My father, in his inexperience (for he does not know either the origin of the trouble that holds her in its grip, or its cause, or the extent of the infirmity), bade me treat her and give her the same medicine; for he thinks that madness has but one form, that the ailment is simple, and that her illness is identical with his, permitting the same treatment. When I say what is as true as true can be, that it is impossible to save his wife and confess that I am worsted by the disorder, he is indignant and angry, and says that I am deliberately shirking and giving the woman up, thus making the ineffectiveness of the art of medicine a reproach against me. He does, indeed, what is habitually done by people who are offended; all are angry at those who speak the truth in frankness. In spite of that, I shall plead to the best of my ability against him, not only for myself but for my art.

First, I shall begin with the law under which he wishes to disown me, in order that he may discover that his power is now no longer what it was before. The lawgiver, father,has not permitted all to exercise the privilege of disownment, or upon all sons, or as often as they choose, or upon all manner of grounds. On the contrary, just as he has conceded to fathers the right to exercise such anger, just so he has made provision in behalf of sons, that they may not suffer it unjustly ; and for that reason he has not allowed the punishment to be inflicted freely or without trial, but has ordered men to be summoned to court and empanelled as investigators who will not be influenced either by anger or by malice in determining what is just. For he knew that many people on many occasions are obsessed by senseless reasons for anger; that one believes a malicious falsehood, while another relies upon a servant or an unfriendly female. It was not his idea, therefore, that the thing should go untried or that sons should at once lose their case by default. Water is measured,

Time for speaking is apportioned to each side by the waterclock (κλέψυδρα).

Accordingly, since it is within your powers, since my father controls only the charge, and you who sit in judgement control the decision whether his accusation is reasonable, do not yet consider his specific allegation against me and the ground of his present indignation, but first examine that other point, whether he should still be allowed to disown a son when, after once for all disowning him, using the privilege that derives from the law and exercising to the full this paternal suzerainty, he has subsequently taken him back again and annulled the disownment. I say that such a thing is most unjust—for punishments, precisely in the case of children, to be interminable, their condemnations numerous, and their fear eternal; for the law at one moment to share the prosecutor’s anger, only soon afterward to relax, and then again to be as severe as before; in a word, for justice to be altered this way and that to conform to the momentary opinion of fathers. No, the first time it is right to give the parent free rein, to share his anger with him, to make him arbiter of the punishment; but if, once for all, he expends his privilege, makes full use of the law, satisfies his anger, and then afterwards takes back his son, persuaded that he deserves it, he must abide by it, and not keep shifting, changing his mind, and altering his decision.

When that son was born there was no way, of course, to ascertain whether he would turn out to be bad or good, and on that account the privilege of repudiating children who are unworthy of their family has been allowed to their parents, since they determined to bring them up at a time when they were unaware ofthis.

When, however, under no constraint but able to do as he pleases, a man himself, of his own motion and after putting his son to the test, takes him back, what pretext for change of mind remains, or what further recourse to the law? The legislator would say to you: “If he was bad and deserved to be disowned, what made you ask him back? Why did you readmit him to your house? Why did you nullify the law? You were free and at liberty not to do this. Surely it cannot be conceded that you should make sport of the laws and that the courts should be convened to suit your changes of mind, that the laws should be relaxed one moment and enforced the next and the jurors sit to register, or rather to execute, your decisions, inflicting a penalty at one time, bringing you together at another, as often as it shall please you. You begat him once for all, you brought him up once for all, and have once for all, in return for this, the power to disown him, and then only if you are held to be doing it justly. This persistence, this interminability, this prodigious casualness is beyond the legal right of a father.”

In Heaven’s name, gentlemen of the jury, do not permit him, once he has effected the reinstatement of his own free will, set aside the decision of the former court, and nullified his anger, to reinvoke the same penalty and to recur to the right of a father when its term by now is over and done with, inoperative in his case alone because it is already used up. You perceive, surely, that in all courts where jurors are drawn by lot, if a man thinks that the verdict is unjust, the law allows him to appeal from them to another tribunal; but if people have themselves of their own accord agreed upon jurors and willingly committed the arbitrament to them, that is not then the case. For there was no need to consult them at all; but if a man has selected them of his own choice, he ought to remain content with their decision. So it is with you: a son who seemed to you unworthy of his lineage need never have been taken back, but one whom you have pronounced good and taken back again you will not thereafter be able to disown ; for you yourself have borne witness that he does not deserve to undergo this again, and have acknowledged that he is good. It is fitting, therefore, that his reinstatement should be irrevocable and the reconciliation binding after deliberation so oft-repeated, and two sessions of court, one (the first) in which you repudiated him, the other (your own) when you changed your mind and undid it. By setting aside the earlier decision you have guaranteed your later determination. Abide, then, by your latest purpose and maintain your own verdict; you must be a father, for that is what you decided, what you approved, what you ratified.

