Plutarch, De fraterno amore, William Clark Helmbold (Translator), 7

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[7] Therefore it is fitting to cleanse away completely hatred of brothers, which is both an evil sustainer of parents in their old age¹ and a worse nurturer of children in their youth. And it is also a cause of slander and accusations against such brothers; for their fellow-citizens think that, after having been so closely bound together by their common education, their common life together, and their kinship, brothers could not have become deadly enemies unless each were aware of many wicked deeds committed by the other. There must be, they infer, great reasons for the breaking-up of a great goodwill and affection. For this reason it is not easy to effect a reconciliation of brothers; for just as things which have been joined together, even if the glue becomes loose, may be fastened together again and become united, yet if a body which has grown together is broken or split, it is difficult to find means of welding or joining it; so friendships knitted together through long familiarity, even though the friends part company, can be easily resumed again, but when brothers have once broken the bonds of Nature,² they cannot readily come together, and even if they do, their reconciliation bears with it a filthy hidden sore of suspicion. Or rather, every enmity between man and man which steals into the heart in company with the most painful emotions - contentiousness, anger, envy, remembrance of wrongs - causes pain and perturbation of mind; but when the enmity is toward a brother, with whom it is necessary to share sacrifices and the family’s sacred rites, to occupy the same sepulchre, and in life, perhaps, the same or a neighbouring habitation - such an enmity keeps the painful situation ever before our eyes, and reminds us every day of the madness and folly which has made the sweetest countenance of the nearest kinsman become most frowning and angry to look upon, and that voice which has been beloved and familiar from boyhood most dreadful to hear. And though they see many other examples of brothers using the same house and table and undistributed estates and slaves, yet they alone maintain different sets of friends and guests, considering as hostile everything dear to their brothers - and that too though all the world may readily reflect that while friends and boon-companions may be taken as booty, and relatives by marriage and familiars may be obtained³ when the old ones, like arms or implements, have been lost, yet the acquisition of another brother is impossible,⁴ as is that of a new hand when one has been removed or that of a new eye when one has been knocked out; rightly, then, did the Persian⁵ woman declare, when she chose to save her brother in place of her children, that she could get other children, but not another brother, since her parents were dead.

De fraterno amore. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.

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Current edition Perseus

On Brotherly Love (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. VI. Helmbold, W.C., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1939 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Περὶ φιλαδελφίας Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol III. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig. Teubner, 1891.) — 7 focus

[7] διὸ καὶ γονέων κακὴν γηροτρόφον οὖσαν καὶ 25 κακίονα παιδοτρόφον τέκνων ἐκκαθαίρειν προσήκει τὴν μισαδελφίαν. ἔστι δὲ καὶ πρὸς πολίτας διάβολος καὶ κατήγορος· οἴονται γὰρ οὐκ ἂν· ἐκ τοσῆσδε συντροφίας καὶ συνηθείας καὶ οἰκειότητος ἐχθροὺς 481c καὶ πολεμίους γενέσθαι, μὴ πολλὰ καὶ πονηρὰ συνειδότας 5 ἀλλήλοις. μεγάλαι γὰρ αἰτίαι μεγάλην διαλύουσιν εὔνοιαν καὶ φιλίαν· ὅθεν οὐδὲ ῥᾳδίως αὖθις ἐνδέχονται διαλύσεις. ὥσπερ γὰρ τὰ συμπαγέντα, κἂν χαλάσῃ τὸ ἐχέκολλον, ἐνδέχεται πάλιν δεθῆναι καὶ συνελθεῖν, συμφυοῦς δὲ σώματος ῥαγέντος ἢ σχισθέντος; 10 ἔργον ἐστὶ κόλλησιν εὑρεῖν καὶ σύμφυσιν· οὕτως αἱ μὲν ὑπὸ χρείας συνημμέναι φιλίαι κἂν διαστῶσιν οὐ χαλεπῶς αὖθις ἀναλαμβάνουσιν· ἀδελφοὶ δὲ τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐκπεσόντες; οὔτε· ῥᾳδίως; συνέρχονται, κἂν συνέλθωσι, ῥυπαρὰν καὶ ὕποπτον οὐλὴν αἱ 15 481d διαλύσεις ἐφέλκονται. πᾶσα μὲν οὖν ἔχθρα πρὸς ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπῳ μετὰ τῶν μάλιστα λυπούντων ἐνδυομένη παθῶν, φιλονεικίας ὀργῆς φθόνου μνησικακίας, ὀδυνηρόν ἐστι καὶ ταραχῶδες· ἡ δὲ πρὸς ἀδελφόν, ᾧ θυσιῶν τε κοινωνεῖν ἀνάγκη καὶ ἱερῶν πατρῴων 20 ὁμόταφόν τε γενέσθαι καί που σύνοικον ἢ γείτονα χωρίων, ἐν ὄμμασιν ἔχει τὸ λυπηρόν, ὑπομιμνήσκουσα καθʼ ἡμέραν τῆς ἀνοίας καὶ παραφροσύνης, διʼ ἣν τὸ ἥδιστον καὶ συγγενέστατον πρόσωπον 481e βλέπεται σκυθρωπότατον, ἥ τε προσφιλὴς ἐκ νέων 25 φωνὴ καὶ συνήθης ἀκοῦσαι φοβερωτάτη γέγονε. πολλοὺς δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἀδελφῶν ὁρῶντες οἰκίᾳ τε μιᾷ χρωμένους καὶ τραπέζῃ καὶ χωρίοις ἀνεμήτοις καὶ ἀνδραπόδοις, αὐτοὶ καὶ φίλους διῄρηνται καὶ ξένους, ἐχθρὰ πάντα τὰ προσφιλῆ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς νέμοντες· καὶ ταῦτα, πᾶσιν ἐν μέσῳ λογίζεσθαι παρόντος, ὅτι, ληιστοί¹ μέν τε φίλοι καὶ συμπόται κτητοί δὲ κηδεσταὶ καὶ συνήθεις, τῶν πρώτων ὥσπερ ὅπλων ἢ ὀργάνων διαφθαρέντων· ἀδελφοῦ δʼ ἀντίκτησις οὐκ 5 ἔστιν, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ χειρὸς ἀφαιρεθείσης οὐδʼ ὄψεως ἐκκοπείσης· ἀλλʼ ὀρθῶς ἡ Περσὶς² εἶπεν, ἀντὶ τῶν 481f τέκνων ἑλομένη σῶσαι τὸν ἀδελφόν, ὅτι παῖδας μὲν ἑτέρους κτήσασθαι δύναιτʼ ἄν, ἀδελφὸς δʼ ἄλλος αὐτῇ, γονέων μὴ ὄντων, οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο. 10

