Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/237

Rh that they love father and mother, and also such an example and lesson unto their children to love together, as there is none other like unto it, but contrariwise, they take an ill precedent to hate their own brethren from the first original of their father: for he that liveth continually and waxeth old in suits of law, in quarrels and dissensions with his own brethren, and afterward shall seem to preach unto his children for to live friendly and lovingly together, doth as much as he who according to the common proverb:

and so by his own deeds doth weaken the efficacy of his words. If then Eteocles the Theban, when he had once said unto his brother Polynices, in Euripides:

should come afterwards again unto his sons and admonish them:

who would not mock him and despise his admonition? And what kind of man would Atreus have been reputed, if after he bad set such a supper as he did before his brother, he should in this manner have spoken sentences and given instruction to his own children?

Banish therefore we must, and rid away clean, all hatred from among brethren, as a thing which is a bad nurse to parents in their old age, and a worse fostress to children in their youth; besides, it giveth occasion of slander, calumniation and obloquy among their fellow-citizens and neighbours, for thus do men conceive and deem of it: That brethren having been nourished and brought up together so familiarly from their very cradle,