On Brotherly Love (8-9)

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.