De Sera Numinis Vindicta

After Patrocleas had thus discoursed, Olympicus taking him up, There is this farther, said he, O Patrocleas! which thou shouldst have taken notice of; for how great an inconveniency and absurdity arises besides from these delays and procrastinations of divine justice! For the slowness of its execution takes away the belief of providence; and the wicked, perceiving that calamity does not presently follow at the heels of every enormous crime, but a long time after, look upon their calamity as a misfortune, and calling it chance, not punishment, are nothing at all thereby reformed; troubled indeed they well may be at the dire accident befallen them, but they never repent of the villanies they have committed. For as, in the case of horse, the lashing and spurring that immediately pursue the transgression correct and reduce him to his duty, but all the tugging at the bit and shouting which are late and out of time seem to be inflicted for some other reason than to teach or instruct, the animal being thereby put to pain without understanding his error; in like manner, were the impieties of enormous transgressors and heinous offenders singly scourged and repressed by immediate severity, it would be most likely[*](I follow Wyttenbach’s emendation μάλιστ’ ἄν for μόλις ἄν. (G.)) to bring them to a sense of their folly, humble them, and strike them with an awe of the Divine Being, whom they find with a watchful eye beholding the actions and passions of men, and feel to be no dilatory but a speedy avenger of iniquity; whereas that remiss and slow-paced justice (as Euripides describes it) that falls upon the wicked by accident, by reason of its uncertainty, ill-timed delay, and disorderly motion, seems rather to resemble chance than providence. So that I cannot conceive what benefit there is in these millstones of the Gods which are said to grind so late,[*](Referring to the verse, Ὀψὲ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά, the mills of the Gods grind late, but they grind fine. (G.)) as thereby

celestial punishment is obscured, and the awe of evil doing rendered vain and despicable.

These things thus uttered, while I was in a deep meditation of what he had said, Timon interposed. Is it your pleasure. said he, that I shall give the finishing stroke to the difficulties of this knotty question, or shall I first permit him to argue in opposition to what has been propounded already? Nay then, said I, to what purpose is it to let in a third wave to drown the argument, if one be not able to repel or avoid the objections already made to begin therefore, as from the Vestal hearth, from that ancient circumspection and reverence which our ancestors, being Academic philosophers also, bare to the Supreme Godhead, we shall utterly decline to speak of that mysterious Being as if we could presume to utter positively any thing concerning it. For though it may be borne withal, for men unskilled in music to talk at random of notes and harmony, or for such as never experienced warfare to discourse of arms and military affairs; yet it would be a bold and daring arrogance in us, that are but mortal men, to dive too far into the incomprehensible mysteries of Deities and Daemons,—just as if persons void of knowledge should undertake to judge of the methods and reason of cunning artists by slight opinions and probable conjectures of their own. And while one that understands nothing of science finds it hard to give a reason why the physician did not let blood before but afterwards, or why he did not bathe his patient yesterday but to-day; it cannot be that it is safe or easy for a mortal to speak otherwise of the Supreme Deity than only this, that he alone it is who knows the most convenient time to apply most proper corrosives for the cure of sin and impiety, and to administer punishments as medicaments to every transgressor, yet being not confined to an equal quality and measure common to all distempers, nor to one and the same time. Now that the

medicine of the soul which is called justice is the most transcendent of all sciences, besides ten thousand other witnesses, even Pindar himself testifies, where he gives to God, the ruler and lord of all things, the title of the most perfect artificer, as being the grand author and distributer of Justice, to whom it properly belongs to determine at what time, in what manner, and to what degree to punish every particular offender. And Plato asserts that Minos, being the son of Jupiter, was the disciple of his father to learn this science; intimating thereby that it is impossible for any other than a scholar, bred up in the school of equity, rightly to behave himself in the administration of justice, or to make a true judgment of another whether he does well or no. For the laws which are constituted by men do not always prescribe that which is unquestionable and simply decent, or of which the reason is altogether without exception perspicuous, in regard that some of their ordinances seem to be on purpose ridiculously contrived; particularly those which in Lacedaemon the Ephori ordain at their first entering into the magistracy, that no man suffer the hair of his upper lip to grow, and that they shall be obedient to the laws to the end they may not seem grievous to them. So the Romans, when they asserted the freedom of any one, cast a slender rod upon his body; and when they make their last wills and testaments, some they leave to be their heirs, while to others they sell their estates; which seems to be altogether contrary to reason. But that of Solon is most absurd, who, when a city is up in arms and all in sedition, brands with infamy the person who stands neuter and adheres to neither party. And thus a man that apprehends not the reason of the lawgiver, or the cause why such and such things are so prescribed, might number up several absurdities of many laws. What wonder then, since the actions of men are so difficult to be understood, if it be no less difficult to determine concerning the Gods, wherefore they inflict their punishments upon sinners, sometimes later, sometimes sooner.