INTRODUCTION 
					In this essay Plutarch has arranged his material somewhat more methodically than is his usual practice.
					In chaps. 1-7 he shows that Brotherly Love is in
					accordance with nature; in 9-19 he tells us how we
					should conduct ourselves toward a brother: (a) while
					our parents are alive, (b) when they are dead, (c) when
					the brother is our inferior, (d) when our superior;
					and also the reasons for quarrels and the treatment
					thereof. He closes with some pleasant tales of
					affection for brothers’ children.
				 
					That Plutarch wrote this work after De Adulatore
						et Amico , De Amicorum Multitudine , This point was subsequently shown, but with much less care and detail, by G. Hein ( Quaestiones Plut. , diss. Berlin, 1916, p. 37), who seems to have been ignorant of Brokate’s far superior work. and the Life of
							Cato Minor was demonstrated by C. Brokate ( De
								aliquot Plui. libellis , diss. Güttingen, 1913, pp. 17-24,
					58; and see the excellent tables on pp. 47, 61).
					Plutarch appears to have retained a certain amount
					of more or less irrelevant material on friendship from
					his recent work on these treatises, and also to have
					drawn upon some portions of Theophrastus’s treatise
 	 On Friendship . Cf. Brokate, op. cit. , pp. 7 ff. 
				 
					The essay is No. 98 in the Lamprias catalogue.
					
				 The ancient representations of the Dioscuri are
					called by the Spartans beam-figures 
 Cf. M. C. Waites, Amer. Jour. Arch. , xxiii., 1919, pp. 1 ff.: this passage is cited by Eustathius on Il. , 1125. 60. : they
					consist of two parallel wooden beams joined by two
					other transverse beams placed across them; and
					this common and indivisible character of the offering
					appears entirely suitable to the brotherly love of
					these gods. In like manner do I also dedicate this
					treatise On Brotherly Love to you, Nigrinus and
 	Quietus, The identity of Avidius Nigrinus and Avidius Quietus is not certainly established; see Prosopographia Imp. Rom. , i. pp. 189-190. a joint gift for you both who well deserve
					it. For as to the exhortations this essay contains,
					since you are already putting them into practice, you
					will seem to be giving your testimony in their favour
					rather than to be encouraged to perform them; and
					the pleasure you will take in acts which are right will
					make the perseverance of your judgement more firm,
					inasmuch as your acts will win approval before spectators, so to speak, who are honourable and devoted
					to virtue.
				 
					Now Aristarchus, Nauck, comparing Suidas, s.v. Theodectes, and Stephanus Byzantius, would correct Aristarchus to Aristandrus, the father of the tragic poet Theodectas of Phaselis. the father of Theodectes, by way
					of jeering at the crowd of sophists, used to say that in
					the old days there were barely seven Sophists,
 	 That is, the Seven Wise Men. Plutarch so uses σοφιστής ( cf. Moralia , 96 a, where all mss. but one read σοφιστοῦ ; 857 f); so also Aristotle, Frag. 5 ed. V. Rose. Cf. the earlier usage of Herodotus, i. 29 (where Wells’s note is hopelessly wrong); ii. 49; iv. 95; Hippocrates, De Vet. Med. , 20. but
					
					 
					
					that in his own day an equally large number of
					non-sophists could not easily be found. And according to my observation, brotherly love is as rare in
					our day as brotherly hatred was among the men of
					old; when instances of such hatred appeared, they
					were so amazing that the times made them known to
					all as warning examples in tragedies and other
					stage-performances; but all men of to-day, when they
					encounter brothers who are good to each other,
					wonder at them no less than at those famous sons of
					Molione, Cf. Moralia , 1083 c; Fraser’s note on Apollodorus, ii. 7. 2 (L.C.L. vol. i. p. 249). who, according to common belief, were
					born with their bodies grown together; and to use
					in common a fathers wealth and friends and
					slaves is considered as incredible and portentous as
					for one soul to make use of the hands and feet and
					eyes of two bodies.
				 And yet the illustration of such common use by
					brothers Nature has placed at no great distance from
					us; on the contrary, in the body itself she has contrived to make most of the necessary parts double
					and brothers and twins Cf. Hierocles, Frag. De Fraterno Amore (Stobaeus, vol. iv. p. 663 ed. Hense). : hands, feet, eyes, ears,
					nostrils; and she has thus taught us that she has
					divided them in this fashion for mutual preservation
					and assistance, not for variance and strife. And
					when she separated the very hands into a number of
					unequal fingers, she supplied men with the most
					accurate and skilful of instruments, so that Anaxagoras Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker 
 ⁵, ii. p. 30, 102. of old assigned the reason for man’s wisdom
					and intelligence to his having hands. The contrary
					of this, however, seems to be true Cf. Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium , iv. 10 (687 a 17 ff.). : it is not because
					man acquired hands that he is wisest of animals;
					
