Chapter IX: Introduction (8)

who laments not only his misfortunes but his crimes, finds his agonies sharpened by the turpitude of the fact. Hence it comes to pass, that neither rich furniture nor abundance of gold, not a descent from an illustrious family or greatness of authority, not eloquence and all the charms of speaking can procure so great a serenity of life as a mind free from guilt, kept untainted not only from actions but purposes that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted but undisturbed; the fountain will run clear and unsullied; and the streams that flow from it will be just and honest deeds, ecstasies of satisfaction, a brisk energy of spirit which makes a man an enthusiast in his joy, and a tenacious memory sweeter than hope, which (as Pindar saith) with a virgin warmth cherisheth old age.[94] For as censers, even after they are empty, do for a long time after retain their fragrancy, as Carneades expresseth it, so the good actions of a wise man perfume his mind, and leave a rich scent behind them; so that joy is, as it were, watered with these essences, and owes its flourishing to them. This makes him pity those who not only bewail but accuse human life, as if it were only a region of calamities and a place of banishment appointed for their souls.

20. That saying of Diogenes extremely pleaseth me, who, seeing one sprucing himself up very neatly to go to a great entertainment, asked him whether every day was not a festival to a good man. And certainly, that which makes it the more splendid festival is sobriety. For the world is a spacious and beautiful temple; this a man is brought into as soon as he is born, where he is not to be a dull spectator of immovable and lifeless images made by human hands, but is to contemplate sublime things, which (as Plato tells us) the divine mind has exhibited to our senses as likenesses of things in the ideal world, having the principles of life and motion in themselves; such as are the sun, moon, and stars; rivers which are still supplied with fresh accessions of water; and the earth, which with a motherly indulgence suckles the plants and feeds her sensitive creatures. Now since life is the introduction and the most perfect initiation into these mysteries, it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness and tranquillity. For we are not to imitate the little vulgar, who wait impatiently for the jolly days which are consecrated to Saturn, Bacchus, and Minerva, that they may be merry with hired laughter, and pay such a price to the mimic and stage-dancer for their diversions. At all these games and ceremonies we sit silent and composed; for no man laments when he is initiated in the rites, when he beholds the games of Apollo, or drinks in the Saturnalia. But when the Gods order the scenes at their own festivals, or initiate us into their own mysteries, the enjoyment becomes sordid to us; and we wear out our wretched lives in care, heaviness of spirit, and bitter complaints.

Men are delighted with the harmonious touches of an instrument; they are pleased likewise with the melody of the birds; and it is not without some recreation that they behold the beasts frolicsome and sporting; but when the frisk is over and they begin to bellow and curl their brows, the ungrateful noise and their angry looks offend them. But as for their own lives, they suffer them to pass away without a smile, to boil with passions, be involved in business, and eaten out with endless cares. And to ease them of their solicitudes, they will not seek out for remedies themselves, nor will they even hearken to the reasons or admit the consolations of their friends. But if they would only give ear to these, they might bear their present condition without fault-finding, remember the past with joy and gratitude, and live without fear or distrust, looking forward to the future with a joyful and lightsome hope.

OF SUPERSTITION OR INDISCREET DEVOTION.

1. Our great ignorance of the Divine Beings most naturally runs in two streams; whereof the one in harsh and coarse tempers, as in dry and stubborn soils, produces atheism, and the other in the more tender and flexible, as in moist and yielding grounds, produces superstition. Indeed, every wrong judgment, in matters of this nature especially, is a great unhappiness to us; but it is here attended with a passion, or disorder of the mind, of a worse consequence than itself. For every such passion is, as it were, an error inflamed. And as a dislocation is the more painful when it is attended with a bruise, so are the perversions of our understandings, when attended with passion. Is a man of opinion that atoms and a void were the first origins of things? It is indeed a mistaken conceit, but makes no ulcer, no shooting, no searching pain. But is a man of opinion that wealth is his last good? This error contains in it a canker; it preys upon a man’s spirits, it transports him, it suffers him not to sleep, it makes him horn-mad, it carries him over headlong precipices, strangles him, and makes him unable to speak his mind. Are there some again, that take virtue and vice for substantial bodies? This may be sottish conceit indeed, but yet it bespeaks neither lamentations nor groans. But such opinions and conceits as these,—

Poor virtue! thou wast but a name, and mere jest,
And I, choust fool, did practise thee in earnest,

and for thee have I quitted injustice, the way to wealth, and excess, the parent of all true pleasure,—these are the thoughts that call at once for our pity and indignation; for they will engender swarms of diseases, like fly-blows and vermin, in our minds.

2. To return then to our subject, atheism, which is a false persuasion that there are no blessed and incorruptible beings, tends yet, by its disbelief of a Divinity, to bring men to a sort of unconcernedness and indifferency of temper; for the design of those that deny a God is to ease themselves of his fear. But superstition appears by its appellation to be a distempered opinion and conceit, productive of such mean and abject apprehensions as debase and break a man’s spirit, while he thinks there are divine powers indeed, but withal sour and vindictive ones. So that the atheist is not at all, and the superstitious is perversely, affected with the thoughts of God; ignorance depriving the one of the sense of his goodness, and superadding to the other a persuasion of his cruelty. Atheism then is but false reasoning single, but superstition is a disorder of the mind produced by this false reasoning.

