sses of travail,"[55]
were not written by Homer, but by some Homerid who had been a mother, or
was even then in the throes of travail, and who vividly felt the sharp
pain in her womb. But the love to one's offspring implanted by nature,
moves and influences the mother even then: in the very height of her
throes, she neglects not nor flees from her babe, but turns to it and
smiles at it, and takes it up and caresses it, though she derives no
pleasure or utility from it, but with pain and sorrow receives it,
"warming it and fostering it in swaddling clothes, with unintermittent
assiduity both night and day."[56] What hope of gain or advantage had
they in those days? nay, or even now? for the hopes of parents are
uncertain, and have to be long waited for. He who plants a vine in the
spring equinox, gleans its vintage in the autumnal equinox; he who sows
corn when the Pleiads set, reaps it when they rise; cattle and horses
and birds have produce at once fit for use; whereas man's bringing up is
toilsome, his growth slow; and as excellence flowers late, most fathers
die before their sons attain to fame. Neocles lived not to see
Themistocles' victory at Salamis, nor Miltiades Cimon's at the
Eurymedon, nor did Xanthippus hear Pericles haranguing, nor did Aristo
hear Plato philosophizing, nor did their fathers know of the triumphs of
Euripides and Sophocles. They heard them faltering in speech and lisping
in syllables, the poor parents saw their errors in revelling and
drinking and love-affairs, so that of all Evenus'[57] lines, that one
alone is most remembered and quoted, "to a father a son is always a
cause of fear or pain." Nevertheless, parents do not cease to bring up
sons, even when they can least need them. For it is ridiculous to
suppose that the rich, when they have sons, sacrifice and rejoice that
they will have people to take care of them and to bury them; unless
indeed they bring up sons from want of heirs; as if one could not find
or fall in with anyone who would be willing to have another's property!
Why, the sand on the sea shore, and the dust, and the wings of birds of
varied note, are less numerous than the number of would-be heirs. For
had Danaus, the father of fifty daughters, been childless, he would have
had more heirs, and of a different spirit. For sons have no gratitude,
nor regard, nor veneration for inheritance; but take it as a debt;
whereas the voices of strangers which you hear round the childless ma