Even if I were not your own son, but adopted, and you wished to disown me, I should not think you could; for what it was possible not to do at all, it is unjust to undo once it has taken place. But when a son has been got by birth, and then again by choice and decision, how is it reasonable to put him away again and deprive him repeatedly of that single relationship? If I happened to be a slave, and at first, thinking me vicious, you had put me in irons, but on becoming convinced that I was not a wrongdoer you had let me go and set me free, would it be in your power, if you became angry on occasion, to bring me back into the same condition of slavery? By no means, for the laws require that such pacts should be permanent and under all circumstances valid.

Upon the point that it is no longer in his power to disown one whom he has once disowned and then of his own accord taken back I still have much to say ; nevertheless, I shall make an end.

But consider what manner of man he will now be disowning. I do not mean that then I was but a layman, whereas now I am a physician, for my profession would avail me nothing in this respect. Nor that then I was young, whereas now I am well on in years and derive from my age the right to have it believed that I would do no wrong; for that too is perhaps trivial. But at that time, even if he had suffered no wrong, as I should maintain, yet he had received no benefit from me when he excluded me from the house ; whereas now I have recently been his saviour and benefactor. What could be more ungrateful than that, after he had been saved through me and had escaped so great a danger, he should at once make return in this way, taking no account of that cure; nay, should so easily forget and try to drive into loneliness a man who, when he might justly have exulted over those who had unjustly cast him out, not only had borne him no grudge but actually had saved his life and made him sound of mind?

It is no trifling or commonplace benefit, gentlemen of the jury, that I have conferred upon him; and yet I am accounted worthy of treatment like this. Although he himself does not know what happened then, you all know how he acted and felt and what his condition was when, taking him in hand after the other doctors had given up, while the members of the family were avoiding him and not venturing even to approach him, I made him what you see him, so that he is able to bring charges and argue about the laws. Stay! you can see your counterpart, father; you were nearly as your wife is now, when I brought you back to your former sanity. Truly it is not just that I should receive such a recompense for it, or that you should employ your reason only against me. That I have done you no little good is clear from the very charges which you bring; you hate me because I do not cure your wife when she is at the end of everything and in an utterly wretched plight. Since I freed you from a similar condition, why are you not far rather overjoyed and thankful to have been liberated from a state so terrible? Instead, and it is most ungrateful—you no sooner recover your sanity than you bring me to court and after your life has been saved, seek to punish me, reverting to that old-time hatred and citing the self-same law. It is a handsome fee, in truth, that you pay in this manner to the art of healing, and a fitting price for your medicines, to employ your sanity only to attack your physician !

Will you, gentlemen of the jury, empower this man to punish his benefactor, to banish his saviour, to hate the one who made him sane, to take vengeance on the one who set him on his feet? Not if you do what is just. For if I were really now guilty of the greatest offences, there was no slight gratitude owing me previously; keeping this in sight and in mind, he would have done well to ignore the present and to be prompt to forgive for the sake of the past, especially if the benefaction were so great as to overtop everything subsequent. That, I think, is true of mine toward this man, whom I saved, who is my debtor for the whole of his life, to whom I have given existence, sanity, and intelligence, and that at a time when all the others had finally given up and were confessing themselves defeated by the malady.

My benefaction, I think, is the greater because, although I was not his son at that time and had no imperative reason to take the case but was free and independent, having been released from the responsibility imposed by nature, nevertheless I was not indifferent but came voluntarily, unsummoned, on my own initiative; I gave my assistance, lavished my attentions, brought about a cure, and set my father on his feet, preserving him for myself, pleading my own cause against his disownment, stilling his anger by my friendliness, annulling the law by my love, purchasing by a great benefaction my reentrance into the family, demonstrating my loyalty to my father at a crisis so dangerous, bringing about my own adoption with the help of my profession, and proving myself a legitimate son in his time of dire need.