3. Every distemper of our minds is truly base and ignoble; yet some passions are accompanied with a sort of levity, that makes men appear gay, prompt, and erect; but none, we may say, are wholly destitute of force for action. But the common charge upon all sorts of passions is, that they excite and urge the reason, forcing it by their violent stings. Fear alone, being equally destitute of reason and audacity, renders our whole irrational part stupid, distracted, and unserviceable. Therefore it is called δεῖμα because it _binds_, and τάρβος because it _distracts_ the mind.[95] But of all fears, none so dozes and confounds as that of superstition. He fears not the sea that never goes to sea; nor a battle, that follows not the camp; nor robbers, that stirs not abroad; nor malicious informers, that is a poor man; nor emulation, that leads a private life; nor earthquakes, that dwells in Gaul; nor thunderbolts, that dwells in Ethiopia: but he that dreads divine powers dreads every thing, the land, the sea, the air, the sky, the dark, the light, a sound, a silence, a dream. Even slaves forget their masters in their sleep; sleep lightens the irons of the fettered; their angry sores, mortified gangrenes, and pinching pains allow them some intermission at night.

Dear sleep, sweet easer of my irksome grief,
Pleasant thou art! how welcome thy relief![96]

Superstition will not permit a man to say this. That alone will give no truce at night, nor suffer the poor soul so much as to breathe or look up, or respite her sour and dismal thoughts of God a moment; but raises in the sleep of the superstitious, as in the place of the damned, certain prodigious forms and ghastly spectres, and perpetually tortures the unhappy soul, chasing her out of sleep into dreams, lashed and tormented by her own self, as by some other, and charged by herself with dire and portentous injunctions. Neither have they, when awake, enough sense to slight and smile at all this, or to be pleased with the thought that nothing of all that terrified them was real; but they still fear an empty shadow, that could never mean them any ill, and cheat themselves afresh at noonday, and keep a bustle, and are at expense upon the next fortune-teller or vagrant that shall but tell them:—

If in a dream hobgoblin thou hast seen,
Or felt’st the rambling guards o’ th’ Fairy Queen,

send for some old witch who can purify thee, go dip thyself in the sea, and then sit down upon the bare ground the rest of the day.

O that our Greeks should found such barbarous rites,[97]

as tumbling in mire, rolling themselves in dunghills, keeping of Sabbaths, monstrous prostrations, long and obstinate sittings in a place, and vile and abject adorations, and all for vain superstition! They that were careful to preserve good singing used to direct the practisers of that science to sing with their mouths in their true and proper postures. Should not we then admonish those that would address themselves to the heavenly powers to do that also with a true and natural mouth, lest, while we are so solicitous that the tongue of a sacrifice be pure and right, we distort and abuse our own with silly and canting language, and thereby expose the dignity of our divine and ancient piety to contempt and raillery? It was not unpleasantly said somewhere by the comedian to those that adorned their beds with the needless ornaments of silver and gold: Since the Gods have given us nothing gratis except sleep, why will you make that so costly? It might as well be said to the superstitious bigot: Since the Gods have bestowed sleep on us, to the intent we may take some rest and forget our sorrows, why will you needs make it a continual irksome tormentor, when you know your poor soul hath ne’er another sleep to betake herself to? Heraclitus saith: They who are awake have a world in common amongst them; but they that are asleep are retired each to his own private world. But the frightful visionary hath ne’er a world at all, either in common with others or in private to himself; for neither can he use his reason when awake, nor be free from his fears when asleep; but he hath his reason always asleep, and his fears always awake; nor hath he either an hiding-place or refuge.

4. Polycrates was formidable at Samos, and so was Periander at Corinth; but no man ever feared either of them that had made his escape to an equal and free government. But he that dreads the divine government, as a sort of inexorable and implacable tyranny, whither can he remove? Whither can he fly? What land, what sea can he find where God is not? Wretched and miserable man! in what corner of the world canst thou so hide thyself, as to think thou hast now escaped him? Slaves are allowed by the laws, when they despair of obtaining their freedom, to demand a second sale, in hopes of kinder masters. But superstition allows of no change of Gods; nor could he indeed find a God he would not fear, that dreads his own and his ancestors’ guardians, that quivers at his preservers and benign patrons, and that trembles and shakes at those of whom we ask wealth, plenty, concord, peace, and direction to the best words and actions. Slaves again account it their misfortune to become such, and can say,—

Both man and wife in direful slavery,
And with ill masters too! Fate’s worst decree!

But how much less tolerable, think you, is their condition, that can never possibly run away, escape, or desert? A slave may fly to an altar, and many temples afford sanctuary to thieves; and they that are pursued by an enemy think themselves safe if they can catch hold on a statue or a shrine. But the superstitious fears, quivers, and dreads most of all there, where others when fearfullest take greatest courage. Never hale a superstitious man from the altar. It is his place of torment; he is there chastised. In one word, death itself, the end of life, puts no period to this vain and foolish dread; but it transcends those limits, and extends its fears beyond the grave, adding to it the imagination of immortal ills; and after respite from past sorrows, it fancies it shall next enter upon never-ending ones. I know not what gates of hell open themselves from beneath, rivers of fire together with Stygian torrents present themselves to view; a gloomy darkness appears full of ghastly spectres and horrid shapes, with dreadful aspects and doleful groans, together with judges and tormentors, pits and caverns, full of millions of miseries and woes. Thus does wretched superstition bring inevitably upon itself by its fancies even those calamities which it has once escaped.

