Parallela minora

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. 5. Goodwin, William W., editor; Oswald, John, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

When Priam found that Troy was given for lost, he sent his young son Polydore into Thrace with a vast sum of gold, and put all into the hands of Polymestor his kinsman. So soon as Troy was taken, Polymestor killed the child, and took the gold to himself. Hecuba, being

driven upon that quarter, overreached Polymestor by craft, under pretence of giving him a great treasure, at which time she, with the assistance of her fellow-prisoners, tore out his eyes with her nails.—Euripides the Tragedian.

When Hannibal was ravaging the country of Campania, Lucius Thymbris deposited his son Rustius, with a vast sum of money, in the hands of Valerius Gestius his kinsman; who upon intelligence that the enemy carried all before him, out of pure avarice and without any regard to humanity or justice, killed the child. It so fell out that Thymbris, as he was walking about the fields, found the dead body of his son; whereupon he called his kinsman under pretence of a treasure that he would show him. He took his opportunity, put out his eyes, and crucified him. —Aristides’s Third Book of his Italic History.

Aeacus had two sons by Psamathe, Phocus and Telamon, the former better beloved than the other. Telamon one day took out his brother a hunting; and a boar presenting himself, he threw his lance in pretence at the boar, but in truth at his brother, whom he hated, and so killed him; for which his father banished him.—Dorotheus’s First Book of Transformations.

Caius Maximus had two sons, Rhesus the one, by Ameria, . . . and the other Similius. The brothers were a hunting together, and Rhesus having killed the other, put it off—when he came home—that it was by chance, and far from any design of doing it. But his father, when he came in time to know the truth of it, banished the son.— Aristocles, in the Third Book of his Italian History.