[14] But since, to quote Simonides,
1
all larks must grow a crest, and every public career bears its crop of enmities and disagreements, the public man must give especial consideration to these matters. So most people commend Themistocles and Aristeides who, whenever they went on an embassy or in command of an army, laid down their private enmity at the frontier, then took it up again later. And some people also are immensely pleased by the conduct of Cretinas of Magnesia. He was a political opponent of Hermeias, a man who was not powerful but was of ambitious spirit and brilliant mind, and when the Mithridatic war broke out, seeing that the State was in danger, he told Hermeias to take over the command and manage affairs, while he himself withdrew; or, if Hermeias wished him to be general, then Hermeias should remove himself, that they might not by ambitious strife with one another destroy the State. The challenge pleased Hermeias, and saying that Cretinas was more versed in war than himself, he went away with his wife and children. And as he was departing Cretinas escorted him, first giving him out of his own means such things as were more useful to exiles than to people besieged in a city, after which by his excellent military leadership he saved the State unexpectedly when it was on the brink of destruction. For if it is a noble thing and the mark of an exalted spirit to exclaim
I love my children, but I love my country more,
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would it not have been easier for each of them to say,
I hate so-and-so and wish to do him harm, but I love my country more? For to be unwilling to make peace with a personal enemy for the sake of those things for which we ought even to give up a friend is shockingly uncivilized and as low as the beasts. Certamly Phoeion and Cato and their like acted much better, for they would allow no personal enmity to have any bearing whatsoever upon political differences, but were stern and inexorable only in public contests against sacrificing what was for the common good; yet in private matters they treated kindly and without anger their political opponents. For the statesman should not regard any fellow-citizen as an enemy, unless some man, such as Aristion, Nabis, or Catiline, should appear who is a pest and a running sore to the State. Those who are in other ways out of harmony he should, like a skilful musician, bring into unison by gently tightening or relaxing the strings of his control, not attacking angrily and insultingly those who err, but making an appeal designed rather to make a moral impression, as Homer does:
Truly, my friend, I did think you surpassed other men in your wisdom
3
;
and
Knowledge thou hast to devise other speech that is better than this was.
4
But if they say or do anything good, he should not be vexed by their honours, nor should he be sparing of complimentary words for their good actions; for if we act in this way our blame, where it is needed, will be thought justified, and we shall make them dislike evil by exalting virtue and showing through comparison that good actions are more worthy and fitting than the other kind. And I think also that the statesman should give testimony in just causes even for his opponents, should aid them in court against the malicious prosecutors, and should discredit calumnies about them if such accusations are alien to the principles they profess; just as the infamous Nero, a little before he put Thrasea to death, whom he hated and feared intensely, nevertheless when someone accused him of a bad and unjust decision in court, said:
I wish Thrasea were as good a friend to me as he is a most excellent judge. And it is not a bad method for confounding persons of a different kind, men who are naturally vicious and prone to evil conduct, to mention to them some enemy of theirs who is of finer character and to say:
He would not have said that or done that. And some men, too, when they do wrong, should be reminded of their excellent fathers, as Homer says:
Truly not much like his sire is the son who was gotten by Tydeus
5
;
And Appius, when competing with Scipio Africanus
6
in the elections, said:
O Paulus, how you would groan in the lower world if you saw that when your son was standing for the censorship Philonicus the publican acted as his bodyguard! Such sayings serve at once to rebuke wrongdoers and to add lustre to those who administer the rebuke. And the Nestor of Sophocles, too, made a statesmanlike reply when reviled by Ajax:
I blame thee not; for good thy acts, though ill thy speech.
7
And Cato, although he had opposed Pompey in the violent measures which he and Caesar applied to the State, when war broke out between them advised handing over the leadership to Pompey, saying:
The men who can bring about great evils can also end them. For blame wThich is mingled with praise and contains nothing insulting but merely frankness of speech, and arouses not anger but a pricking of the conscience and repentance, appears both kindly and healing; but abusive speech is not at all fitting for statesmen. Observe the things that were said by Demosthenes against Aeschines and by Aeschines against him and again those which Hypereides wrote against Demades, and ask yourself if a Solon or a Pericles or Lycurgus the Lacedaemonian or Pittacus the Lesbian would have said them. And yet even Demosthenes employs abuse only in his speeches before a court of law; the Philippics are free from all jeering and scurrility. For such things bring disgrace upon the speakers rather than upon those spoken of, and moreover they bring confusion into the conduct of affairs and they disturb councils and assemblies. Therefore Phocion did well when he stopped speaking and yielded the floor to a man who was reviling him, and then, when the fellow had at last become silent, came forward again saying:
Well, then, about the cavalry and the heavy infantry you have heard already; it remains for me to discuss the light infantry and the targeteers. But since many men find it hard to endure that sort of thing quietly, and abusive speakers are often, and not without general benefit, made to shut their mouths by the retorts they evoke, let the reply be brief in wording, showing no temper and no extreme rancour, but urbanity mingled with playfulness and grace which somehow or other has a sting in it. Retorts which turn his own words back upon the speaker are especially good in this way. For just as things which are thrown and return to the thrower seem to do this because they are driven back by some force and firmness of that against which they are thrown, so that which is spoken seems through the force and intellect of him who has been abused to turn back upon those who uttered the abuse. For example, the retort of Epameinondas to Callistratus, who reproached the Thebans and the Argives because Oedipus killed his f ither and Orestes killed his mother:
When we had driven out the doers of those deeds, you took them in, and that of Antalcidas the Spartan to the Athenian who said
We have often chased you away from the Cephissus,
Yes, but we have never had to chase you from the Eurotas. And Phocion also made a witty retort, when, after Demades had screamed
The Athenians will put you to death, he replied,
Yes, if they are crazy; but you are the one whom t ley will execute, if they are sane. And Crassus the orator, when Domitius said to him,
It was you. was it not, who wept when a lamprey died that you kept in a tank? retorted with the question,
It was you, was it not, who buried three wives without shedding a tear? Apt replies of this sort, however,;ire of some use also in life in general. Praecepta gerendae reipublicae. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.
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