before he has had time to work out all his villainy, as we try to stop epileptic fits before they come on.
§ xxi. Just now we were dissatisfied that the wicked were punished late and tardily, whereas at present we find fault with the deity for correcting the character and disposition of same before they commit crime, from our ignoring that the future deed may be worse and more dreadful than the past, and the hidden intention than the overt act; for we are not able fully to understand the reasons why it is better to leave some alone in their ill deeds, and to arrest others in the intention; just as no doubt medicine is not appropriate in the case of some patients, which would be beneficial to others not ill, but yet perhaps in a more dangerous condition still. And so the gods do not visit all the offences of parents on their children, but if a good man is the son of a bad one, as the son of a sickly parent is sometimes of a good constitution, he is exempt from the punishment of his race, as not being a participator in its viciousness. But if a young man imitates his vicious race it is only right that he should inherit the punishment of their ill deeds, as he would their debts. For Antigonus was not punished for Demetrius, nor, of the old heroes,50 Phyleus for Augeas, or Nestor for Neleus, for though their sires were bad they were good, but those whose nature liked and approved the vices of their ancestors, these justice punished, taking vengeance on their similarity in viciousness. For as the warts and moles and freckles of parents often skip a generation, and reappear in the grandsons and granddaughters, and as a Greek woman, that had a black baby and so was accused of adultery, found out that she was the great granddaughter of an Ethiopian,51 and as the son of Pytho the Nisibian who recently died, and who was said to trace his descent to the Sparti,52 had the birthmark on his body of the print of a spear the token of his race, which though long dormant had come up again as out of the deep, so frequently earlier generations conceal and suppress the mental idiosyncrasies and passions of their race, which afterwards nature causes to break out in other members of the family, and so displays the family bent either to vice or virtue."