What do you suppose my sufferings were, what my exertions, to be with him, to wait upon him, to watch my opportunity, now yielding to the full force of the ailment, now bringing my professional skill to bear when the disorder abated a little? And truly, of all these duties that are included in medical science, the most dangerous is to treat such patients and to approach people in that condition, for often they loose their frenzy upon those who are near them, when their ailment has become severe. And yet none of these considerations made me hesitant or faint-hearted. I joined battle with the disease and measured myself against it in every way, and so at last prevailed by means of my remedy.

Let no one, hearing this, be quick to remark: “What sort of feat is it, and how great, to give a remedy?”’ Many things must precede this; one must prepare the way for the medicine, make the body easy to cure, and take thought for the patient’s whole condition, purging him, reducing him, nourishing him with the proper foods, rousing him as much as is expedient, planning for periods of sleep, contriving periods of solitude. Those who have any other sickness can readily be persuaded to consent to all this, but the insane because of their independence of spirit are hard to influence and hard to direct, dangerous to the physician, and hard to conquer by the treatment. Often when we think we are near the goal at last and become hopeful, some trivial slip, occurring when the illness has reached its height, easily overturns everything that has been done, hampers the treatment, and thwarts our skill.

When a man has endured all this, has wrestled with an illness so serious, and has conquered the ailment of all ailments most difficult to master, will you empower the plaintiff to disown him again, permit him to interpret the laws in any way he will against a benefactor, and allow him to fight with nature?

I, obeying nature, save and preserve my father for my own sake, gentlemen of the jury, even if he wrongs me; but that father, following, he says, the laws, ruins the son that has done him a benefit, and deprives him of his family. He is his son’s enemy, I am my father’s friend. I cherish nature, he slights and insults her just claims. To think of a father who hates his son unjustly! To think of a son that loves his father still more unjustly! For I bring it as a charge against myself, since my father constrains me to do so, that I who am hated love when I should not and love more than I ought. Yet it is nature’s behest that fathers love their sons more than sons their fathers. He, however, deliberately slights even the laws, which preserve for the family sons who have done no wrong, as well as nature, who draws parents into great affection for their children. It cannot be said that, having exceptional grounds for good-will towards me, he pays me exceptional dues of good-will and runs the measure over, or that at least he imitates and rivals me in my love; no, alas! he even hates one who loves him, repels one who cherishes him, injures one who helps him, and disowns one who clings to him. Aye, though the laws are kindly to children, he employs them against me as if they were unkindly. Ah, what a conflict you wish to precipitate, father, between the laws and nature !

Truly, truly, this matter is not as you will have it tobe. Youillinterpret the laws, father, for they are well made. Nature and law are not at war in the matter of good-will; they go hand in hand there, and work together for the righting of wrongs. You mistreat your benefactor; you wrong nature. Why wrong the laws, as well as nature? They mean to be good, and just, and kindly to children, but you will not allow it, inciting them repeatedly against one son as if his name were legion, and not suffering them to rest contented with punishments when they are willing to rest contented with demonstrations of filial affection; and yet they were not made, surely, as a menace to those who have done no wrong. Indeed, the laws permit suit to be brought on the charge of ingratitude against persons who do not help those who have helped them.

The existence of a law making ingratitude (dyapio7ia) actionable was part of the accepted tradition of the Greek rhetorical seHnee (Sopater in Walz, Rhetores Graect, VIII, 175 and 239; Cyrus, tbsd., 391; cf. Seneca, de Benef., III, 6, 1). For its existence outside the schools the evidence is conflicting. The name of the action is included in the list given by Pollux, VIII, 31, and Valerius Maximus (V, 3, ext. 3) says that Athens had such a law. On the other hand, Xenophon puts into the mouth of Socrates (Mem., II, 2,13; ef. Cyrop. I, 2,7) the statement that Athens took no cognisance of ingratitude except toward parents, and Seneca (loc. cit.) says that no nation except the Macedonians had a law against it,

That it is neither possible for him to disown a son after having already once for all exhausted his paternal right and made use of the laws, nor yet just to thrust away one who has shown himself so great a benefactor and exclude him from the house has been, I think, sufficiently established.