(A certain rich man(230) had numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle and “ranging flocks of goats”(231) and many times ten thousand mares “grazed his marsh‐meadows.”(232) Many shepherds too he had, both slaves and hired freedmen, neatherds and goatherds and grooms for his horses, and many estates withal. Now much of all this his father had bequeathed to him, but he had himself acquired many times more, being eager to enrich himself whether justly or unjustly; for little did he care for gods. Several wives he had, and sons and daughters by them, among whom he divided his wealth before he died. But he did not teach them how to manage it, or how to acquire more if it should fail, or how to preserve what they had. For in his ignorance he thought that their mere numbers would suffice, nor had he himself any real knowledge of that sort of art, since he had not acquired his wealth on any rational principle but rather by use and wont, like quack doctors who try to cure their patients by relying on their experience only, so that many diseases escape them altogether.(233) Accordingly since he thought that a number of sons would suffice to preserve his wealth, he took no thought how to make them virtuous. But this very thing proved to be the beginning of their iniquitous behaviour to one another. For every one of them desired to be as wealthy as his father and to possess the whole for himself alone, and so attacked the brother that was his neighbour. Now for a time they continued to behave thus. And their relatives also shared in the folly and ignorance of those sons, since they themselves had had no better education. Then ensued a general slaughter, and heaven brought the tragic curse(234) to fulfilment. For “by the edge of the sword they divided their patrimony” and everything was thrown into confusion. The sons demolished the ancestral temples which their father before them had despised and had stripped of the votive offerings that had been dedicated by many worshippers, but not least by his own ancestors. And besides demolishing the temples they erected sepulchres(235) both on new sites and on the old sites of the temples, as though impelled by fate or by an unconscious presentiment that they would ere long need many such sepulchres, seeing that they so neglected the gods.)