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When Solon, Cf. Life of Solon, xiv. (85 d). speaking of principles of government, said that equality does not create sedition, he was thought to be playing up too much to the crowd by introducing an arithmetical proportion, a democratic principle, Cf. Moralia, 719 b, 643 c: that is, arithmetical, instead of what Aristotle terms proportionate equality. instead of the sound geometrical proportion. Cf., for example, Plato, Gorgias, 508 a. As for a man who gives advice to brothers in the matter of a family estate after the manner of Plato’s Republic, 462 c; cf. Moralia, 140 d, 767 d, and Aristotle’s attempted refutation, Politics, ii. 1. 8 (1261 b 16). advice to the citizens of his state, to abolish, if possible, the notion of mine and not mine, but if he cannot do this, to cherish equality and cling to it, and thus lays a fair and abidingPerhaps with a reference to Euripides, Phoenissae, 538 (cited 481 a, supra). foundation of concord and peace, let him also make use of eminent precedents, such as that reply of Pittacus to the king of LydiaCroesus: cf. Diogenes Laertius, i. 75. who inquired if Pittacus had money: Twice as much, said he, as I would wish, now that my brother is dead. But since it is not only the getting of money and the losing of it that makes less grow hostile to more, Euripides, Phoenissae, 539: τῷ πλέονι δ᾽αἰεὶ πολέμιον καθίσταται. but in general, as Plato Republic, 547 a. says, in inequality movement is produced and in equality rest and repose; thus all manner of inequality is dangerous as likely to foster brothers’ quarrels, and though it is impossible for them to be equal and on the same footing in all respects (for on the one hand our natures at the very beginning make an unequal apportionment, and then later on our varying fortunes beget envies and jealousies, the most shameful diseases and baneful plagues, Cf., for example, 468 b, supra. ruinous not only for private houses, but for whole states as well); against these inequalities we must be on our guard and must cure them, if they arise. One would therefore advise a brother, in the first place, to make his brothers partners in those respects in which he is considered to be superior, adorning them with a portion of his repute and adopting them into his friendships, and if he is a cleverer speaker than they, to make his eloquence available for their use as though it were no less theirs than his; in the next place, to make manifest to them neither haughtiness nor disdain, but rather, by deferring to them and conforming his character to theirs, to make his superiority secure from envy and to equalize, so far as this is attainable, the disparity of his fortune by his moderation of spirit. Lucullus, Cf. Life of Lucullus, i. (492 b). for instance, refused to hold office before his brother, older though he was, but forwent his own proper time for candidature and awaited his brother’s. And PolydeucesQuoted by Stobaeus, vol. iv. p. 659 ed. Hense, joined with the Polydeuces quotation in 483 c, supra. refused to become even a god by himself, but chose rather to become a demigod with his brother and to share his mortal portion upon the condition of yielding to Castor part of his own immortality.