5. Atheism is attended with none of this. True indeed, the ignorance is very lamentable and sad. For to be blind or to see amiss in matters of this consequence cannot but be a fatal unhappiness to the mind, it being then deprived of the fairest and brightest of its many eyes, the knowledge of God. Yet this opinion (as hath been said) is not necessarily accompanied with any disordering, ulcerous, frightful, or slavish passion. Plato thinks the Gods never gave men music, the science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to tickle the ear, but in order that the confusion and disorder in the periods and harmonies of the soul, which often for want of the Muses and of grace break forth into extravagance through intemperance and license, might be sweetly recalled, and artfully wound up to their former consent and agreement.

No animal accurst by Jove
Music’s sweet charms can ever love,[98]

saith Pindar. For all such will rave and grow outrageous straight. Of this we have an instance in tigers, which (as they say), if they hear but a tabor beat near them, will rage immediately and run stark mad, and in fine tear themselves in pieces. They certainly suffer the less inconvenience of the two, who either through defect of hearing or utter deafness are wholly insensible of music, and therefore unmoved by it. It was a great misfortune indeed to Tiresias, that he wanted sight to see his friends and children; but a far greater to Athamas and Agave, to see them in the shape of lions and bucks. And it had been happier for Hercules, when he was distracted, if he could have neither seen nor known his children, than to have used like the worst of enemies those he so tenderly loved.

6. Well then, is not this the very case of the atheist, compared with the superstitious? The former sees not the Gods at all, the latter believes that he really sees them; the former wholly overlooks them, but the latter mistakes their benignity for terror, their paternal affection for tyranny, their providence for cruelty, and their frank simplicity for savageness and brutality.

Again, the workman in copper, stone, and wax can persuade such that the Gods are in human shape; for so they make them, so they draw them, and so they worship them. But they will not hear either philosophers or statesmen that describe the majesty of the Divinity as accompanied by goodness, magnanimity, benignity, and beneficence. The one therefore hath neither a sense nor belief of that divine good he might participate of; and the other dreads and fears it. In a word, atheism is an absolute insensibility to God (or _want of passion_), which does not recognize goodness; while superstition is a blind heap of passions, which imagine the good to be evil. They are afraid of their Gods, and yet run to them; they fawn upon them, and reproach them; they invoke them, and accuse them. It is the common destiny of humanity not to enjoy uninterrupted felicity.

Nor pains, nor age, nor labor they e’er bore,
Nor visited rough Acheron’s hoarse shore,

saith Pindar of the Gods; but human passions and affairs are liable to a strange multiplicity of uncertain accidents and contingencies.

7. Consider well the atheist, and observe his behavior first in things not under the disposal of his will. If he be otherwise a man of good temper, he is silent under his present circumstances, and is providing himself with either remedies or palliatives for his misfortunes. But if he be a fretful and impatient man, his whole complaint is against Fortune. He cries out, that nothing is managed here below either after the rules of a strict justice or the orderly course of a providence, and that all human affairs are hurried and driven without either premeditation or distinction. This is not the demeanor of the superstitious; if the least thing do but happen amiss to him, he sits him down plunged in sorrow, and raises himself a vast tempest of intolerable and incurable passions, and presents his fancy with nothing but terrors, fears, surmises, and distractions, until he hath overwhelmed himself with groans and fears. He blames neither man, nor Fortune, nor the times, nor himself; but charges all upon God, from whom he fancies a whole deluge of vengeance to be pouring down upon him; and, as if he were not only unfortunate but in open hostility with Heaven, he imagines that he is punished by God and is now making satisfaction for his past crimes, and saith that his sufferings are all just and owing to himself. Again, when the atheist falls sick, he reckons up and calls to his remembrance his several surfeits and debauches, his irregular course of living, excessive labors, or unaccustomed changes of air or climate. Likewise, when he miscarries in any public administration, and either falls into popular disgrace or comes to be ill presented to his prince, he searches for the causes in himself and those about him, and asks,

Where have I erred? What have I done amiss?
What should be done by me that undone is?[99]

But the fanciful superstitionist accounts every little distemper in his body or decay in his estate, the death of his children, and crosses and disappointments in matters relating to the public, as the immediate strokes of God and the incursions of some vindictive daemon. And therefore he dares not attempt to remove or relieve his disasters, or to use the least remedy or to oppose himself to them, for fear he should seem to struggle with God and to make resistance under correction. If he be sick, he thrusts away the physician; if he be in any grief, he shuts out the philosopher that would comfort and advise him. Let me alone, saith he, to pay for my sins: I am a cursed and vile offender, and detestable both to God and angels. Now suppose a man unpersuaded of a Divinity in never so great sorrow and trouble, you may yet possibly wipe away his tears, cut his hair, and force away his mourning; but how will you come at this superstitious penitentiary, either to speak to him or to bring him any relief? He sits him down without doors in sackcloth, or wrapped up in foul and nasty rags; yea, many times rolls himself naked in mire, repeating over I know not what sins and transgressions of his own; as, how he did eat this thing and drink the other thing, or went some way prohibited by his Genius. But suppose he be now at his best, and laboring under only a mild attack of superstition; you shall even then find him sitting down in the midst of his house all becharmed and bespelled, with a parcel of old women about him, tugging all they can light on, and hanging it upon him as (to use an expression of Bion’s) upon some nail or peg.

