there be a certain communion of rewards and punishments. And so [are] the Scipios of old good? — before that heavenly judge [it] profits their posterity too. [Are they] evil? [it] harms [them]. We Belgians, some years ago wanton, avaricious, impious, atone [for it]. Because in every external punishment God looks not upon the present things alone, but re-looks-upon the past too: and with the weights of both these times he tempers evenly the scale of his justice. I said, ‘external punishment.’ And I would have thee note [it]. For not the faults themselves are transferred, nor is there made a certain confusion of crimes: [that] is absent: but the punishment only, or certain chastisements, are those [things] which are about us, not in us: and they look properly to bodies, as to wealth, not to this internal mind. But what injury [is there] here? For surely we are willing to be heirs of the advantages and rewards, if any be owed to [our] elders: why should we refuse the burdens and the punishments?
“Delicta maiorum immeritus lues, / Romane.” [Horace, Odes 3.6.1: “Thou, undeserving, shalt atone for the sins of thy ancestors, O Roman.”]
So sings that Roman bard. Truly — except that he adds ‘undeserving.’ For [it is] most deservedly, because the ancestors deserved [it]. But the poet could see the effect, [he] did not rise to the cause. But as, in one and the same man, we by right punish in [his] old age some offense committed in [his] youth: so God [punishes], in empires or kingdoms, old sins. Because by the external reasoning of communion they are a certain one [thing] to God, and conjoined. These intervals of times do not divide us in his sight, who holds all eternity enclosed in his capacious mind. Or [shall we say] that those Martian wolves [the Romans] of old overthrew so many cities, broke so many scepters, with impunity? [that] they drank so much slaughter and blood, they themselves ever un-rained-upon [unpunished]? Then at last I would confess [that] there is no avenger-God, who hears and sees what we do. But it is not so. It is necessary that they pay the penalties, sometime, even in their posterity — slow, though not late. Nor is this conjunction, in God’s sight, of times only: but also of parts. This I mean to say. Just as, in a man, when the hand, foot, [or] belly has sinned, the whole body atones for it: so in some common assembly, [the] fault of the few, all [must] often expiate. Especially if those who sin be, as it were, certain worthier members — as kings, Princes, magistrates. Truly Hesiod, [speaks] from the very inner-shrine of wisdom:
Πολλάκι καὶ ξύμπασα πόλις κακοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἐπαύρει, / Ὅστις ἀλιτραίνει καὶ ἀτάσθαλα μηχανάαται. / Τοῖσι δ’ οὐρανόθεν μέγ’ ἐπήγαγε πῆμα Κρονίων.
[Hesiod, Works and Days 240–242: “Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man, whoever sins and devises reckless deeds. Upon them Cronion [Zeus] brought great woe from heaven.”]
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Λιμὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν.
[Hesiod, Works and Days 243, the fourth line: “famine together with plague.” Serarius then gives a Latin verse rendering of the whole:]
“For the crime of one, the whole city pays the penalties, / if anyone bear himself sacrilegiously or unjustly: / Jupiter hence, from high heaven, sent disasters — / a plague or a famine.”
So the whole fleet of the Argives perished. “For the crime of one, and the madness of Ajax son of Oileus.” So in Judaea a single plague most justly took away seventy thousand men, on account of the unjust desire of the king. And sometimes the contrary. When all have sinned, God selects one, and a few, as it were expiatory [victims] for the public fault. In which [selection], if for a little while he departs from that rigid law of parity, yet from that very inequity a new equity arises: and there is a certain clement justice toward the many, [in] what seems severity toward the few. Does not even the schoolmaster’s rod strike some one out of the number of the wanton flock; [does not] the general chastise a few, by decimation, out of a routed army? — yet each [does so] with a salutary counsel, because that punishment of the few nonetheless terrifies and amends all. I have often seen physicians cut a vein in the foot or arm, when the whole body ached: how do I know whether the same [holds] here? For these [are] secret things, [utterly] secret, Lipsius: and, if we are wise, we shall not too closely touch that sacred fire, of which we men can perhaps see certain sparks and flashes: [but] we cannot [see] itself. As those who fix their eyes too keenly on the Sun, lose them, so [do they lose] all the light of the mind who strain it upon this light. Let us abstain, therefore, I judge, from curious [inquiries], and [from those] with the peril of the question: and let this at least stand for us, that faults cannot, [and] ought not, be estimated humanly. [That] there is another balance with God, another tribunal. And howsoever those hidden judgments hold themselves, they are not to be blamed by us, but to be borne, and revered. This one sentence I press upon thee, by which I will impose [my] hand upon this matter, and at the same time [close] the mouth of all the Inquisitive:
“The judgments of God are many [and] hidden: none [are] unjust.”
