On Brotherly Love (5-9)

And surely this fact is quite easy to perceive from the contrary. For when we observe that parents are grieved by sons who maltreat a servant honoured by mother and father, and neglect plants or farm-lands in which their parents took delight, and that remissness in caring for some house-dog or horse hurts elderly persons who feel a jealous affection for them; and when, again, we observe that parents are vexed when their children disparage and hiss at concerts and spectacles and athletes all of which they themselves used to admire; when we observe these things, is it reasonable to suppose that parents are indifferent

when sons quarrel, hate and malign each other, and array themselves ever against each other s interests and activities, and are finally ruined by each other? No one can say that the parents are indifferent. Hence when, on the other hand, brothers love and feel affection for each other, and, in so far as Nature has made them separate in their bodies, so far do they become united in their emotions and actions, and share with each other their studies and recreations and games, then they have made their brotherly love a sweet and blessed sustainer of old age [*] for their parents. For no father is so fond of oratory or of honour or of riches as he is of his children; therefore fathers do not find such pleasure in seeing their sons gaining a reputation as orators, acquiring wealth, or holding office as in seeing that they love one another. So they report of Apollonis of Cyzicus, mother of King Eumenes[*] and three other sons, Attalus and Philetaerus and Athenaeus, that she always congratulated herself and gave thanks to the gods, not because of wealth or empire, but because she saw her three sons members of the body-guard of the eldest, who passed his days without fear surrounded by brothers with swords and spears in their hands. So again, on the contrary, when Artaxerxes[*] perceived that his son Ochus had plotted against his brothers, he despaired and died.

For cruel are the wars of brothers,

as Euripides[*] says, and they are cruellest of all to the parents themselves. For he that hates his own brother and is angry with him cannot refrain from blaming the father that begat and the mother that bore such a brother.[*]

So Peisistratus,[*] marrying for a second time when his sons were full grown, said that because he considered them to be honourable and good he wished to become the father of more children like them. Excellent and just sons will not only love each other the more because of their parents, but will also love their parents the more because of each other; so will they always both think and say that, though they owe their parents gratitude for many favours, it is most of all for their brothers that they owe it,[*] since these are truly the most precious and delightful of all the possessions they have received from them. Well indeed has Homer[*] also depicted Telemachus as reckoning his brotherless condition a misfortune:

The son of Cronus thus has doomed our race

To have one son alone.

But Hesiod[*] does not well in advising an only son to inherit his father’s estate - and that too when he was himself a pupil of the Muses,[*] who, in fact, received this name[*] just because they were always together (homou ousas) in concord and sisterly affection.[*]

Now, as regards parents, brotherly love is of such sort that to love ones brother is forthwith a proof of love for both mother and father; and again, as

regards children, for them there is no lesson and example comparable to brotherly love on their father’s part. And, on the other hand, the contrary is a bad example for children who inherit, as from a father’s testament, his hatred of brothers. For a man who has grown old in law-suits and quarrels and contentions with his brothers, and then exhorts his children to concord,

Healer of others, full of sores himself,[*]

weakens the force of his words by his own actions. If, at any rate, Eteocles[*] of Thebes had said with reference to his brother,[*]

To where the sun and stars rise would I go,

And plunge beneath the earth-if this I could-

To hold Dominion, greatest of the gods,

and then had proceeded to exhort his own children[*]

Revere Equality, which ever binds

Friend to friend, state to state, allies unto

Allies: Nature made equal rights secure,

who would not have despised him? And what sort of man would Atreus have been, if, after serving his brother that dinner,[*] he had then proceeded to preach to his own children:

And yet the use of friends, fast joined with ties Of blood, alone brings help when troubles flow?[*]

Therefore it is fitting to cleanse away completely hatred of brothers, which is both an evil sustainer of parents in their old age[*] and a worse nurturer of children in their youth. And it is also a cause of slander and accusations against such brothers; for their fellow-citizens think that, after having been so closely bound together by their common education, their common life together, and their kinship, brothers could not have become deadly enemies unless each were aware of many wicked deeds committed by the other. There must be, they infer, great reasons for the breaking-up of a great goodwill and affection. For this reason it is not easy to effect a reconciliation of brothers; for just as things which have been joined together, even if the glue becomes loose, may be fastened together again and become united, yet if a body which has grown together is broken or split, it is difficult to find means of welding or joining it; so friendships knitted together through long familiarity, even though the friends part company, can be easily resumed again, but when brothers have once broken the bonds of Nature,[*] they cannot readily come together, and even if they do, their reconciliation bears with it a filthy hidden sore of suspicion. Or rather, every enmity between man and man which steals into the heart in company with the most painful emotions - contentiousness, anger, envy, remembrance of wrongs - causes pain and perturbation of mind; but when the enmity is toward a brother, with whom it is necessary to share sacrifices and the family’s sacred rites, to occupy the same sepulchre, and in life, perhaps, the same or a neighbouring habitation - such an enmity keeps the painful situation ever before our