8. It is reported of Teribazus that, being seized by the Persians, he drew out his scimitar, and being a very stout person, defended himself bravely; but when they cried out and told him he was apprehended by the king’s order, he immediately put up his sword, and presented his hands to be bound. Is not this the very case of the superstitious? Others can oppose their misfortunes, repel their troubles, and furnish themselves with retreats, or means of avoiding the stroke of things not under the disposal of their wills; but the superstitious person, without anybody’s speaking to him,—but merely upon his own saying to himself, This thou undergoest, vile wretch, by the direction of Providence, and by Heaven’s just appointment,—immediately casts away all hope, surrenders himself up, and shuns and affronts his friends that would relieve him. Thus do these sottish fears oftentimes convert tolerable evils into fatal and insupportable ones. The ancient Midas (as the story goes of him), being much troubled and disquieted by certain dreams, grew so melancholy thereupon, that he made himself away by drinking bull’s blood. Aristodemus, king of Messenia, when a war broke out betwixt the Lacedaemonians and the Messenians, upon some dogs howling like wolves, and grass coming up about his ancestors’ domestic altar, and his divines presaging ill upon it, fell into such a fit of sullenness and despair that he slew himself. And perhaps it had been better if the Athenian general, Nicias, had been eased of his folly the same way that Midas and Aristodemus were, than for him to sit still for fear of a lunar eclipse, while he was invested by an enemy, and so be himself made a prisoner, together with an army of forty thousand men (that were all either slain or taken), and die ingloriously. There was nothing formidable in the inter-position of the earth betwixt the sun and the moon, neither was there any thing dreadful in the shadow’s meeting the moon at the proper time: no, the dreadfulness lay here, that the darkness of ignorance should blind and befool a man’s reason at a time when he had most occasion to use it.

Glaucus, behold!
The sea with billows deep begins to roll;
The seas begin in azure rods to lie;
A teeming cloud of pitch hangs on the sky
Right o’er Gyre rocks; there is a tempest nigh;[100]

which as soon as the pilot sees, he falls to his prayers and invokes his tutelar daemons, but neglects not in the mean time to hold to the rudder and let down the mainyard; and so,

By gathering in his sails, with mighty pain,
Escapes the hell-pits of the raging main.

Hesiod[101] directs his husbandman, before he either plough or sow, to pray to the infernal Jove and the venerable Ceres, but with his hand upon the plough-tail. Homer acquaints us how Ajax, being to engage in a single combat with Hector, bade the Grecians pray to the Gods for him; and while they were at their devotions, he was putting on his armor. Likewise, after Agamemnon had thus prepared his soldiers for the fight,—

Each make his spear to glitter as the sun,
Each see his warlike target well hung on,—

he then prayed,—

Grant me, great Jove, to throw down Priam’s roof.[102]

For God is the brave man’s hope, and not the coward’s excuse. The Jews indeed once sat on their tails,—it being forsooth their Sabbath day,—and suffered their enemies to rear their scaling-ladders and make themselves masters of their walls, and so lay still until they were caught like so many trout in the drag-net of their own superstition.[103]

9. Such then is the behavior of superstition in times of adversity, and in things out of the power of man’s will. Nor doth it a jot excel atheism in the more agreeable and pleasurable part of our lives. Now what we esteem the most agreeable things in human life are our holidays, temple-feasts, initiatings, processionings, with our public prayers and solemn devotions. Mark we now the atheist’s behavior here. ’Tis true, he laughs at all that is done, with a frantic and sardonic laughter, and now and then whispers to a confidant of his, The devil is in these people sure, that can imagine God can be taken with these fooleries, but this is the worst of his disasters. But now the superstitious man would fain be pleasant and gay, but cannot for his heart. The whole town is filled with odors of incense and perfumes, and at the same time a mixture of hymns and sighs fills his poor soul.[104] He looks pale with a garland on his head, he sacrifices and fears, prays with a faltering tongue, and offers incense with a trembling hand. In a word, he utterly baffles that saying of Pythagoras, that we are then best when we come near the Gods. For the superstitious person is then in his worst and most pitiful condition, when he approaches the shrines and temples of the Gods.