II. From Plutarch’s booklet On the Delayed Vengeance of the Deity. First, a certain Timon disputes against the derivation of punishments upon the descendants, and says: “[That] which Euripides complains of, and objects to the Divinity:
“The children often atone for the wicked crimes of [their] parents.” [Euripides, via Timon]
Even if we be silent, I think [it right] to reprehend [it]. For if those who have offended have already paid the penalties, it is not fitting that those who have done nothing unjust be punished. Since not even those who have perpetrated the crimes are reckoned to be consonant with justice or equity [if they were] to undergo punishment twice for one and the same thing. Accordingly, if the divine vengeance proceeds slowly, and the punishment which is owed to the wicked at length, late, afflicts the innocent — [God] does not rightly compensate the iniquity by the slowness.” He [Timon] brings forward next eight or nine examples, by which he proves this very [point]. But when Plutarch had said all these [to be] either fables, or [things] similar to fables, he goes on to show, by at least six arguments, how rightly it is done by God, that he pours out punishments from some upon others. And the first indeed agrees with my second [cause]; the second with the fourth; the third with nearly the same; the fourth with the first; the fifth with the seventh; the sixth with the first and fifth. Now, with one breath as it were, we have heard all these [as] one cause, [and] the eighth [argument] lucidly perorating. “That,” he says, “the matter may at once, at the threshold, lie open and be made clear, let there be led into memory the honor which is wont to be had for those whose ancestors received the gods in hospitality; and also that fair portion which was conferred on the successors of Pindar, in the sacking of Thebes. For who would not deservedly be delighted by that pre-eminence of honor which so long coalesced and grew up among the Greeks? — unless [it be one] to whom, according to the same Pindar, a cold flame has fashioned a black heart. I pass over now the herald’s-praise similar to this at Sparta, which is wont to be proclaimed after the Lesbian song, in memory and honor of that ancient Terpander: for it seems to rest on the same reasoning. But you I call, Philtiades, who among the Boeotians hold [it] worthy to be far preferred to others, since you proclaim yourselves sprung from illustrious parents; and you who among the Phocians are wont to glory on account of the race of Daiphantus — be present to me, I say, and a help, when Lycormas and Satilaeus divide between themselves the ancestral honor of the Heraclidae, and, restoring the Stephanophoria [garland-bearing], sing that it exceedingly befits [those] begotten from Hercules to obtain firm and grateful honors. Since [Hercules] himself, when he had affected the Greeks with immense benefits, had obtained no worthy reward and retribution.” “Most beautiful, by Hercules,” he says, “and quite worthy of Philosophy, [is] the contest thou hast proposed. Dismiss, therefore, ho! I say, that vehement kind of accusation, and take it not ill if sometimes those be punished who are sprung from wicked and depraved parents; or cease to glory and be praised for that honored nobility, [and] for [that] pre-eminence. For it behooves, if we desire to retain the honor of virtue or nobility in our race, [that we] also reasonably, on account of the permanent vengeance of crimes, not be indignant, but rightly reckon that these [things] mutually concur, and are converted [into one another] equally and evenly. For [he] who, sprung from Cimon, [is] excellently honored at Athens, but, [seeing those] descended from Lachares and Ariston despised, grieving with indignation discerns [this] — he seems quite fickle and heedless, nay rather more contentious, and troublesome to the Divinity. For he blames [it] when he discerns [that] the sons of unjust and wicked men fare happily: and again he criminates [it], if he perceives the offspring of the shameful and wicked to be coerced or utterly taken away; and he equally reprehends God, and accuses [him], whether he afflicts the son of a just, or of a guilty, father, or affects [him] with discomfort. And these [men] I set up as, [it were,] certain obstacles — exceedingly hostile and bitter accusers — against thee. Thence, resuming as it were the beginning of the nexus, so, [as men] disposed concerning the divine reasons, let us — from the darkness and inextricable errors — with intrepid piety lead [them] back to [their] duty, and let us persuade them [that] God does nothing but what is right, and is recognized [as] quite becoming; but [that] we, indeed, cannot, in these [things] which we are daily wont to do, show or express the manifest truth. As, for example: why we order the children of those who have died of phthisis [consumption], or of dropsy [aqua intercus], to sit [with their] feet immersed in water, until the dead [parent] be cremated: for by that compact [it is believed] the diseases are transferred, or [rather] believed [that they] can by no means pass over to them. And again, for what cause a she-goat, if it take the eryngium herb into its mouth, halts the whole flock, until the shepherd, coming upon [it], drive [it] off. There are also very many other [things] which contain latent forces, and produce incredible effects, and, with a stupendous swiftness or slowness, pass over from some to others. But we are wont to admire the intervals according to time, not place. For which is the more stupendous? Whether the plague which took its beginning in Ethiopia, filled Athens, took away Pericles, and ill-affected Thucydides? Or if, on account of the crimes of the Delphians and Sybarites, the vengeance of [their] crimes at length flowed down upon [their] descendants? For [things] have, from the last [ones], certain relations to the first, and affinities, the cause of which, although we be ignorant [of it], yet we know for certain [that they] happen not without reason. Accordingly, why, [seeing that] not only upon the stock of men, but publicly upon cities, the divine vengeance sometimes stalks — [why this] seems to have the pretext of justice, since a city is one thing, and continuous, and admits no change, as animals [do], nor is wont [one] to be made from another, but is always conformable, and everywhere like to itself — [the vengeance justly demands punishment for] all the things which it does,
