Of Brotherly Love (6)

Wherefore Pisistratus, being about to marry again, his sons being grown up to a mature age, gave them their deserved character of praise, together with the reason of his designs for a second marriage,—that he might be the

happy father of more such children. Now those who are truly ingenious do not only love one another the more entirely for the sake of their common parents, but they love their very parents for the sake of one another; always owning themselves bound to their parents especially for the mutual happiness that they enjoy in each other, and looking upon their brethren as the dearest and the most valuable treasure they could have received from their parents. And thus Homer elegantly expresses Telemachus bewailing the want of a brother:

Stern Jove has in some angry mood

Condemned our race to solitude.

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But I like not Hesiod’s judgment so well, who is all for a single son’s inheriting. Not so well (I say) from Hesiod, a pupil of the Muses, who being endeared sisters kept always together, and therefore from that inseparate union (ὁμοῦ οὐσαι) were called Muses. To parents therefore the love of brothers is a plain argument of their children’s love to themselves. And to the children of the brothers themselves it is the best of precedents, and that which affords the most effectual advice that can be thought of; as again, they will be forward enough in following the worst of their parents’ humors and inheriting their animosities. But for one who has led his relations a contentious life, and quarrelled himself up into wrinkles and gray hairs,—for such a one to begin a lecture of love to his children is just like him

Who boldly takes the fees,

To cure in others what’s his own disease.

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In a word, his own actions weaken and confute all the arguments of his best counsel. Take Eteocles of Thebes reflecting upon his brother and flying out after this manner:

I’d mount the Heavens, I’d strive to meet the sun

In’s setting forth, I’d travel within him down

Beneath the earth, I’d balk no enterprise,

To gain Jove’s mighty power and tyrannize.

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Suppose, I say, out of this rage, he had presently fallen into the softer strain of good advice to his children, charging them thus:

Prize gentle amity that vies

With none for grandeur; concord prize

That joins together friends and states,

And keeps them long confederates.

Equality!—whatever else deceives

Our trust, ’tis this our very selves outlives;

who is there that would not have despised him? Or what would you have thought of Atreus, after he had treated his brother at a barbarous supper, to hear him afterwards thus instructing his children:

Such love as doth become related friends

Alone, when ills betide, its succor lends?