10. So that I cannot but wonder at those that charge atheism with impiety, and in the mean time acquit superstition. Anaxagoras was indicted of blasphemy for having affirmed the sun to be a red-hot stone; yet the Cimmerians were never much blamed for denying his being. What? Is he that holds there is no God guilty of impiety, and is not he that describes him as the superstitious do much more guilty? I, for my own part, had much rather people should say of me, that there neither is nor ever was such a man as Plutarch, than they should say: “Plutarch is an unsteady, fickle, froward, vindictive, and touchy fellow; if you invite others to sup with you, and chance to leave out Plutarch, or if some business falls out that you cannot wait at his door with the morning salute, or if when you meet with him you don’t speak to him, he’ll fasten upon you somewhere with his teeth and bite the part through, or catch one of your children and cane him, or turn his beast into your corn and spoil your crop.” When Timotheus the musician was one day singing at Athens an hymn to Diana, in which among other things was this,—

Mad, raving, tearing, foaming Deity,—

Cinesias, the lyric poet, stood up from the midst of the spectators, and spoke aloud: I wish thee with all my heart such a Goddess to thy daughter, Timotheus. Such like, nay worse, are the conceits of the superstitious about this Goddess Diana:—

Thou dost on the bed-clothes jump,
And there liest like a lump.
Thou dost tantalize the bride,
When love’s charms by thee are tied.
Thou look’st grim and full of dread,
When thou walk’st to find the dead.
Thou down chairs and tables rumbl’st,
When with Oberon thou tumbl’st.[105]

Nor have they any milder sentiments of Apollo, Juno, or Venus; for they are equally scared with them all. Alas! what could poor Niobe ever say that could be so reflecting upon the honor of Latona, as that which superstition makes fools believe of her? Niobe, it seems, had given her some hard words, for which she fairly shot her

Six daughters, and six sons full in their prime;[106]

so impatient was she, and insatiate with the calamities of another. Now if the Goddess was really thus choleric and vindictive and so highly incensed with bad language, and if she had not the wisdom to smile at human frailty and ignorance, but suffered herself to be thus transported with passion, I much marvel she did not shoot them too that told this cruel story of her, and charged her both in speech and writing with so much spleen and rancor. We oft accuse Queen Hecuba of barbarous and savage bitterness, for having once said in Homer,—

Would God I had his liver ’twixt my teeth;[107]

yet the superstitious believe, if a man taste of a minnow or bleak, the Syrian Goddess will eat his shins through, fill his body with sores, and dissolve his liver.

11. Is it a sin then to speak amiss of the Gods, and is it not to think amiss of them? And is not thinking the cause of speaking ill? For the only reason of our dislike to detraction is that we look upon it as a token of ill-will to us; and we therefore take those for our enemies that misrepresent us, because we look upon them as untrusty and disaffected. You see then what the superstitious think of the divinity, while they fancy the Gods such heady, faithless, fickle, revengeful, cruel, and fretful things. The consequence of which is that the superstitious person must needs both fear and hate them at once. And indeed, how can he otherwise choose, while he thinks the greatest calamities he either doth now or must hereafter undergo are wholly owing to them? Now he that both hates and fears the Gods must of necessity be their enemy. And if he trembles, fears, prostrates, sacrifices, and sits perpetually in their temples, that is no marvel at all. For the very worst of tyrants are complimented and attended, yea, have statues of gold erected to them, by those who in private hate them and wag their heads. Hermolaus waited on Alexander, and Pausanias was of Philip’s guard, and so was Chaerea of Caligula’s; yet every one of these said, I warrant you, in his heart as he went along,—

Had I a power as my will is good,
Know this, bold tyrant, I would have thy blood.[108]

The atheist believes there are no Gods; the superstitious would have none, but is a believer against his will, and would be an infidel if he durst. He would be as glad to ease himself of the burthen of his fear, as Tantalus would be to slip his head from under the great stone that hangs over him, and would bless the condition of the atheist as absolute freedom, compared with his own. The atheist now has nothing to do with superstition; while the superstitious is an atheist in his heart, but is too much a coward to think as he is inclined.

12. Moreover, atheism hath no hand at all in causing superstition; but superstition not only gave atheism its first birth, but serves it ever since by giving it its best apology for existing, which, although it be neither a good nor a fair one, is yet the most specious and colorable. For men were not at first made atheists by any fault they found in the heavens or stars, or in the seasons of the year, or in those revolutions or motions of the sun about the earth that make the day and night; nor yet by observing any mistake or disorder either in the breeding of animals or the production of fruits. No, it was the uncouth actions and ridiculous and senseless passions of superstition, her canting words, her foolish gestures, her charms, her magic, her freakish processions, her taborings, her foul expiations, her vile methods of purgation, and her barbarous and inhuman penances, and bemirings at the temples,—it was these, I say, that gave occasion to many to affirm, it would be far happier there were no Gods at all than for them to be pleased and delighted with such fantastic toys, and to thus abuse their votaries, and to be incensed and pacified with trifles.

13. Had it not been much better for the so much famed Gauls and Scythians to have neither thought nor imagined nor heard any thing of their Gods, than to have believed them such as would be pleased with the blood of human sacrifices, and would account such for the most complete and meritorious of expiations? How much better had it been for the Carthaginians to have had either a Critias or a Diagoras for their first lawmaker, that so they might have believed in neither God nor spirits, than to make such offerings to Saturn as they made?—not such as Empedocles speaks of, where he thus touches the sacrifices of beasts:—

The sire lifts up his dear beloved son,
Who first some other form and shape did take;
He doth him slay and sacrifice anon,
And therewith vows and foolish prayers doth make.