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the causes and the merits of all the things which it does, as long as it retains the nexus and series of the community, and preserves [its] unity, if it has been wont to recover itself. For if, on account of an interval of time, someone should wish to make several [cities] out of one city, he would be like [one] who should try to make several [men] out of one man: since [the man] who is now older was formerly younger, and once altogether a youth. These [reasonings] indeed would be like the Epicharmian [sophisms], out of which the augmented discourse of the Sophists grew, when they say [that he] who once received a loan now owes nothing, since he has become another [person]. And [that he] who yesterday was invited to dinner, today comes uninvited, for he exists [as] another. Accordingly, the changes in each one of us are greater than age is wont to make publicly in cities. For if, after the thirtieth year, someone should revisit Athens, he would surely recognize the manners now flourishing, the movements, disciplines, studies, the people’s favor, anger, and hatred, and the rest of that kind, quite similar and conformable to those ancient and prior ones. But a man’s form he would, though known and familiar, scarcely be able, meeting [it] after so great a space of time, to recognize. But the variations of manners, which by every reasoning, labor, passion, [and] by laws too, are easily changed, [these], to that [city] which is always present [continuous], seem to contain an absurdity and a wondrous novelty. But a man, from [the time] he is born, is called one [and the same] to the very end: and since the same [thing] befalls the city, [which is] thus permanent, we deem it worthy too that it be liable to the reproaches of [its] progenitors, since it deservedly desires to enjoy their glory, honor, and power, and reckons this just. Unless we should wish to plunge all affairs into the Heraclitean river, into which, they say, no one enters twice without being utterly moved [changed], and passing into an alien nature. If, therefore, a city is a certain continuous thing, and exists as one and conformable in a perpetual series, it is necessary too that the race proceed from the same beginnings, and refer back [carry on] a certain power and society. For [what is] begotten from that from which it is begotten cannot be severed or set apart as a certain constructed workmanship, since it was begotten from it, not by it, in such a way that it is contained [in it] as a certain part — both to be duly honored, and justly punished — and is carried round in its own self. And, unless I should seem to jest, I would indeed assert that the statue of Cassander, melted down by the Athenians, suffered far more unjust [things], and the body of Dionysius, dug up by the Syracusans after [his] death, was affected with a greater injury, than if a divine vengeance had been carried down upon their sons. For the statue of Cassander, by its own nature, could receive no injury, and the soul had long since left the dead body of Dionysius. But to Nisaeus, Apollocrates, Antipater, and Philippus, and all the rest sprung from wicked parents, there is a certain quite proper part of [their] progenitors implanted, and it adheres to them — not troublesome or burdensome, but [that] by which they are nourished in life, governed, and are wise. It is not, therefore, a wonder nor absurd, since they proceed from those [parents], if, for their [parents’] crimes, they take up too a part of the vengeance — since [the things] which are reckoned blessed among men, they have obtained and possess on account of those [parents]. And universally, I say, whatever [is] useful in medicine, that same we reckon to be also just. And truly he is to be laughed at who should assert [it] iniquitous to cauterize the thumb, when the vertebra of the hips ached; or to lacerate the midriff, when the liver was wasting with corruption; or, if anyone, on account of a weakness of the hooves, should anoint the tops of the horns of oxen. So too in avenging crimes, he who thinks any other [thing] just than to heal wickedness, and is indignant when he sees the physician proceed to the cure of a disease by a far different way, and insinuate medicines for some [parts] through other [parts] — as [when they] cut a vein, that [the patient] may be relieved of an ophthalmia — he surely seems to profit not far beyond [his] sense-perception, and does not consider the schoolmaster, who seizes some one of the boys to admonish the rest; and the general, who, when he takes away every tenth man, leads all back to duty. Accordingly, not only to a part on account of another part, but also to a soul on account of a soul, far more than to a body on account of a body, are affects, vexations, passions, and amendments wont to accrue. For there, as it seems, it is necessary that the same passion and change be innate [naturally arise]; but here it is necessary that the soul, driven by imaginations, on account of fear or confidence, be made worse or better.” These [things say] those wise men.