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Now since, as Simonides says, all larks must have a crest, and every eminent office in a commonweal brings enmities and dissensions, it is not a little convenient for a statesman to be forewarned also of his comportment in these rencounters. Many therefore commend Themistocles and Aristides, who, when they were to go forth on an embassy or to command together the army, laid down their enmity at the confines of the city, taking it up again after their return. Some again are highly pleased with the action of Cretinas the Magnesian. He, having for his rival in the government one Hermias, a man not powerful and rich, but ambitious and high-spirited, when the Mithridatic war came on, seeing the city in danger, desired Hermias either to take the government upon himself and manage the affairs whilst he retired, or, if he would have him take the command of the army, to depart himself immediately, lest they should through their ambitious contention destroy the city. The proposal pleased Hermias, who, saying that Cretinas was a better soldier than himself, did with his wife and children quit the city. Cretinas then escorted him as he went forth, furnishing him out of his own estate with all such things as are more useful to those that fly from home than to those that are besieged; and excellently defending the city, unexpectedly preserved it, being at the point to be destroyed. For if it is generous and proceeding from a magnanimous spirit to cry out, I love my children, but my country more, why should it not be readier for every one of them to say, I hate this man, and desire to do him a diskindness, but the love of my country has greater power over me? For not to condescend to be reconciled to an enemy for those very causes for which we ought to abandon even a friend, is even to extremity savage and brutish. But far better did Phocion and Cato, who grounded not any enmity at all on their political differences, but being fierce and obstinate only in their public contests not to recede from any thing they judged convenient for the state, did in their private affairs use those very persons friendly and courteously from whom they differed in the other. For one ought not to esteem any citizen an enemy, unless it be one like Aristion, Nabis, or Catiline, the disease and plague of the city: but as for those that are otherwise at discord, a good magistrate should, like a skilful musician, by gently setting them up or letting them down, bring them to concord; not falling angrily and reproachfully upon those that err, but mildly reprehending them in such like terms as these of Homer’s, Good friend, I thought you wiser than the rest;Il. XVII. 171 and again, You could have told a better tale than this;Il. VII. 358. nor yet repining at their honors, or sparing to speak freely in commendation of their good actions, if they say or do any thing advantageous to the public. For thus will our reprehension, when it is requisite, be credited, and we shall render them averse to vice, increasing their virtue, and showing, by comparing them, how much the one is more worthy and beseeming them than the other.
