9
Let this, then, serve as a preamble to my whole discourse. But as the starting-point of my admonitions, let us take, not the division of the father’s goods, as other writers do, but the misguided quarrels and jealousy of the children while the parents are yet alive. The ephors, when Agesilaüs Cf. Life of Agesilaüs, v. (598 b). used to send an ox as a mark of distinguished service to each member of the gerousia The Spartan Council of Elders. as he was appointed, fined him, alleging as their reason that by such demagogic means of gaining popular favour he was trying to acquire as his own personal followers men who belonged to the state; but one would advise a son to care for his parents, not with the design of acquiring their goodwill for himself alone or turning it away from others to himself. It is in this way that many play the demagogue against their brothers, having a specious but unjust pretext for this rapacity; for they deprive them of the greatest and fairest of inheritances, their parents’ goodwill, by servilely and unscrupulously cutting across their brothers’ path, opportunely making their attacks when the parents are occupied and unsuspecting, and, in particular, showing themselves dutiful and obedient and prudent in those matters in which they perceive their brothers to be in error, or seeming to be so. But the right way, on the contrary, when a son sees that his father is angry with his brother, is to take his share of it and bear the brunt of it together with his brother, by such assistance making the anger lighter, and then by rendering services and favours to help somehow or other to restore his brother to his father’s grace. If there is error of omission, he can allege in the brother’s favour the absence of opportunity, or that he was engaged on some other work, or his very nature, as being more useful and more intelligent in other directions. The saying of AgamemnonOn behalf of Menelaüs: Il., x. 122-123. also is admirable: Not to slackness does he yield or foolishness, But looks to me, and to me he has committed this duty. And fathers are very willing to accept even the substitution of other termsThat is, terms which excuse the fault; cf. Moralia, 56 c. and to believe their sons when they call their brothers’ carelessness simplicity, their stupidity straightforwardness, and their contentiousness inability to endure contempt; the result is that he who aets as mediator succeeds in lessening the anger against his brother, and at the same time he increases his father’s goodwill toward himself.
