elf to
them. Again, when a she-goat takes a bit of eringo into her mouth, why
do the whole herd stand still, till the goatherd comes up and takes it
out of her mouth? There are other properties that have connection and
communication, and that transfer themselves from one thing to another
with incredible[848] quickness and over immense distances. But we marvel
more at intervals of time than place. And yet is it more wonderful that
Athens should have been smitten with a plague[849] that started in
Arabia, and of which Pericles died and Thucydides fell sick, than that,
when the Delphians and Sybarites became wicked, vengeance should have
fallen on their descendants.[850] For properties have relations and
connections between ends and beginnings, and although the reason of them
may not be known by us, they silently perform their errand."

Sec. XV. "Moreover the public punishments of cities by the gods admits of a
just defence. For a city is one continuous entity, a sort of creature
that never changes from age, or becomes different by time, but is ever
sympathetic with and conformable to itself, and is answerable for
whatever it does or has done for the public weal, as long as the
community by its union and federal bonds preserves its unity. For he
that would make several, or rather any quantity of, cities out of one by
process of time would be like a person who made one human being several,
by regarding him now as an old man, now as a young man, now as a
stripling. Or rather this kind of reasoning resembles the arguments of
Epicharmus, from whom the sophists borrowed the piled-up method of
reasoning,[851] for example, he incurred the debt long ago, so he does
not owe it now, being a different person, or, he was invited to dinner
yesterday, but he comes uninvited to-day, for he is another person. And
yet age produces greater changes in any individual than it does commonly
in cities. For any one would recognize Athens again if he had not seen
it for thirty years, for the present habits and feelings of the people
there, their business, amusements, likes and dislikes, are just what
they were long ago; whereas a man's friend or acquaintance meeting him
after some time would hardly recognize his appearance, for the change of
character easily introduced by every thought and deed, feeling and
custom, produce a wonderful strangeness and novelty in the same person.
And yet a man is reckoned to be the same person from birth to death, an