a better condition, and of honour and love for their benefactors. For are not even savage animals, and such as are naturally most hostile to our race, and who are taken away by violence, and at first are detained by chains, and confined in iron cages,—are not these afterwards rendered mild by a certain mode of treatment, and by daily supplying them with food? And will not the man who is a brother, or even any casual person, who deserves attention in a much greater degree than a brute, be changed to milder manners by proper treatment, though he should not entirely forsake his rusticity? In our behaviour, therefore, towards every man, and in a much greater degree towards a brother, we should imitate the reply of Socrates to one who said to him, “May I die unless I am revenged on you.” For his answer was, “May I die, if I do not make you my friend.” And thus much concerning these particulars. In the next place, a man should consider that after a manner his brothers are parts of him, just as my eyes are parts of me; and likewise my legs, my hands, and the remaining members of my body. For brothers have the same relation to a family considered as one thing [as the parts to the whole of the body]. As, therefore, the eyes and the hands, if each of them should receive a peculiar soul and intellect, would, by every possible contrivance, pay a guardian attention to the remaining parts of the body, on account of the before-mentioned communion, because they could not perform their proper office well without the presence of the other members; thus also it is requisite that we who are men, and who acknowledge that we have a soul, should omit no offices which it becomes us to perform to our brothers. For again, brothers are more naturally adapted to assist each other, than are the parts of the body. For the eyes, indeed, being present with each other, see what is before them, and one hand cooperates with the other which is present; but the mutual works of brothers are, in a certain respect, much more multifarious. For they perform things which are profitable in common, though they should be at the greatest distance from each other; and they greatly benefit each other, though the interval which separates them should be immeasurable. In short, it must be considered, that our life appears to be a certain long war continued to the extent of many years; and this partly through the nature of the things themselves which possess a certain opposition; and partly through the sudden and unexpected occurrences of fortune; but most of all through vice itself, which neither abstains from any violence, nor from any fraud and evil stratagems. Hence nature, as not being ignorant of the purpose for which she generated us, produced each of us accompanied, after a certain manner, by an auxiliary. No one, therefore, is alone, nor does he derive his origin _from an oak or a rock_, but from parents, and in conjunction with brothers, and kindred, and other familiars.