[17] Furthermore, there are other disturbances which brothers of nearly the same age must guard against; they are but small, to be sure, yet continuous and frequent, and create a vicious practice of offending and exasperating one another on all occasions, which at last ends in incurable hatred and malevolence. For having once begun to differ in childish matters, about the care of animals and their fights, as, for instance, those of quails or cocks, they then continue to differ about the contests of boys in the palaestra, of dogs on the hunt, and of horses at the races, until they are no longer able to control or subdue their contentious and ambitious spirit in more important matters. So the most powerful of the Greeks in my time, disagreeing first about rival dancers, then about harp-players, and afterwards by continually holding up to invidious comparison the swimming-baths and porticoes and banquet-halls at Aedepsus,
1
and then manoeuvring for places and positions, and going on to cut off aqueducts and divert their waters, they became so savage and reckless that they were deprived of everything by the despot,
2
and, becoming exiles and paupers and-I had almost said-something other than their former selves, they remained the same only in their hatred for one another. It is therefore of no slight importance to resist the spirit of contentiousness and jealousy among brothers when it first creeps in over trivial matters, practising the art of making mutual concessions, of learning to take defeat, and of taking pleasure in indulging brothers rather than in winning victories over them. For the men of old gave the name of
Cadmean
3
victory to no other than that of the brothers at Thebes, as being the most shameful and the worst of victories.
What then? Do not practical affairs bring many occasions for controversy and dissension even to those who have the reputation of being of an equitable and gentle disposition? Yes, certainly. But there also we must see to it that the affairs fight the battle quite by themselves, without our inserting into the contest, like a hook, as it were, any emotion arising from contentiousness or anger; but, keeping our eyes fixed impartially upon the swaying of Justice, as though we were watching a pair of balances, we should with all speed turn over the matter in dispute to the decision of a jury or of arbitrators, and cleanse its filth away before, like a dye or stain, it sinks into the fabric and its colours become fast and hard to wash out. We should next pattern ourselves after the Pythagoreans, who, though related not at all by birth, yet sharing a common discipline,
4
if ever they were led by anger into recrimination, never let the sun go down
5
before they joined right hands, embraced each other, and were reconciled. For just as it is nothing alarming if a fever attends a swelling in the groin, but if the fever persists when the swelling is gone, it is thought to be a malady and to have a deeper origin: so when the dissension of brothers ceases after the matter in dispute is settled, the dissension was caused by the matter; but if it remains, the matter was but a pretext and contained some malignant and festering reason.
De fraterno amore. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.