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On Love To One’s Offspring
by
Sec. V. What if this natural affection, like many other virtues, is obscured by badness, as a wilderness chokes a garden? Are we to say that man does not love himself by nature, because many cut their throats or throw themselves down precipices? Did not Oedipus put out his eyes? And did not Hegesias by his speeches make, many of his hearers to commit suicide?[59] “Fatality has many different aspects.”[60] But all these are diseases and maladies of the soul driving a man contrary to nature out of his wits: as men themselves testify even against themselves. For if a sow destroys one of its litter, or a bitch one of its pups, men are dejected and troubled, and think it an evil omen, and sacrifice to the gods to avert any bad results, on the score that it is natural to all to love and cherish their offspring, unnatural to destroy it. For just as in mines the gold is conspicuous even though mixed up with earth, so nature manifests plainly love to offspring even in instances of faulty habits and affections. For when the poor do not rear their children, it is from fear that if reared to man’s estate they would be more than ought to be the case servile, and have little culture, and be debarred of all advantages: so, thinking poverty the worst of all evils, they cannot bear to give it their children, any more than they would some bad disease.[61]
Footnotes:
[44] Much of this is very corrupt in the Greek. I have tried to get the best sense I could; but it is very obscure. Certainly Plutarch’s style is often very harsh and crabbed.
[45] The jus trium liberorum assigned certain privileges to the father of three children, under the Roman Emperors. Frequent allusions are made to this law by the ancient writers.
[46] Compare Lucretius, i. 10-20.
[47] A quotation from Simonides.
[48] We are not bound to swallow all the ancients tell us. Credat Judaeus Apella!
[49] “Iliad,” xvii. 134-136.
[50] “Iliad,” ix. 324. Quoted again in “How one may be aware of one’s Progress in Virtue,” Sec. 8.
[51] “Odyssey,” xx. 14, 15.
[52] A theatre, that is, in which animals and birds and human beings should meet in common.
[53] All that is said here about the milk, the menses, and the blood, I have been obliged somewhat to condense and paraphrase. The ancients sometimes speak more plainly than we can. Ever and anon one must pare down a phrase or word in translating an ancient author. It is inevitable. Verbum sat sapienti.
[54] Homer, “Iliad,” xvii. 446, 447.
[55] Ibid. xi. 269-271.
[56] A fragment from Euripides, according to Xylander.
[57] Evenus of Paros was an Elegiac Poet.
[58] Aristophanes, “Equites,” 50, 51.
[59] See Cicero “Tuscul.” i. 34.
[60] Euripides, “Alcestis,” 1159; “Helena,” 1688; “Andromache,” 1284; “Bacchae,” 1388.
[61] The discourse breaks off abruptly. It is directed against the Epicureans. It throws ridicule on appealing to the affection of brutes for their offspring instead of appealing to human nature.