Carry the discussion back to primitive mankind,
to those whose women were the first to bear, and
whose men were the first to see a child born; they had
neither any law which bade them rear their children,
nor any expectation of gratitude or of receiving
the wages of maintenance ‘lent to their children
when they were young.’
1 Nay, I should rather be
inclined to affirm that these mothers were hostile and
malicious toward their children, since great dangers
and travail had come to them from child-birth :
As when a sharp pang pierces a woman in labour,
A pang which the Eileithyiae of child-bed send,
The daughters of Hera, who bring the bitter pangs -
these lines, women tell us, were written, not by
Homer,
2 but by an Homerid
3 after child-birth or
[p. 351]
while she was still in the throes of it and had the
pain of travail, alike bitter and sharp, actually present
in her entrails. But even then the affection for offspring implanted by Nature would bend and lead the
mother : still hot and suffering and shaken with her
pangs, she did not neglect or avoid her child, but
turned to it and smiled at it and took it up and kissed
it, though she reaped nothing sweet or profitable
therefrom, but received it with pain and suffering,
and ‘with tatters’ of swaddling-clothes
Thus warming and caressing it, both night
And day she passes in alternate toil.4
For what pay or advantage were these services performed by those ancient parents? Nor is there
any for those of our day, since their expectations
are uncertain and far off. He that plants a vineyard
in the vernal equinox gathers the grapes in the autumnal ; he that sows wheat when the Pleiades set
reaps it when they rise ; cattle and horses and
birds bring forth young at once ready for use ;
but as for man, his rearing is full of trouble, his
growth is slow, his attainment of excellence is far
distant and most fathers die before it comes. Neocles
did not live to see the Salamis of Themistocles
nor Miltiades the Eurymedon of Cimon ; nor did
Xanthippus ever hear Pericles harangue the people,
nor did Ariston hear Plato expound philosophy ;
nor did the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles come
to know their sons' victories ; they but heard them
[p. 353]
lisping and learning to speak and witnessed their
revellings and drinking-bouts and love-affairs, as they
indulged in such follies as young men commit ; so
that of all Evenus
5 wrote the only line that is
praised or remembered is
For fathers a child is always fear or pain.
Yet none the less fathers do not cease rearing children
and, most of all, those who least need them. For it is
ridiculous if anyone thinks that the rich sacrifice and
rejoice when sons are born to them because they will
have someone to support them and bury them-unless,
by Heaven, it is for lack of heirs that they bring
up children, since it is impossible to find or happen
upon anyone willing to accept another's property!
Not sand or dust or feathers of birds of varied note
Could heap up so great a number6
as is the number of those seeking inheritances.
7
The sire of fifty daughters,8 Danaüs;
but if he had been childless, he would have had more
heirs, and heirs unlike his own. For sons feel no
gratitude, nor, for the sake of inheriting, do they pay
court or show honour, knowing that they receive the
inheritance as their due. But you hear the words of
[p. 355]
strangers clustering around the childless man, like
those famous verses of the comic poet,
9
O Demos, judge one case, then to your bath ;
Gorge, guzzle, stuff, and take three obols' pay.
And the remark of Euripides,
10
Money it is that finds out friends for men
And holds the greatest power among mankind,
is not a simple and general truth, but applies to the
childless : it is these whom rich men feast, whom
great men court, for these alone do advocates plead
gratis.
A rich man with an unknown heir's a power.11
Many, at any rate, who had many friends and much
honour, the birth of one child has made friendless
and powerless. Therefore not even toward the
acquisition of power is there any aid to be derived
from children, but the whole force of Nature exists
no less in man than in beasts.
12
