8. Do you not think it better that retribution should come in due season and in a fitting way, than immediately and all at once? As, for instance, in the case of Kalippus, who, supposed to be the friend of Dion, killed him with the same sword with which he was afterward dispatched by his friends; and that of Mitias the Argive who had been slain in a tumult and whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on the slayer of Mitias during a dramatic performance and killed him. And the stories of Bessus, the Paeonian, and of Aristo the Oetaean, the leaders of the mercenaries, you, of course, know, Patrocleas.” “I do not,” said he, “but I would like to hear them.” “Aristo,” I said, “having taken away the ornaments of Eriphyle lying here (in this temple), with the permission of the authorities, presented them to his wife; but his son, angered at his mother from some cause, set the house on fire and burned up all who were in it. And Bessus, as the story goes, having killed his own father, was not found out for a long time, but finally, going to a banquet with some friends and happening to strike a nest of young swallows with his spear, knocked it down and killed the fledglings. When those who were present said, as was natural, ‘Man, what possessed you to do such an ill-omened deed?’ he replied, ‘Have they not this long time been falsely accusing me and crying out against me for killing my father’? The astonished company reported the remark to the king, and after the case had been investigated Bessus received his just deserts.”
9. “We say these things,” I continued, “on the assumption that there is a postponement of punishment for the wicked; on the other hand, it is proper to hear what Hesiod says, who does not think with Plato that punishment is a pain which follows injustice, but that it is something of equal age with it; that it springs from the same root and place, for he says,
‘Evil counsel is most hurtful to him who has given it,’ and,
‘He who lays plots for another, lays a plot against himself.’
The cantharis, you know, is said to contain within itself the antidote (for the pain it inflicts), and villainy, by engendering within itself both pain and punishment, pays the penalty for evil-doing, not at a subsequent time, but in the outrage itself. Every malefactor who is punished by the infliction of pain on his body bears his own cross, and vice wreaks upon itself, out of itself, its own vengeance, because it is in a sense a creator of the woes of life that it brings into existence, together with the accompanying disgrace, many sorrows, fears and violent passions and regrets and unceasing restlessness. Some people are in no wise different from children, who, on seeing malefactors in the theaters often clad in gilded and purple garments, crowned and dancing about, are delighted and admire them as fortunate mortals, until they are seen goaded and scourged, while the fire breaks forth from their splendid and costly attire. For many of the wicked are the owners of fine mansions, and, as they hold magistracies and other responsible positions, no one is aware that they are undergoing punishment until they are put to death or hurled from rocks. This, one ought not to call punishment, but the consummation and fulfilment of punishment. For as Herodicus of Selymbria, who had been attacked by consumption, an incurable disease, was the first to combine gymnastics with the healing art, and of whom Plato says, that (in so doing) he protracted his own death, and that of all who were similarly diseased; so malefactors who are seen to have escaped immediate punishment, expiate their crimes by a longer, not by a shorter penalty; nor after a longer time but during a longer time; they are not punished after they have grown old, but they grow old during their punishment. And I say _a long time_ with reference to ourselves, for to the gods the span of human life is nothing,—now, but not thirty years ago is the same as to say, that in the evening, but not in the morning, the malefactor, is to be tortured or hanged, especially since man is shut up in this life just as in a prison from which there is no migration to another place or escape, but which in the meanwhile allows time for many enjoyments and the transaction of business, the bestowing and receiving of honors and favors, and for diversions; just as persons in prison are allowed to play at dice or draughts, though the noose is all the while dangling above their heads.