d
similarly we think it right for a city always remaining the same to be
liable to reproach for the ill deeds of its former inhabitants, on the
same principle as it enjoys its ancient glory and power; or shall we,
without being aware of it, throw everything into Heraclitus' river, into
which he says a person cannot step twice,[852] since nature is ever
changing and altering everything?"

Sec. XVI. "If then a city is one continuous entity, so of course is a race
that starts from one beginning, that can trace back intimate union and
similarity of faculties, for that which is begot is not, like some
production of art, unlike the begetter, for it proceeds from him, and is
not merely produced by him, so that it appropriately receives his share,
whether that be honour or punishment. And if I should not seem to be
trifling, I should say that the bronze statue of Cassander melted down
by the Athenians, and the body of Dionysius thrown out of their
territory by the Syracusans after his death, were treated more unjustly
than punishing their posterity would have been. For there was none of
the nature of Cassander in the statue, and the soul of Dionysius had
left his dead body before this outrage, whereas Nysaeus and
Apollocrates,[853] Antipater and Philip,[854] and similarly other sons
of wicked parents had innate in them a good deal of their fathers, and
that no listless or inactive element, but one by which they lived and
were nourished, and by which their ideas were controlled. Nor is it at
all strange or absurd that some should have their fathers'
characteristics. And to speak generally, as in surgery whatever is
useful is also just, and that person would be ridiculous who should say
it was unjust to cauterize the thumb when the hip-joints were in pain,
and to lance the stomach when the liver was inflamed, or when oxen were
tender in their hoofs to anoint the tips of their horns, so he that
looks for any other justice in punishment than curing vice, and is
dissatisfied if surgery is employed to one part to benefit another, as
surgeons open a vein to relieve ophthalmia, can see nothing beyond the
evidence of the senses, and does not remember that even a schoolmaster
by correcting one lad admonishes others, and that by decimation a
general makes his whole army obey. And so not only by one part to
another comes benefit, but also to the soul through the soul, even more
often than to the body through the body, come certain disposit