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Certainly if you had Tithonus as your father, who was immortal but always needed much care on account of old age, I do not believe you would avoid or grow weary of attending to him, speaking to him, and helping him on the ground that you had performed those duties for a long time; and your fatherland or, as the Cretans call it, your mother country, which has earlier and greater rights than your parents, is long lived, to be sure, but by no means ageless or self-sufficient; on the contrary, since it always needs much consideration and assistance and anxious thought, it draws the statesman to itself and holds him, Grasping him fast by the cloak, and restrains him though hastening onward.Homer, Il. xvi. 9. Now surely you know that I have been serving the Pythian Apollo for many Pythiads,Periods of four years marked by the quadrennial celebration of the Pythian games in honour of Apollo at Delphi. but you would not say: Plutarch, you have done enough sacrificing, marching in processions, and dancing in choruses, and now that you are older it is time to put off the garland and to desert the oracle on account of your age. And so do not imagine that you yourself, being a leader and interpreter of the sacred rites of civic life, ought to give up the worship of Zeus of the State and of the Forum, rites to which you have for a long time been consecrated.