Translations (1)

Of Brotherly Love Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. III. Goodwin, William W., editor; Thomson, John, translator. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company, 1874.) — 7 focus

[7] It is therefore very needful to throw off those ill dispositions, as being very grievous and troublesome to their parents, and more destructive to children in respect of the ill example. Besides, it occasions many strange censures and much obloquy amongst men. For they will not be apt to imagine that so near and intimate relations as brothers, that have eaten of the same bread and all along participated of the same common maintenance, and who have conversed so familiarly together, should break out into contention, except they were conscious to themselves of a great deal of naughtiness. For it must be some great matter that violates the bonds of natural affection; whence it is that such breaches are so hardly healed up again. For, as those things which are joined together by art, being parted, may by the same art be compacted again, but if there be a fracture in a natural body, there is much difficulty in setting and uniting the broken parts; so, if friendships that through a long tract of time have been firmly and closely contracted come once to be violated, no endeavors will bring then together any more. And brothers, when they have once broke natural affection, are hardly made true friends again; or, if there be some kind of peace made betwixt then, it is like to prove but superficial only, and such as carries a filthy festering scar along with it. Now all enmity between man and man which is attended with these perturbations of quarrelsomeness, passion, envy, recording of an injury, must needs be troublesome and vexatious; but that which is harbored against a brother, with whom they communicate in sacrifices and other religious rites of their parents, with whom they have the same common charnel-house and the same or a near habitation, is much more to be lamented,—especially if we reflect upon the horrid madness of some brothers, in being so prejudiced against their own flesh and blood, that his face and person once so welcome and familiar, his voice all along from his childhood as well beloved as known, should on a sudden become so very detestable. How loudly does this reproach their ill-nature and savage dispositions, that, whilst they behold other brethren lovingly conversing in the same house and dieting together at the same table, managing the same estate and attended by the same servants, they alone divide friends, choose contrary acquaintance, resolving to abandon every thing that their brother may approve of? Now it is obvious to any to understand, that new friends and companions may be compassed and new kindred may come in when the old, like decayed weapons and worn-out utensils, are lost and gone. But there is no more regaining of a lost brother, than of a hand that is cut off or an eye that is beaten out. The Persian woman therefore spake truth, when she preferred the saving her brother’s life before her very children’s, alleging that she was in a possibility of having more children if she should be deprived of those she had, but, her parents being dead, she could hope for no more brothers after him.¹

Notes on the current edition

On Brotherly Love

1. Cf. 480 c, supra.

2. Cf. Racine, La Thebaïde:

Mais, quand de la nature on a brise les chaines,

Cher Attale, il n’est rien qui puisse reunir

Ceux que des noeuds si forts n’ont pas sceu retenir.

L’on hait avec exces lorsque l’on hait un frere.

3. With reference to Il., ix. 406-409:

ληϊστοὶ μὲν γάρ τε βόες καὶ ἴφια μῆλα,

κτητοὶ δὲ τρίποδές τε καὶ ἴππων ξανθὰ κάρηνα·

ἀνδρὸς δὲ ψυχὴ πάλιν ἐλθέμεν οὔτε λεϊστὴ

οὔθ᾽ἑλετή, ἐπεὶ ἄρ κεν ἀμείψεται ἔρκος ὀδόντων.

4. Cf. the passage of Sophocles, Antigone, 905 ff., now accepted by most critics as genuine.

5. Herodotus, iii. 119.

Plutarch De fraterno amore 7

William Clark Helmbold (Translator)

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