Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/257

Rh that considering his vain-glorious spirit, all brotherly love was not in him utterly extinct; for being himself the younger, he waged war with Seleucus for the crown, and kept his mother sure enough for to side with him and take his part; now it happened that during this war and when it was at the hottest, Seleucus struck a battle with the Galatians, lost the field, and was himself not to be found, but supposed certainly to have been slain and cut in pieces, together with his whole army, which by the barbarians were put to the sword and massacred; when news came unto Antiochus of this defeature, he laid away his purple robes, put on black, caused the court gates to be shut, and mourned heavily for his brother, as if he had been dead: but being afterwards advertised that he was alive, safe and sound, and that he went about to gather new forces and make head again, he came abroad, sacrificed with thanksgiving unto the gods, and commanded all those cities and states which were under his dominion to keep holiday, to sacrifice and wear chaplets of flowers upon their heads in token of public joy. The Athenians, when they had devised an absurd and ridiculous fable as touching the quarrel between Neptune and Minerva, intermeddled withal another invention, which soundeth to some reason, tending to the correction of the same, and as it were to make amends for that absurdity, for they suppress always the second of August, upon which day happened (by their saying) that debate aforesaid between Neptune and Minerva.

What should let and hinder us likewise, if it chance that we enter into any quarrel or debate with our allies and kinsfolk in blood, to condemn that day to perpetual oblivion, and to repute and reckon it among the cursed and dismal days; but in no wise by occasion of one such unhappy day to forget so many other good and joyful days wherein we have lived and been brought up together; for either it is for nothing and in vain that nature hath endued us with meekness and harmless long-sufferance, or patience the daughter of modesty and mediocrity, or else surely we ought to use these virtues and good gifts of her principally to our allies and kinsfolk; and verily to crave and receive pardon of them when we ourselves have offended and done amiss, declareth no less love and natural affection than to forgive them if they have trespassed against us. And therefore we ought not to neglect them if they be angry and displeased; nor to be strait-laced and stiffly stand against them when they come to justify or excuse themselves; but rather both when ourselves have faulted, oftentimes to prevent their