What follows, though put forward as an independent topic, may also be regarded as the explanation of the second member of the alternative, the mitigation of the penalty consequent upon the admission of the offender. ‘And to those who humble themselves before us, and do not answer or contradict us; for in doing so they seem to admit their inferiority, and (conscious) inferiority implies fear, (not contemptuous indifference), and no one in that state of mind is ever guilty of a slight’. (Fear and anger cannot coexist, § 10.) ‘That our anger does cease towards those who humble themselves before us, is shewn also by the habit which dogs have of not biting those that sit down (when they attack them)’. This fact in the natural history of dogs is attested not only by Homer—Od. ξ 26 ἐξαπίνης δ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα ἴδον κύνες ὑλακόμωροι: οἱ μὲν κεκλήγοντες ἐπέδραμον, αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἕζετο κερδοσύνῃ, σκῆπτρον δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε χειρός—but also by the experience of modern travellers in Albania [see esp. Mure's Tour in Greece I 93—100 or De Quincey's review XIII 301—9]. I myself heard of it there. In illustration of καθίζοντας, sitting as a suppliant posture, Victorius cites Soph. Oed. R. init. τίνας ποθ᾽ ἕδρας τάσδε κ.τ.λ. Arist. Plut. 382, ὁρῶ τιν ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος καθεδούμενον, ἱκετηρίαν ἔχοντα. Demosth. de Cor. § 107 οὐκ ἐν Μουνυχίᾳ ἐκάθεζετο (took sanctuary at the altar of Artemis in Munychia).
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