Wherefore Pisistratus, being about to marry again,
his sons being grown up to a mature age, gave them their
deserved character of praise, together with the reason of
his designs for a second marriage,—that he might be the
happy father of more such children. Now those who are
truly ingenious do not only love one another the more entirely for the sake of their common parents, but they love
their very parents for the sake of one another; always
owning themselves bound to their parents especially for the
mutual happiness that they enjoy in each other, and looking upon their brethren as the dearest and the most valuable treasure they could have received from their parents.
And thus Homer elegantly expresses Telemachus bewailing the want of a brother:
Stern Jove has in some angry mood
Condemned our race to solitude.Odyss. XVI. 117.
But I like not Hesiod’s judgment so well, who is all for a
single son’s inheriting. Not so well (I say) from Hesiod, a
pupil of the Muses, who being endeared sisters kept always
together, and therefore from that inseparate union (ὁμοῦ οὐσαι) were called Muses. To parents therefore the love of
brothers is a plain argument of their children’s love to
themselves. And to the children of the brothers themselves it is the best of precedents, and that which affords
the most effectual advice that can be thought of; as again,
they will be forward enough in following the worst of their
parents’ humors and inheriting their animosities. But for
one who has led his relations a contentious life, and quarrelled himself up into wrinkles and gray hairs,—for such
a one to begin a lecture of love to his children is just like
him
Who boldly takes the fees,
To cure in others what’s his own disease.Euripides, Frag. 1071.
In a word, his own actions weaken and confute all the
arguments of his best counsel. Take Eteocles of Thebes
reflecting upon his brother and flying out after this manner:
I’d mount the Heavens, I’d strive to meet the sun
In’s setting forth, I’d travel within him down
Beneath the earth, I’d balk no enterprise,
To gain Jove’s mighty power and tyrannize.Eurip. Phoeniss. 504 and 536.
Suppose, I say, out of this rage, he had presently fallen
into the softer strain of good advice to his children, charging them thus:
Prize gentle amity that vies
With none for grandeur; concord prize
That joins together friends and states,
And keeps them long confederates.
Equality!—whatever else deceives
Our trust, ’tis this our very selves outlives;
who is there that would not have despised him? Or what
would you have thought of Atreus, after he had treated his
brother at a barbarous supper, to hear him afterwards thus
instructing his children:
Such love as doth become related friends
Alone, when ills betide, its succor lends?