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The ancient representations of the Dioscuri are
called by the Spartans ‘beam-figures’
1: they
consist of two parallel wooden beams joined by two
other transverse beams placed across them ; and
this common and indivisible character of the offering
appears entirely suitable to the brotherly love of
these gods. In like manner do I also dedicate this
treatise On Brotherly Love to you, Nigrinus and
Quietus,2 a joint gift for you both who well deserve
it. For as to the exhortations this essay contains,
since you are already putting them into practice, you
will seem to be giving your testimony in their favour
rather than to be encouraged to perform them ; and
the pleasure you will take in acts which are right will
make the perseverance of your judgement more firm,
inasmuch as your acts will win approval before spectators, so to speak, who are honourable and devoted
to virtue.
Now Aristarchus,3 the father of Theodectes, by way
of jeering at the crowd of sophists, used to say that in
the old days there were barely seven Sophists,4 but
[p. 249]
that in his own day an equally large number of
non-sophists could not easily be found. And according to my observation, brotherly love is as rare in
our day as brotherly hatred was among the men of
old ; when instances of such hatred appeared, they
were so amazing that the times made them known to
all as warning examples in tragedies and other
stage-performances ; but all men of to-day, when they
encounter brothers who are good to each other,
wonder at them no less than at those famous sons of
Molione,5 who, according to common belief, were
born with their bodies grown together ; and to use
in common a fathers wealth and friends and
slaves is considered as incredible and portentous as
for one soul to make use of the hands and feet and
eyes of two bodies.
1 Cf. M. C. Waites, Amer. Jour. Arch., xxiii., 1919, pp. 1 ff.: this passage is cited by Eustathius on Il., 1125. 60.
2 The identity of Avidius Nigrinus and Avidius Quietus is not certainly established; see Prosopographia Imp. Rom., i. pp. 189-190.
3 Nauck, comparing Suidas, s.v. Theodectes, and Stephanus Byzantius, would correct ‘Aristarchus’ to Aristandrus, the father of the tragic poet Theodectas of Phaselis.
4 That is, the Seven Wise Men. Plutarch so uses σοφιστής (cf. Moralia, 96 a, where all mss. but one read σοφιστοῦ; 857 f); so also Aristotle, Frag. 5 ed. V. Rose. Cf. the earlier usage of Herodotus, i. 29 (where Wells's note is hopelessly wrong); ii. 49; iv. 95; Hippocrates, De Vet. Med., 20.
5 Cf. Moralia, 1083 c; Fraser's note on Apollodorus, ii. 7. 2 (L.C.L. vol. i. p. 249).
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. W. C. Helmbold. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1939. 6.
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