last question, as if it were a
combatant in reserve, since the other two questions have been debated
sufficiently. For as to the charge and bold accusation that Euripides
brings against the gods, for visiting the sins of the parents upon the
children, consider that even those of us who are silent agree with
Euripides. For if the guilty were punished themselves there would be no
further need to punish the innocent, for it is not fair to punish even
the guilty twice for the same offence, whereas if the gods through
easiness remit the punishment of the wicked, and exact it later on from
the innocent, they do not well to compensate for their tardiness by
injustice. Such conduct resembles the story told of AEsop's coming to
this very spot,[837] with money from Croesus, to offer a splendid
sacrifice to the god, and to give four minae to each of the Delphians.
And some quarrel or difference belike ensuing between him and the
Delphians here, he offered the sacrifice, but sent the money back to
Sardis, as though the Delphians were not worthy to receive that benefit,
so they fabricated against him a charge of sacrilege, and put him to
death by throwing him headlong down yonder rock called Hyampia. And in
consequence the god is said to have been wroth with them, and to have
brought dearth on their land, and all kinds of strange diseases, so that
they went round at the public festivals of the Greeks, and invited by
proclamation whoever wished to take satisfaction of them for AEsop's
death. And three generations afterwards came Idmon[838] a Samian, no
relation of AEsop's, but a descendant of those who had purchased AEsop as
a slave at Samos, and by giving him satisfaction the Delphians got rid
of their trouble. And it was in consequence of this, they say, that the
punishment of those guilty of sacrilege was transferred from Hyampia to
Nauplia.[839] And even great lovers of Alexander, as we are, do not
praise his destroying the city of the Branchidae and putting everybody in
it to death because their great-grandfathers betrayed the temple at
Miletus.[840] And Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, laughing and
jeering at the Corcyraeans for asking him why he wasted their island,
replied, "Because, by Zeus, your forefathers welcomed Odysseus." And
when the people of Ithaca likewise complained of his soldiers carrying
off their sheep, he said, "Your king came to us, and actually put out
the shepherd's eye to boot."[841] And is it not strang