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Some of the Pythagoreans blame him for having in
his book of Justice written concerning cocks, that they
are usefully procreated, because they awaken us from our
sleep, hunt out scorpions, and animate us to battle, breeding in us a certain emulation to show courage; and yet
that we must eat them, lest the number of chickens should
be greater than were expedient. But he so derides those
who blame him for this, that he has written thus concerning Jupiter the Savior and Creator, the father of justice,
equity, and peace, in his Third Book of the Gods: ‘As
cities overcharged with too great a number of citizens send
forth colonies into other places and make war upon some,
so does God give the beginnings of corruption.’ And he
brings in Euripides for a witness, with others who say,
that the Trojan war was caused by the Gods, to exhaust
the multitude of men.
But letting pass their other absurdities (for our design is
not to enquire what they have said amiss, but only what
they have said dissonantly to themselves), consider how
he always attributes to the Gods specious and kind appellations, but at the same time cruel, barbarous, and Galatian deeds. For those so great slaughters and carnages,
as were the productions of the Trojan war and again of
the Persian and Peloponnesian, were no way like to colonies unless these men know of some cities built in hell
and under the earth. But Chrysippus makes God like to
Deïotarus, the Galatian king, who having many sons, and
being desirous to leave his kingdom and house to one of
them, killed all the rest; as he that cuts and prunes away
all the other branches from the vine, that one which he
[p. 461]
leaves remaining may grow strong and great. And yet the
vine-dresser does this, the sprigs being slender and weak;
and we, to favor a bitch, take from her many of her new
born puppies, whilst they are yet blind. But Jupiter,
having not only suffered and seen men to grow up, but
having also both created and increased them, plagues them
afterwards, devising occasions of their destruction and corruption; whereas he should rather not have given them
any causes and beginnings of generation.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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