15. And, in truth, the wrath of the gods, when it falls upon a whole city, has its justification. For a city is a unit and an entirety, just like an animal, that does not lose its identity with the passing of the years, nor is transformed from one thing into something different in the course of time, but is always affected by like feelings and has a character peculiar to itself. It merits all the praise and all the blame for what it has done in its sovereign capacity, so long as the community which makes it one and binds it together preserves its unity. To make one city, in the course of time, consist of many cities, or rather, of a countless number, is like dividing one man into many because he is now older, but was formerly younger, and still earlier, a stripling. This is altogether like the well-known argument of Epicharmus, the so-called increasing syllogism, much used by the Sophists, that the man who had incurred a debt some time ago does not owe it now as he has become another man, and that he who was invited to a banquet yesterday comes to-day an unbidden guest because he is another person. Advancing age produces greater changes in each one of us than in the general character of cities. Any one would recognize Athens if he saw it thirty years ago; the customs of to-day, the motions, the sports, the occupations, the likes and dislikes of the people are precisely the same they were in former times; but a man whom a relative or a friend might chance to meet after an interval of time, he would scarcely recognize, and the change of character easily seen in every remark and occupation and in the feelings and habits have, even for those who are about us all the time, something strange and striking by their novelty. Nevertheless a man is regarded as one person from his birth to his death; and in like manner we think it right that the city, which remains the same, ought to be held responsible for the transgressions of its former citizens with the same show of reason that it shares in their glory and prestige; otherwise we shall, without being aware of it, cast everything into the river of Heracleitus into which he says nothing goes twice because nature keeps all things in motion and changes their form.