But they knowingly and wittingly themselves devoted their own children; and they that had none of their own bought of some poor people, and then sacrificed them like lambs or pigeons, the poor mother standing by the while without either a sigh or tear; and if by chance she fetched a sigh or let fall a tear, she lost the price of her child, but it was nevertheless sacrificed. All the places round the image were in the mean time filled with the noise of hautboys and tabors, to drown the poor infants’ crying. Suppose we now the Typhons and Giants should depose the Gods and make themselves masters of mankind, what sort of sacrifices, think you, would they expect? Or what other expiations would they require? The queen of King Xerxes, Amestris, buried twelve men alive, as a sacrifice to Pluto to prolong her own life; and yet Plato saith, This God is called in Greek Hades, because he is placid, wise, and wealthy, and retains the souls of men by persuasion and oratory. That great naturalist Xenophanes, seeing the Egyptians beating their breasts and lamenting at the solemn times of their devotions, gave them this pertinent and seasonable admonition: If they are Gods (said he), don’t cry for them; and if they are men, don’t sacrifice to them.

14. There is certainly no infirmity belonging to us that contains such a multiplicity of errors and fond passions, or that consists of such incongruous and incoherent opinions, as this of superstition doth. It behooves us therefore to do our utmost to escape it; but withal, we must see we do it safely and prudently, and not rashly and inconsiderately, as people run from the incursions of robbers or from fire, and fall into bewildered and untrodden paths full of pits and precipices. For so some, while they would avoid superstition, leap over the golden mean of true piety into the harsh and coarse extreme of atheism.

THE APOPHTHEGMS OR REMARKABLE SAYINGS OF KINGS AND GREAT COMMANDERS.

PLUTARCH TO TRAJAN THE EMPEROR WISHETH PROSPERITY.

Artaxerxes, King of Persia, O Caesar Trajan, greatest of princes, esteemed it no less royal and bountiful kindly and cheerfully to accept small, than to make great presents; and when he was in a progress, and a common country laborer, having nothing else, took up water with both his hands out of the river and presented it to him, he smiled and received it pleasantly, measuring the kindness not by the value of the gift, but by the affection of the giver. And Lycurgus ordained in Sparta very cheap sacrifices, that they might always worship the Gods readily and easily with such things as were at hand. Upon the same account, when I bring a mean and slender present of the common first-fruits of philosophy, accept also (I beseech you) with my good affection these short memorials, if they may contribute any thing to the knowledge of the manners and dispositions of great men, which are more apparent in their words than in their actions. My former treatise contains the lives of the most eminent princes, lawgivers, and generals, both Romans and Grecians; but most of their actions admit a mixture of fortune, whereas such speeches and answers as happened amidst their employments, passions, and events afford us (as in a looking-glass) a clear discovery of each particular temper and disposition. Accordingly Siramnes the Persian, to such as wondered that he usually spoke like a wise man and yet was unsuccessful in his designs, replied: I myself am master of my words, but the king and fortune have power over my actions. In the former treatise speeches and actions are mingled together, and require a reader that is at leisure; but in this the speeches, being as it were the seeds and the illustrations of those lives, are placed by themselves, and will not (I think) be tedious to you, since they will give you in a few words a review of many memorable persons.

CYRUS. The Persians affect such as are hawk-nosed and think them most beautiful, because Cyrus, the most beloved of their kings, had a nose of that shape. Cyrus said that those that would not do good for themselves ought to be compelled to do good for others; and that nobody ought to govern, unless he was better than those he governed. When the Persians were desirous to exchange their hills and rocks for a plain and soft country, he would not suffer them, saying that both the seeds of plants and the lives of men resemble the soil they inhabit.

DARIUS. Darius the father of Xerxes used to praise himself, saying that he became even wiser in battles and dangers. When he laid a tax upon his subjects, he summoned his lieutenants, and asked them whether the tax was burthensome or not? When they told him it was moderate, he commanded them to pay half as much as was at first demanded. As he was opening a pomegranate, one asked him what it was of which he would wish for a number equal to the seeds thereof. He said, Of men like Zopyrus,—who was a loyal person and his friend. This Zopyrus, after he had maimed himself by cutting off his nose and ears, beguiled the Babylonians; and being trusted by them, he betrayed the city to Darius, who often said that he would not have had Zopyrus maimed to gain a hundred Babylons.

SEMIRAMIS. Semiramis built a monument for herself, with this inscription: Whatever king wants treasure, if he open this tomb, he may be satisfied. Darius therefore opening it found no treasure, but another inscription of this import: If thou wert not a wicked person and of insatiable covetousness, thou wouldst not disturb the mansions of the dead.

XERXES. Arimenes came out of Bactria as a rival for the kingdom with his brother Xerxes, the son of Darius. Xerxes sent presents to him, commanding those that brought them to say: With these your brother Xerxes now honors you; and if he chance to be proclaimed king, you shall be the next person to himself in the kingdom. When Xerxes was declared king, Arimenes immediately did him homage and placed the crown upon his head; and Xerxes gave him the next place to himself. Being offended with the Babylonians, who rebelled, and having overcome them, he forbade them weapons, but commanded they should practise singing and playing on the flute, keep brothel-houses and taverns, and wear loose coats. He refused to eat Attic figs that were brought to be sold, until he had conquered the country that produced them. When he caught some Grecian scouts in his camp, he did them no harm, but having allowed them to view his army as much as they pleased, he let them go.

