Plutarch, De sera numinis vindicta
Goodwin, Ed.

Bion was of opinion that God, in punishing the children of the wicked for the sins of their fathers, seems more irregular than a physician that should administer physic to a son or a grandchild, to cure the distemper of a father or a grandfather. But this comparison does not [p. 172] run cleverly; since the amplification of the similitude agrees only in some things, but in others is altogether defective. For if one man be cured of a disease by physic, the same medicine will not cure another; nor was it ever known that any person troubled with sore eyes or laboring under a fever was ever restored to perfect health by seeing another in the same condition anointed or plastered. But the punishments or executions of malefactors are done publicly in the face of the world, to the end that, justice appearing to be the effect of prudence and reason, some may be restrained by the correction inflicted upon others. So that Bion never rightly apprehended where the comparison answered to our question. For oftentimes it happens, that a man comes to be haunted with a troublesome though not incurable disease, and through sloth and in temperance increases his distemper, and weakens his body to that degree that he occasions his own death. After this, it is true, the son does not fall sick; only he has received from his father's seed such a habit of body as makes him liable to the same disease; which a good physician or a tender friend or a skilful apothecary or a careful master observing confines him to a strict and spare diet, restrains him from all manner of superfluity, keeps him from all the temptations of delicious fare, wine, and women, and making use of wholesome and proper physic, together with convenient exercise, dissipates and extirpates the original cause of a distemper at the beginning, before it grows to a head and gets a masterless dominion over the body. And is it not our usual practice thus to admonish those that are born of diseased parents, to take timely care of themselves, and not to neglect the malady, but to expel the original nourishment of the inbred evil, as being then easily movable and apt for expulsion? It is very true, cried they. Therefore, said I, we cannot be said to do an absurd thing, but what is absolutely necessary,—nor that [p. 173] which is ridiculous, but what is altogether useful,—while we prescribe to the children of the epileptic, the hypochondriacal, and those that are subject to the gout, such exercises, diet, and remedies as are proper, not so much because they are at that time troubled with the distemper, as to prevent the malady. For a man begotten by an unsound body does not therefore deserve punishment, but rather the preservation of proper physic and good regimen; which if any one call the punishment of fear or effeminacy, because the person is debarred his pleasures and put to some sort of pain by cupping and blistering, we mind not what he says. If then it be of such importance to preserve, by physic and other proper means, the vitiated offspring of another body, foul and corrupted; ought we to suffer the hereditary resemblances of a wicked nature to sprout up and bud in the youthful character, and to wait till they are diffused into all the affections of the mind, and bring forth and ripen the malignant fruit of a mischievous disposition? For such is the expression of Pindar.