[824]

"and yet that son of Copreus never performed any brilliant or notable
action: but the descendants of Sisyphus and Autolycus and Phlegyas
nourished in the glory and virtues of great kings. Pericles also sprang
of a family under a curse,[825] and Pompey the Great at Rome was the son
of Pompeius Strabo, whose dead body the Roman people cast out and
trampled upon, so great was their hatred of him. How is it strange then,
since the farmer does not cut down the thorn till he has taken his
asparagus, nor do the Libyans burn the twigs till they have gathered the
ledanum, that god does not exterminate the wicked and rugged root of an
illustrious and royal race till it has produced its fit fruit? For it
would have been better for the Phocians to have lost ten thousand of the
oxen and horses of Iphitus, and for more gold and silver to have gone
from Delphi, than that Odysseus and AEsculapius should not have been
born, nor those others who from bad and wicked men became good and
useful."

Sec. VIII. "And do you not all think that it is better that punishment
should take place at the fitting time and in the fitting manner rather
than quickly and on the spur of the moment? Consider the case of
Callippus, who with the very dagger with which he slew Dion, pretending
to be his friend, was afterwards slain by his own friends. And when
Mitius the Argive was killed in a tumult, a brazen statue in the
market-place fell on his murderer and killed him during the public
games. And of course, Patrocleas, you know all about Bessus the Paeonian,
and about Aristo the Oetaean leader of mercenaries." "Not I, by Zeus,"
said Patrocleas, "but I should like to hear." "Aristo," I continued, "at
the permission of the tyrants removed the necklace of Eriphyle[826]
which was hung up in this temple, and took it to his wife as a present;
but his son being angry with his mother for some reason or other, set
the house on fire, and burnt all that were in it. As for Bessus, it
seems he had killed his father, though his crime was long undiscovered.
But at last going to sup with some strangers, he knocked down a nest of
swallows, pricking it with his lance, and killed all the young swallows.
And when the company said, as it was likely they would, 'Whatever makes
you act in such a strange manner?' 'Have they not,' he replied, 'been
long bearing false witness against me, crying out that I had killed my
father?' And the company, astonished at his answer, laid t