ARTAXERXES. Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, surnamed Longimanus (or _Long-hand_) because he had one hand longer than the other, said, it was more princely to add than to take away. He first gave leave to those that hunted with him, if they would and saw occasion, to throw their darts before him. He also first ordained that punishment for his nobles who had offended, that they should be stripped and their garments scourged instead of their bodies; and whereas their hair should have been plucked out, that the same should be done to their turbans. When Satibarzanes, his chamberlain, petitioned him in an unjust matter, and he understood he did it to gain thirty thousand pieces of money, he ordered his treasurer to bring the said sum, and gave them to him, saying: O Satibarzanes! take it; for when I have given you this, I shall not be poorer, but I had been more unjust if I had granted your petition.

CYRUS THE YOUNGER. Cyrus the Younger, when he was exhorting the Lacedaemonians to side with him in the war, said that he had a stronger heart than his brother, and could drink more wine unmixed than he, and bear it better; that his brother, when he hunted, could scarce sit his horse, or when ill news arrived, his throne. He exhorted them to send him men, promising he would give horses to footmen, chariots to horsemen, villages to those that had farms, and those that possessed villages he would make lords of cities; and that he would give them gold and silver, not by tale but by weight.

ARTAXERXES MNEMON. Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus the Younger, called Mnemon, did not only give very free and patient access to any that would speak with him, but commanded the queen his wife to draw the curtains of her chariot, that petitioners might have the same access to her also. When a poor man presented him with a very fair and great apple, By the Sun, said he, ’tis my opinion, if this person were entrusted with a small city, he would make it great. In his flight, when his carriages were plundered, and he was forced to eat dry figs and barley-bread, Of how great pleasure, said he, have I hitherto lived ignorant!

PARYSATIS. Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, advised him that would discourse freely with the king, to use words of fine linen.

ORONTES. Orontes, the son-in-law of King Artaxerxes, falling into disgrace and being condemned, said: As arithmeticians count sometimes myriads on their fingers, sometimes units only; in like manner the favorites of kings sometimes can do every thing with them, sometimes little or nothing.

MEMNON. Memnon, one of King Darius’s generals against Alexander, when a mercenary soldier excessively and impudently reviled Alexander, struck him with his spear, adding, I pay you to fight against Alexander, not to reproach him.

EGYPTIAN KINGS. The Egyptian kings, according unto their law, used to swear their judges that they should not obey the king when he commanded them to give an unjust sentence.

POLTYS. Poltys king of Thrace, in the Trojan war, being solicited both by the Trojan and Grecian ambassadors, advised Alexander to restore Helen, promising to give him two beautiful women for her.

TERES. Teres, the father of Sitalces, said, when he was out of the army and had nothing to do, he thought there was no difference between him and his grooms.

COTYS. Cotys, when one gave him a leopard, gave him a lion for it. He was naturally prone to anger, and severely punished the miscarriages of his servants. When a stranger brought him some earthen vessels, thin and brittle, but delicately shaped and admirably adorned with sculptures, he requited the stranger for them, and then brake them all in pieces, Lest (said he) my passion should provoke me to punish excessively those that brake them.

IDATHYRSUS. Idathyrsus, King of Scythia, when Darius invaded him, solicited the Ionian tyrants that they would assert their liberty by breaking down the bridge that was made over the Danube: which they refusing to do because they had sworn fealty to Darius, he called them good, honest, lazy slaves.

ATEAS. Ateas wrote to Philip: You reign over the Macedonians, men that have learned fighting; and I over the Scythians, which can fight with hunger and thirst. As he was rubbing his horse, turning to the ambassadors of Philip, he asked whether Philip did so or not. He took prisoner Ismenias, an excellent piper, and commanded him to play; and when others admired him, he swore it was more pleasant to hear a horse neigh.

SCILURUS. Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave fourscore sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them; thus teaching them that, if they held together, they would continue strong, but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

GELO. Gelo the tyrant, after he had overcome the Carthaginians at Himera, made peace with them, and among other articles compelled them to subscribe this,—that they should no more sacrifice their children to Saturn. He often marched the Syracusans out to plant their fields, as if it had been to war, that the country might be improved by husbandry, and they might not be corrupted by idleness. When he demanded a sum of money of the citizens, and thereupon a tumult was raised, he told them he would but borrow it; and after the war was ended, he restored it to them again. At a feast, when a harp was offered, and others one after another tuned it and played upon it, he sent for his horse, and with an easy agility leaped upon him.

HIERO. Hiero, who succeeded Gelo in the tyranny, said he was not disturbed by any that freely spoke against him. He judged that those that revealed a secret did an injury to those to whom they revealed it; for we hate not only those who tell, but them also that hear what we would not have disclosed. One upbraided him with his stinking breath, and he blamed his wife that never told him of it; but she said, I thought all men smelt so. To Xenophanes the Colophonian, who said he had much ado to maintain two servants, he replied: But Homer, whom you disparage, maintains above ten thousand, although he is dead. He fined Epicharmus the comedian, for speaking unseemly when his wife was by.

