Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/244

222 one, and so to hold themselves therewith contented: this done, I say they are to make account that the ordering, managing, and administration only of the goods and heritage is parted and divided; but the enjoying, use, and possession of all remaineth yet whole in common between them. But those that in this partition and distribution of goods pluck one from another the nurses that gave them suck, or such youths as were fostered and brought up together with them of infants, and with whom always they had lived and loved familiarly; well may they prevail so far forth with eager pursuing their wilfulness, as to go away with the gain of a slave, perhaps of greater price: but instead thereof they lose the greatest and most precious things in all their patrimony and inheritance, and utterly betray the love of a brother, and the confidence that otherwise they might have had in him. Some also we have known, who upon a peevish wilfulness only, and a quarrelous humour, and without any gain at all, have in the partition of their father's goods carried themselves no better nor with greater modesty and respect, than if it had been some booty or pillage gotten in war. Such were Charicles and Antiochus, of the city Opus, two brethren, who ever as they met with a piece of silver plate, made no more ado but cut it quite through the midst, and if there came a garment into their hands, in two pieces it went, slit (as near as they could aim) just in the middle, and so they went either of them away with his part, dividing (as it were) upon some tragical curse and execration Others there be who make their boast and report with joy unto others, how in the partition of their patrimony they have by cunning casts coney-catched their brethren, and over-wrought them so by their cautelous circumvention, fine wit and sly policies, as that they have gone away with the better part by odds: whereas indeed they should rejoice rather and please themselves, if in modesty, courtesy, kindness, and yielding of their own right they had surpassed and gone beyond their brethren. In which regard Athenodorus deserveth to be remembered in this place; and indeed there is not one here in these parts but remembereth him well enough. This Athenodorus had one brother elder than himself, named Zenon, who having taken upon him the management of the patrimony left unto them both by their father, had embezzled and made away a