+26.+ For first he “thinks that he should remind the congress that in
war sleepers are woke at dawn by bugles, in peace by cocks.”[42] Then
he says that “Hercules established the Olympic games and the sacred
truce during them, as an exemplification of his own principles;” and
that “he had injured all those persons against whom he waged war, under
compulsion and in obedience to the order of another, but was never
voluntarily the author of harm to any man.”[43] Next he quotes the
instance of Zeus in Homer as being displeased with Ares, and saying[44]—
“Of all the gods that on Olympus dwell
I hold thee most detested; for thy joy
Is ever strife and war and battle.”
And again the wisest of the heroes says[45]—
“He is a wretch, insensible and dead
To all the charities of social life,
Whose pleasure is in civil broil and war.”
Then he goes on to allege that Euripides agrees with Homer in the
lines[46]—
“O well of infinite riches!
O fairest of beings divine!
O Peace, how alas! thou delayest;
My heart for thy coming is fain.
I tremble lest age overtake me,
Ere thy beauty and grace I behold;
Ere the maidens shall sing in their dancing,
And revels be gladsome with flowers.”
Next he remarks that “war is like disease, peace like health; for that
the latter restores those that are sick, while in the former even the
healthy perish. Moreover, in time of peace, the old are buried by the
young as nature directs, while in war the case is reversed; and above
all in war there is no security even as far as the city walls, while
in peace it extends to the frontier of the territory”—and so on. I
wonder what other arguments would have been employed by a youth who had
just devoted himself to scholastic exercises and studies in history;
and who wished, according to the rules of the art, to adapt his words
to the supposed speakers? Just these I think which Timaeus represents
Hermocrates as using.
[Sidenote: Timoleon’s victory over the Carthaginians, B.C. 344.]
(_a_) Again, in the same book, Timoleon is exhorting the Greeks to
engage the Carthaginians;[47] and when they are on the very point of
coming to close quarters with the enemy, who are many times superior
to them in number, Timaeus represents him as saying, “Do not look to
the numbers of the foe, but to their cowardice. For though Libya is
fully settled and abounds in inhabitants, yet when we wish to express
complete desolation we say ‘more desolate than Libya,’ not meaning to
refer to its emptiness, but to the poor spirit of its inhabitants. And
after all, who would be afraid of men who, when nature gives hands as
the distinctive feature of man among all living creatures, carry them
about all their life inside their tunics idle?[48] And more than all,
who wear shirts under their inner tunics, that they may not even when
they fall in battle show their nakedness to their enemies?...”
[Sidenote: Gelo. See Herod. 7, 157-165, B.C. 481.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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