DIONYSIUS. Dionysius the Elder, when the public orators cast lots to know in what order they should speak, drew as his lot the letter M. And when one said to him, Μωρολογεῖς, You will make a foolish speech, O Dionysius, You are mistaken, said he, Μοναρχήσω, I shall be a monarch. And as soon as his speech was ended, the Syracusans chose him general. In the beginning of his tyranny, the citizens rebelled and besieged him; and his friends advised him to resign the government, rather than to be taken and slain by them. But he, seeing a cook butcher an ox and the ox immediately fall down dead, said to his friends: Is it not a hateful thing, that for fear of so short a death we should resign so great a government? When his son, whom he intended to make his successor in the government, had been detected in debauching a freeman’s wife, he asked him in anger, When did you ever know me guilty of such a crime? But you, sir, replied the son, had not a tyrant for your father. Nor will you, said he, have a tyrant for your son, unless you mend your manners. And another time, going into his son’s house and seeing there abundance of silver and gold plate, he cried out: Thou art not capable of being a tyrant, who hast made never a friend with all the plate I have given thee. When he exacted money of the Syracusans, and they lamenting and beseeching him pretended they had none, he still exacted more, twice or thrice renewing his demands, until he heard them laugh and jeer at him as they went to and fro in the market-place, and then he gave over. Now, said he, since they contemn me, it is a sign they have nothing left. When his mother, being ancient, requested him to find a husband for her, I can, said he, overpower the laws of the city, but I cannot force the laws of Nature. Although he punished other malefactors severely, he favored such as stole clothes, that the Syracusans might forbear feasting and drunken clubs. A certain person told him privately, he could show him a way how he might know beforehand such as conspired against him. Let us know, said he, going aside. Give me, said the person, a talent, that everybody may believe that I have taught you the signs and tokens of plotters; and he gave it him, pretending he had learned them, much admiring the subtilty of the man. Being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied: God forbid that it should ever befall me. Hearing that two young men very much reviled him and his tyranny in their cups, he invited both of them to supper; and perceiving that one of them prattled freely and foolishly, but the other drank warily and sparing, he dismissed the first as a drunken fellow whose treason lay no deeper than his wine, and put the other to death as a disaffected and resolved traitor. Some blaming him for rewarding and preferring a wicked man, and one hated by the citizens; I would have, said he, somebody hated more than myself. When he gave presents to the ambassadors of Corinth, and they refused them because their law forbade them to receive gifts from a prince to whom they were sent in embassy, he said they did very ill to destroy the only advantage of tyranny, and to declare that it was dangerous to receive a kindness from a tyrant. Hearing that a citizen had buried a quantity of gold in his house, he sent for it; and when the party removed to another city, and bought a farm with part of his treasure which he had concealed, Dionysius sent for him and bade him take back the rest, since he had now begun to use his money, and was no longer making a useful thing useless.

DIONYSIUS THE YOUNGER said that he maintained many Sophists; not that he admired them, but that he might be admired for their sake. When Polyxenus the logician told him he had baffled him; Yes, said he, in words, but I have caught you in deeds; for you, leaving your own fortune, attend me and mine. When he was deposed from his government, and one asked him what he got by Plato and philosophy, he answered, That I may bear so great a change of fortune patiently. Being asked how it came to pass that his father, a private and poor man, obtained the government of Syracuse, and he already possessed of it, and the son of a tyrant, lost it,—My father, said he, entered upon affairs when the democracy was hated, but I, when tyranny was become odious. To another that asked him the same question, he replied: My father bequeathed to me his government, but not his fortune.

AGATHOCLES was the son of a potter. When he became lord and was proclaimed king of Sicily, he was wont to place earthen and golden vessels together, and show them to young men, telling them, Those I made first, but now I make these by my valor and industry. As he was besieging a city, some from the walls reviling him, saying, Do you hear, potter, where will you have money to pay your soldiers?—he gently answered, I’ll tell you, if I take this city. And having taken it by storm, he sold the prisoners, telling them, If you reproach me again, I will complain to your masters. Some inhabitants of Ithaca complained of his mariners, that making a descent on the island they had taken away some cattle; But your king, said he, came to Sicily, and did not only take away sheep, but put out the shepherd’s eyes, and went his way.

DION. Dion, that deposed Dionysius from the tyranny, when he heard Callippus, whom of all his friends and attendants he trusted most, conspired against him, refused to question him for it, saying: It is better for him to die than to live, who must be weary not only of his enemies, but of his friends too.

ARCHELAUS. Archelaus, when one of his companions (and none of the best) begged a golden cup of him, bade the boy give it Euripides; and when the man wondered at him, You, said he, are worthy to ask, but he is worthy to receive it without asking. A prating barber asked him how he would be trimmed. He answered, In silence. When Euripides at a banquet embraced fair Agatho and kissed him, although he was no longer beardless, he said, turning to his friends: Do not wonder at it, for the beauty of such as are handsome lasts after autumn.

Timotheus the harper, receiving of him a reward less than his expectation, twitted him for it not obscurely; and once singing the short verse of the chorus, You commend earth-born silver, directed it to him. And Archelaus answered him again singing, But you beg it. When one sprinkled water upon him, and his friends would have had him punish the man, You are mistaken, said he, he did not sprinkle me, but some other person whom he took me to be.