but we shall take another opportunity, and I shall effectually convince you. But[1] * * *
XXVI.
Shall I adore, and bend the suppliant knee,
Who scorn their power and doubt their deity?
Does not Niobe here seem to reason, and by that reasoning to bring all her misfortunes upon herself? But what a subtle expression is the following!
On strength of will alone depends success;
a maxim capable of leading us into all that is bad.
Though I'm confined, his malice yet is vain,
His tortured heart shall answer pain for pain;
His ruin soothe my soul with soft content,
Lighten my chains, and welcome banishment!
This, now, is reason; that reason which you say the divine goodness has denied to the brute creation, kindly to bestow it on men alone. How great, how immense the favor! Observe the same Medea flying from her father and her country:
The guilty wretch from her pursuer flies.
By her own hands the young Absyrtus slain,
His mangled limbs she scatters o'er the plain,
That the fond sire might sink beneath his woe,
And she to parricide her safety owe.
Reflection, as well as wickedness, must have been necessary to the preparation of such a fact; and did he too, who prepared that fatal repast for his brother, do it without reflection?
Revenge as great as Atreus' injury
Shall sink his soul and crown his misery.
XVII. Did not Thyestes himself, not content with having defiled his brother's bed (of which Atreus with great justice thus complains,
When faithless comforts, in the lewd embrace,
With vile adultery stain a royal race,
The blood thus mix'd in fouler currents flows,
Taints the rich soil, and breeds unnumber'd woes)
- ↑ Here is a wide chasm in the original. What is lost probably may have contained great part of Cotta's arguments against the providence of the Stoics.
