any man, I think, had seen them, he would have ridiculed the philosophers for the paradoxes which they utter about friendship. But when a quarrel rose between them about the royal power, as between dogs about a bit of meat, see what they say
Polynices.Where will you take your station before the towers?
Eteocles.Why do you ask me this?
Pol.I will place myself opposite and try to kill you.
Et.I also wish to do the same.[1]
Such are the wishes that they utter.
For universally, be not deceived, every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest.[2] Whatever then appears to it an impediment to this interest, whether this be a brother, or a father, or a child, or beloved, or lover, it hates, spurns, curses: for its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; this is father, and brother and kinsman, and country, and God. When then the gods appear to us to be an impediment to this, we abuse them and throw down their statues and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Aesculapius to be burned when his dear friend died.[3]
For this reason if a man put in the same place his interest, sanctity, goodness, and country, and parents, and friends, all these are secured: but if he puts in one place his interest, in another his friends, and his country and his kinsmen and justice itself, all these give way being borne down by the weight of interest. For where the I and the Mine are placed, to that place of necessity the animal inclines: if in the flesh, there is the ruling power: if in the will, it is there and if it is in externals, it is
- ↑ From the Phoenissae of Euripides, v. 723, etc.
- ↑ Compare Euripides, Hecuba, v. 846, etc.:—
δεινόν γε θνητοῖς ὡς ἅπαντα συμπίτνει·
καὶ τὰς ἀνάγκας ὡς νόμοι διώρισαν,
φίλους τιθέντες τούς γε πολεμιωτάτους
ἐχθρούς τε τοὺς πρὶν εὐμενεῖς ποιούμενοι. - ↑ Alexander did this when Hephaestion died. Arrian, Expedition of Alexander, vii. 14.
