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Sec. XVIII. What I have said hitherto is apropos to my subject: I will now speak a word to the men. Parents must not be over harsh and rough in their natures, but must often forgive their sons’ offences, remembering that they themselves were once young. And just as doctors by infusing a sweet flavour into their bitter potions find delight a passage to benefit, so fathers must temper the severity of their censure by mildness; and sometimes relax and slacken the reins of their sons’ desires, and again tighten them; and must be especially easy in respect to their faults, or if they are angry must soon cool down. For it is better for a father to be hot-tempered than sullen, for to continue hostile and irreconcilable looks like hating one’s son. And it is good to seem not to notice some faults, but to extend to them the weak sight and deafness of old age, so as seeing not to see, and hearing not to hear, their doings. We tolerate the faults of our friends; why should we not that of our sons? often even our slaves’ drunken debauches we do not expose. Have you been rather near? spend more freely. Have you been vexed? let the matter pass. Has your son deceived you by the help of a slave? do not be angry. Did he take a yoke of oxen from the field, did he come home smelling of yesterday’s debauch? wink at it. Is he scented like a perfume shop? say nothing. Thus frisky youth gets broken in.[40]

Sec. XIX. Those of our sons who are given to pleasure and pay little heed to rebuke, we must endeavour to marry, for marriage is the surest restraint upon youth. And we must marry our sons to wives not much richer or better born, for the proverb is a sound one, “Marry in your own walk of life.”[41] For those who marry wives superior to themselves in rank are not so much the husbands of their wives as unawares slaves to their dowries.[42]

Sec. XX. I shall add a few remarks, and then bring my subject to a close. Before all things fathers must, by a good behaviour, set a good example to their sons, that, looking at their lives as a mirror, they may turn away from bad deeds and words. For those fathers who censure their sons’ faults while they themselves commit the same, are really their own accusers, if they know it not, under their sons’ name; and those who live a depraved life have no right to censure their slaves, far less their sons. And besides this they will become counsellors and teachers of their sons in wrongdoing; for where old men are shameless youths will of a certainty have no modesty. We must therefore take all pains to teach our sons self-control, emulating the conduct of Eurydice, who, though an Illyrian and more than a barbarian, to teach her sons educated herself though late in life, and her love to them is well depicted in the inscription which she offered to the Muses: “Eurydice of Hierapolis made this offering to the Muses, having conceived a vast love for knowledge. For when a mother with sons full-grown she learnt letters, the preservers of knowledge.”

To carry out all these precepts would be perhaps a visionary scheme; but to attain to many, though it would need a happy disposition and much care, is a thing possible to human nature.[43]

Footnotes:

[3] Euripides, “Here. Fur.” 1261, 1262.

[4] Euripides, “Hippol.” 424, 425.

[5] Cleophantus is the name given to this lad by other writers.

[6] Compare Sophocles, “Oedipus Tyrannus,” 112, 113.

[7] The Thessalians were very pugnacious. Cf. Isocrates, “Oratio de Pace,” p. 316. [Greek: ohi men (Thettaloi) sphisin autois haei polemousin].

[8] A proverbial expression among the ancients for earliest childhood. See Erasmus, “Adagia.”

[9] Plato, “Republic,” ii. p. 429, E.