ere punished late
and tardily, whereas at present we find fault with the deity for
correcting the character and disposition of same before they commit
crime, from our ignoring that the future deed may be worse and more
dreadful than the past, and the hidden intention than the overt act; for
we are not able fully to understand the reasons why it is better to
leave some alone in their ill deeds, and to arrest others in the
intention; just as no doubt medicine is not appropriate in the case of
some patients, which would be beneficial to others not ill, but yet
perhaps in a more dangerous condition still. And so the gods do not
visit all the offences of parents on their children, but if a good man
is the son of a bad one, as the son of a sickly parent is sometimes of a
good constitution, he is exempt from the punishment of his race, as not
being a participator in its viciousness. But if a young man imitates his
vicious race it is only right that he should inherit the punishment of
their ill deeds, as he would their debts. For Antigonus was not punished
for Demetrius, nor, of the old heroes,[862] Phyleus for Augeas, or
Nestor for Neleus, for though their sires were bad they were good, but
those whose nature liked and approved the vices of their ancestors,
these justice punished, taking vengeance on their similarity in
viciousness. For as the warts and moles and freckles of parents often
skip a generation, and reappear in the grandsons and granddaughters, and
as a Greek woman, that had a black baby and so was accused of adultery,
found out that she was the great granddaughter of an Ethiopian,[863] and
as the son of Pytho the Nisibian who recently died, and who was said to
trace his descent to the Sparti,[864] had the birthmark on his body of
the print of a spear the token of his race, which though long dormant
had come up again as out of the deep, so frequently earlier generations
conceal and suppress the mental idiosyncrasies and passions of their
race, which afterwards nature causes to break out in other members of
the family, and so displays the family bent either to vice or virtue."

Sec. XXII. When I had said thus much I was silent, but Olympicus smiled and
said, "We do not praise you, lest we should seem to forget your promised
story, as though what you had advanced was adequate proof enough, but we
will give our opinion when we have heard it." Then I began as follows.
"Thespesius of Soli, an intimate friend of that Prot