					 
					
					it is because by nature he was endowed with reason
					and skill that he acquired instruments of a nature
					adapted to these powers. And this fact is obvious to
					everyone: Nature from one seed and one source has
					created two brothers, or three, or more, not for
					difference and opposition to each other, but that by
					being separate they might the more readily co-operate
					with one another. For indeed creatures that had
					three bodies and an hundred hands, if any such were
					ever really born, being joined together in all their
					members, could do nothing independently and apart
					from one another, as may brothers, who can either
					remain at home or reside abroad, as well as undertake
					public office and husbandry through each other’s help
					if they but preserve that principle of goodwill and
					concord which Nature has given them. But if they
					do not, they will differ not at all, I think, from feet
					which trip up one another and fingers which are unnaturally entwined and twisted by each other. Cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia , ii. 3. 18-19. But
					rather, just as in the same body the combination of
					moist and dry, cold and hot, sharing one nature and
					diet, by their consent and agreement engender the
					best and most pleasant temperament and bodily
					harmony-without which, they say, there is not any
					joy or profit either in wealth or
					 In that kingly rule which makes men
						 Like to gods From Ariphron’s Paean to Health : cf. 450 b, supra . The present passage is paraphrased by Stobaeus, vol. iv. p. 658 ed. Hense. - 
					but if overreaching and factious strife be engendered
					in them, they corrupt and destroy the animal most
					shamefully; so through the concord of brothers both
					
					 
					
					family and household are sound and flourish, and
					friends and intimates, like an harmonious choir,
					neither do nor say, nor think, anything discordant;
 	 Even the base wins honour in a feud Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. , iii. p. 690; Edmonds, Elegy and Iambus , ii. p. 284; quoted also in Life of Alexander , liii. (695 e); Life of Nicias , xi. (530 d); Comparison of Lysander and Sulla , i. (475 f). : 
					a slandering servant, or a flatterer who slips in from
					outside, or a malignant citizen. For as diseases in
					bodies which cannot accept their proper diet engender
					cravings for many strange and harmful foods, so
					slander and suspicion entertained against kinsmen
					ushers in evil and pernicious associations which flow
					in from outside to fill the vacant room. Cf. 468 c-d, supra . 
				 It is true that the Arcadian prophet Hegisistratus of Elis in Herodotus, ix. 37. The first sentence of this chapter is paraphrased by Stobaeus, vol. iv. p. 675 ed. Hense. of necessity manufactured for himself, according to Herodotus, a wooden foot, deprived as he was of his own;
					but the man who quarrels with his brother, and takes
					as his comrade a stranger from the market-place or
					the wrestling-floor, appears to be doing nothing but
					cutting off voluntarily a limb of his own flesh and
					blood, and taking to himself and joining to his body
					an extraneous member. Indeed it is our very need,
					which welcomes and seeks friendship and comradeship, that teaches us to honour and cherish and keep
					our kin, since we are unable and unfitted by Nature
					to live friendless, unsocial, hermits’ lives. Wherefore
					Menander Kock, Com. Att. Frag. , iii. p. 169, Frag. 554 (p. 493 ed. Allinson, L.C.L.); v. 4 is quoted in Moralia , 93 c. rightly says,
					
					 
					
					 Not from drink or from daily revelling
						 Do we seek one to whom we may entrust
						 Our life, father. Do we not think we’ve found
						 Great good in but the shadow of a friend? 
					For most friendships are in reality shadows and
					imitations and images of that first friendship which
					Nature implanted in children toward parents and in
					brothers toward brothers; and as for the man who
					does not reverence or honour this friendship, can
					he give any pledge of goodwill to strangers? Or
					what sort of man is he who addresses his comrade as
					 brother in salutations and letters, but does not
					care even to walk with his own brother when they
					are going the same way? For as it is the act of a
					madman to adorn the effigy of a brother and at the
					same time to beat and mutilate the brother’s body,
					even so to reverence and honour the name brother 
					in others, but to hate and shun the person himself,
					is the act of one who is not sane and has never yet
					got it into his head that Nature is the most holy
					and great of sacred things. For the hyperbole contrast 491 d, infra . 
				 I remember, for instance, that in Rome I undertook to arbitrate between two brothers, of whom one
					had the reputation of being a philosopher. But he
					was, as it appears, not only as a brother but also as
					a philosopher, masquerading under a false name and
					appellation; for when I asked him to conduct himself
					as brother to brother and as philosopher to layman, What you say, said he, as to his being a
						layman, is correct, but I account it no momentous
						or important matter to have sprung from the same
						loins. 
 As for you, said I, it is obvious that you
							
							 
							
							consider it no important or momentous matter to have
							sprung from any loins at all. But certainly all other
					philosophers, even if they do not think so, at least do
					affirm with constant iteration that both Nature and
					the Law, which upholds Nature, have assigned to
					parents, after gods, first and greatest honour Cf. Commentarii in Hesiodum , 65 (Bernardakis, vol. vii. p. 84), on Works and Days , 707. ; and
					there is nothing which men do that is more acceptable to gods than with goodwill and zeal to repay
					to those who bore them and brought them up the
					favours long ago lent to them when they were
						young. 
 	 Plato, Laws , 717 c; cf. 496 c, infra . Nor is there, again, a greater exhibition
					of an impious nature than neglect of parents or
					offences against them. Therefore, while we are forbidden to do wrong to all others, yet to our mother
					and father, if we do not always afford, both in deed
					and in word, matter for their pleasure, even if offence
					be not present, men consider it unholy and unlawful.
					Hence what deed or favour or disposition, which
					children may show toward their parents, can give
					more pleasure than steadfast goodwill and friendship
					toward a brother?