Athens, also sprang from a house on which rested a curse; while in Rome, Pompey the Great was the son of Strabo whose corpse the Roman people, in their hatred, cast out and trampled under foot. Why should it then be thought strange, if, just as the husbandman does not dig up the thorns lest he destroy the asparagus, and the Lydians do not burn the shrub until they have gathered the gum from it; so God should in like manner delay to extirpate the evil and corrupt root of an illustrious and kingly house until the proper fruit has grown from it? It was better for the Phokians to lose the countless herds of kine and horses belonging to Iphitus, as also that much gold and silver should be taken from Delphi, than not to have had Ulysses or Asklepias born among them, or the other distinguished and noble-minded men whose ancestors had been evil-doers and reprobates. 8. Do you not think it better that retribution should come in due season and in a fitting way, than immediately and all at once? As, for instance, in the case of Kalippus, who, supposed to be the friend of Dion, killed him with the same sword with which he was afterward dispatched by his friends; and that of Mitias the Argive who had been slain in a tumult and whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on the slayer of Mitias during a dramatic performance and killed him. And the stories of Bessus, the Paeonian, and of Aristo the Oetaean, the leaders of the mercenaries, you, of course, know, Patrocleas.” “I do not,” said he, “but I would like to hear them.” “Aristo,” I said, “having taken away the ornaments of Eriphyle lying here (in this temple), with the permission of the authorities, presented them to his wife; but his son, angered at his mother from some cause, set the house on fire and burned up all who were in it. And Bessus, as the story goes, having killed his own father, was not found out for a long time, but finally, going to a banquet with some friends and happening to strike a nest of young swallows with his spear, knocked it down and killed the fledglings. When those who were present said, as was natural, ‘Man, what possessed you to do such an ill-omened deed?’ he replied, ‘Have they not this long time been falsely accusing me and crying out against me for killing my father’? The astonished company reported the remark to the king, and after the case had been investigated Bessus received his just deserts.” 9. “We say these things,” I continued, “on the assumption that there is a postponement of punishment for the wicked; on the other hand, it is proper to hear what Hesiod says, who does not think with Plato that punishment is a pain which follows injustice, but that it is something of equal age with it; that it springs from the same root and place, for he says, ‘Evil counsel is most hurtful to him who has given it,’ and, ‘He who lays plots for another, lays a plot against himself.’