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You are right, he said. They don’t accept my view and there is something in their objection, though not so much as they suppose. But the retort of Themistocles comes in pat here, who, when a man from the little island of SeriphusLit. the Seriphean of the anecdote, which, however, Herodotus (viii. 125) tells of another. Cicero Cato M. 8 Seriphio cuidam. grew abusive and told him that he owed his fame not to himself but to the city from which he came, replied that neither would he himself ever have made a name if he had been born in Seriphus nor the other if he had been an Athenian. And the same principle applies excellently to those who not being rich take old age hard; for neither would the reasonable man find it altogether easy to endure old age conjoined with poverty, nor would the unreasonable man by the attainment of riches ever attain to self-contentment and a cheerful temper. May I ask, Cephalus, said I, whether you inherited most of your possessions or acquired them yourself? Acquired, eh? he said. As a moneymaker, I hold a place somewhere halfway between my grandfather and my father. For my grandfather and namesakeCephalus, Lysanias, Cephalus, and so frequently. inherited about as much property as I now possess and multiplied it many times, my father Lysanias reduced it below the present amount, and I am content if I shall leave the estate to these boys not less but by some slight measure more than my inheritance. The reason I asked, I said, is that you appear to me not to be over-fond of money. And that is generally the case with those who have not earned it themselves.Aristotle makes a similar observation, Eth. Nic. iv. 1.20, Rhet. i. 11. 26, ii. 16. 4. For nouveaux riches, γενναῖοι ἐκ βαλλαντίου, see Starkie on Aristophanes Wasps, 1309. But those who have themselves acquired it have a double reason in comparison with other men for loving it. For just as poets feel complacency about their own poems and fathers about their own sons,Cf. Theaetetus 160 E, Symposium 209 C, Phaedrus 274 E, with Epaminondas’ saying, that Leuctra and Mantineia were his children. so men who have made money take this money seriously as their own creation and they also value it for its uses as other people do. So they are hard to talk to since they are unwilling to commend anything except wealth. You are right, he replied. I assuredly am, said I. But tell me further this. What do you regard as the greatest benefit you have enjoyed from the possession of property? Something, he said, which I might not easily bring many to believe if I told them.Cf. Walter Scott’s Be a good man, my dear; nothing else will give you any comfort, when you come to lie here. Perhaps the earliest positive expression of faith in future life and judgement for sin is Pindar’s Second Olympian. See Rohde’s Psyche and Adam in Cambridge Praelections. The Epicureans and sometimes the Stoics unfairly reprobated Plato’s appeal here to this motive, which he disregards in his main argument and returns to only in the tenth book. Cf. 363 C-D, 386 B, 613 E ff., also 496 E, 498 D, 608 D. For let me tell you, Socrates, he said, that when a man begins to realize that he is going to die, he is filled with apprehensions and concern about matters that before did not occur to him. The tales that are told of the world below and how the men who have done wrong here must pay the penalty there,Cf. 498 C and Pindar Ol. ii. 64. But 500 D, there is the realm of Platonic ideas. though he may have laughed them downCf. Gorgias 523 A, 527 A. hitherto, then begin to torture his soul with the doubt that there may be some truth in them. And apart from that the man himselfThe conclusion logically expected, is more credulous, shifts to the alternative preferred by Plato. ὥσπερ marks the figurative sense of nearer. καθορᾷ is not takes a more careful view of it (Goodwin) but wins a glimpse, catches sight of those obscure things, as a sailor descries land. So often in Plato. Cf. Epin. 985 C. Sir Thomas Browne, Christ. Morals, iii. 22 And having been long tossed in the Ocean of the world, he will by that time feel the draught of another. Waller on the Divine Poems—The Soul's Dark Cottage, batter'd and decay'd,Lets in new light through chinks that time has made . . . Leaving the old, both worlds at once they viewThat stand upon the threshold of the new. Rabelais, iii. 21 Aussi les anges, les heroes, les bons demons (selon la doctrine des Platonicques) voyans les humains prochains de mort comme deport très sceur et salutaire—les saluent les consolent, parlent avec eux et ja commencement leur communicquer art de divination. either from the weakness of old age or possibly as being now nearer to the things beyond has a somewhat clearer view of them. Be that as it may, he is filled with doubt, surmises, and alarms and begins to reckon up and consider whether he has ever wronged anyone.