eyes, and reminds us every day of the madness and folly which has made the sweetest countenance of the nearest kinsman become most frowning and angry to look upon, and that voice which has been beloved and familiar from boyhood most dreadful to hear. And though they see many other examples of brothers using the same house and table and undistributed estates and slaves, yet they alone maintain different sets of friends and guests, considering as hostile everything dear to their brothers - and that too though all the world may readily reflect that while friends and boon-companions may be taken as booty, and relatives by marriage and familiars may be obtained [*] when the old ones, like arms or implements, have been lost, yet the acquisition of another brother is impossible,[*] as is that of a new hand when one has been removed or that of a new eye when one has been knocked out; rightly, then, did the Persian[*] woman declare, when she chose to save her brother in place of her children, that she could get other children, but not another brother, since her parents were dead.

What then, someone will say, must one who has a bad brother do? [*] We must remember this first of all: badness can lay hold on every kind of friendship; and, according to Sophocles,[*]

Search out most human traits: you’ll find them base.

For it is impossible to discover that our relations with relatives or comrades or lovers[*] are unmixed with baseness, free from passion, or pure from evil. So the Spartan, when he married a little wife, [*] said that of evils one should choose the least; but brothers one would prudently advise to put up with the evils with which they are most familiar rather than to make trial of unfamiliar ones; for the former procedure as being necessary brings no reproach, but the latter is blameworthy because voluntary. No boon-companion or comrade-in-arms or guest

Is yoked in honour’s bonds not forged by man,[*]

but he is who is of the same blood and upbringing, and born of the same father and mother. For such a kinsman it is altogether fitting to concede and allow some faults, saying to him when he errs,

I cannot leave you in your wretchedness[*]

and trouble and folly, lest I might, unwittingly,punish harshly and bitterly, because I hate it, some ailment instilled into you from the seed of father or mother. For, as Theophrastus[*] said, we must not grow to love those not of our blood and then judge them, but judge them first and love them later; but where Nature does not commit the initiative to judgement in conceiving goodwill toward another nor wait for the proverbial bushel of salt,[*] but has begotten with the child at its birth the principle of love, in that case there should be no harsh nor strict censors of his faults. But as it is, what would you say of those who sometimes readily put up with the wrongdoings of strangers and men of no kin to themselves, men picked up at some drinking-bout or play-ground or wrestling-floor,[*] and take pleasure in their company, yet are peevish and inexorable toward their own brothers? Why some even breed and grow fond of savage dogs and horses, and many people do so with lynxes and cats, monkeys and lions, yet cannot endure their brothers’ rages or stupidities or ambitions; still others make over their houses and property to concubines and harlots, yet fight it out in a duel with their brothers over a site for a building or a corner of property; and finally, giving the name of hatred of evil [*] to their hatred of their brothers, they stalk about pompously, accusing and reviling the wickedness in their brothers; yet in others they take no offence at this same quality, but frequently resort to them and are often in their company.

Let this, then, serve as a preamble to my whole discourse. But as the starting-point of my admonitions, let us take, not the division of the father’s goods, as other writers do, but the misguided quarrels and jealousy of the children while the parents are yet alive. The ephors, when Agesilaüs[*] used to send an ox as a mark of distinguished service to each member of the gerousia [*] as he was appointed, fined him, alleging as their reason that by such demagogic means of gaining popular favour he was trying to acquire as his own personal followers men who belonged to the state; but one would advise a son to care for his parents, not with the design of acquiring their goodwill for himself alone or turning it away

from others to himself. It is in this way that many play the demagogue against their brothers, having a specious but unjust pretext for this rapacity; for they deprive them of the greatest and fairest of inheritances, their parents’ goodwill, by servilely and unscrupulously cutting across their brothers’ path, opportunely making their attacks when the parents are occupied and unsuspecting, and, in particular, showing themselves dutiful and obedient and prudent in those matters in which they perceive their brothers to be in error, or seeming to be so. But the right way, on the contrary, when a son sees that his father is angry with his brother, is to take his share of it and bear the brunt of it together with his brother, by such assistance making the anger lighter, and then by rendering services and favours to help somehow or other to restore his brother to his father’s grace. If there is error of omission, he can allege in the brother’s favour the absence of opportunity, or that he was engaged on some other work, or his very nature, as being more useful and more intelligent in other directions. The saying of Agamemnon[*] also is admirable:

Not to slackness does he yield or foolishness,

But looks to me,

and to me he has committed this duty. And fathers are very willing to accept even the substitution of other terms[*] and to believe their sons when they call their brothers’ carelessness simplicity, their stupidity straightforwardness, and their contentiousness inability to endure contempt; the result is that he who aets as mediator succeeds in lessening the anger against his brother, and at the same time he increases his father’s goodwill toward himself.