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Brothers should not be like the scales of a balance, the one rising upon the other’s sinking; but rather like numbers in arithmetic, the lesser and greater mutually helping and improving each other. For that finger which is not active in writing or touching musical instruments is not inferior to those that can do both; but they all move and act, one as well as another, and are assistant to each other, which makes the inequality among them seem designed by Nature, when the greatest cannot be without the help of the least that is placed in opposition to it. Thus Craterus and Perilaus, brothers to kings Antigonus and Cassander, betook themselves, the one to managing of military, the other of his domestic affairs. On the other hand, the men like Antiochus, Seleucus, Grypus, and Cyzicenus, disdaining any meaner things than purple and diadems, brought a great deal of trouble and mischief upon one another, and made Greece itself miserable with their quarrels. But in regard that men of ambitious inclinations will be apt to envy those who have got the start of them in honor, I judge it most convenient for brothers to take different methods in pursuit of it, rather than to vex and emulate one another in the same way. Those beasts fight and war one with another who feed in one pasture, and wrestlers are antagonists when they strive in the same game. But those that pretend to different games are the greatest friends, and ready to take one another’s parts with the utmost of their skill and power. So the two sons of Tyndarus, Castor and Pollux, carried the day,—Pollux at cuffs, and Castor at racing. Thus Homer brings in Teucer as expert in the bow, whom his brother Ajax, who was best in close fight, Protected over with a glittering shield.Il. VIII. 272.
