n,
are like those lines in the play, "O People, first bathe, after one
decision in the courts, then eat, drink, gobble, take the
three-obol-piece."[58] And what Euripides has said, "Money finds friends
for men, and has the greatest power among mankind," is not merely a
general truth, but is especially true in the case of the childless. For
those the rich entertain to dinner, those great men pay court to, to
those alone orators give their services gratis. "A mighty personage is a
rich man, whose heir is unknown." It has at any rate made many much
loved and honoured, whom the possession of one child would have made
unloved and insignificant. Whence we see that there is no power or
advantage to be got from children, but that the love of them, alike in
mankind as among the animals, proceeds entirely from nature.

Sec. V. What if this natural affection, like many other virtues, is
obscured by badness, as a wilderness chokes a garden? Are we to say that
man does not love himself by nature, because many cut their throats or
throw themselves down precipices? Did not Oedipus put out his eyes? And
did not Hegesias by his speeches make, many of his hearers to commit
suicide?[59] "Fatality has many different aspects."[60] But all these
are diseases and maladies of the soul driving a man contrary to nature
out of his wits: as men themselves testify even against themselves. For
if a sow destroys one of its litter, or a bitch one of its pups, men are
dejected and troubled, and think it an evil omen, and sacrifice to the
gods to avert any bad results, on the score that it is natural to all to
love and cherish their offspring, unnatural to destroy it. For just as
in mines the gold is conspicuous even though mixed up with earth, so
nature manifests plainly love to offspring even in instances of faulty
habits and affections. For when the poor do not rear their children, it
is from fear that if reared to man's estate they would be more than
ought to be the case servile, and have little culture, and be debarred
of all advantages: so, thinking poverty the worst of all evils, they
cannot bear to give it their children, any more than they would some bad
disease.[61]

[44] Much of this is very corrupt in the Greek. I have
tried to get the best sense I could; but it is very
obscure. Certainly Plutarch's style is often very harsh
and crabbed.

[45] The _jus trium liberorum_ assigned certain
privileges to the father of