Yet that son of Copreus has left us no brilliant or signal achievement, while the posterity of Sisyphus and Autolycus and Phlegyas burst into flower of glory and virtue in the persons of great kings. Pericles at Athens came of a house which was under a curse. Pompey the Great, at Rome, was the son of Strabo, whose corpse the Romans cast out and trampled [Sidenote: C] in their hatred. What is there strange then if God acts like the farmer, who does not cut down the thistle till he has picked the asparagus, or like the Libyans who do not burn the dry stalks before they have collected the gum; who spares to destroy a bad and rough-grown root of a noble race of kings till the due fruit has issued from it? For it were better for the Phocians that Iphitus should lose tens of thousands of cattle and horses, or that even more gold should leave Delphi, and silver too, than that Ulysses should never have been born, or Asclepius, or [Sidenote: D] the other brave men and mighty benefactors who have come of bad and vicious lines. VIII. ‘But do you not all think it better that punishments should fall in the fitting time and manner than hastily and at once? There is the case of Callippus, who was slain by his friends with the very dagger which he had used to slay Dion in the guise of a friend. Again, there is Mitys[216] of Argos, killed in a party quarrel, whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on the murderer during a public performance and killed him. And I think you know all about Bessus the Paeonian, Patrocleas, and Ariston of Oeta, the commander of foreign troops?’ [Sidenote: E] ‘Indeed I do not,’ he replied, ‘but I want to hear.’ ‘Ariston,’ I said, ‘with the consent of the tyrants, took down the ornaments of Eriphyle, deposited here, and carried them off to his wife for a present. Then his son, enraged with his mother for some reason, set fire to the house, and burnt up all who were within it. Bessus, it appears, slew his own father, and for a long time escaped detection. Afterwards, having come to some friends for supper, he put his spear through a swallows’ nest and brought it down, and destroyed the young birds. All present exclaimed, as well they might: “Man, what has [Sidenote: F] possessed you to do such a monstrous thing?” To which he replied: “Have they not been telling lies against me this long time, shrieking that I have killed my father?” Astonished at such a speech, they informed the king, an inquiry was held, and Bessus suffered. IX. ‘So far’, I said, ‘we have been speaking, as was agreed, upon the assumption that some respite is really granted to wicked men. For what remains, you must suppose that you are listening to Hesiod,[217] laying down, not with Plato[218] that punishment is [Sidenote: 554] “suffering which waits on wrongdoing”, but that it is a contemporary growth, springing up with sin, from the same place and the same root, _Bad counsel to the counsellor is worst_, and