For let us look back to ancient times, to those who
first brought forth and who first saw a child born. Upon
them certainly no law enjoined any necessity of rearing
their offspring, nor could expectation of thanks oblige
them to feed their infants, as if it were for usury. Nay,
[p. 195]
rather, they were angry with their children, and long remembered the injuries they had received from them, as
authors of so many dangers and of so much pain and travail
to them.
As when keen darts the fierce Ilithyiae send;
the powers that cause the teeming matron's throes,
Sad mothers of unutterable woes!
1
These verses, some say, were not written by Homer, but
by some Homeress, who either had been or was then in
travail, and felt the very pangs in her bowels. Yet the
love implanted by Nature melts and sways the childbed
woman. While she is still in a sweat and trembling for
pain, she is not averse to her infant; but turns it to her,
smiles on it, hugs and kisses it. Though she finds no true
sweetness, nor yet profit, however, ‘she sometimes rocks it
in a warm cradle, sometimes she dances it in the cool air,
turning one toil into another, resting neither night nor day.’
For what reward or gain was all this? For as little
then as now; for the hopes are uncertain and far off. He
that plants a vine in the vernal equinox gathers grapes
upon it in the autumnal. He that sows wheat at the setting of the Pleiades reaps it at their rising. Cows, mares,
and birds bring forth young ready for use. Man's
education is laborious, his increase slow, his virtue lies at
a distance; so that most parents die before their children
show their virtue. Neocles never saw Themistocles's victory at Salamis, nor Miltiades the valor of Cimon at Eurymedon; Xanthippus never heard Pericles pleading; nor
Aristo Plato philosophizing; nor did the fathers of Euripides and Sophocles know the victories their sons won,
though they heard them indeed stammering and learning
to talk. It is the mishap of fathers to see the revelling,
drinking, and love intrigues of their children; to which
purpose that of Evenus is memorable,
[p. 196]
Terror or grief unto his father's heart
A son must ever be.
And yet men find no end of rearing of children; they especially who have no need of them. For it is ridiculous
to think that rich men, when they have children born to
them, sacrifice and rejoice that they may have some to
maintain and to bury them. Or is it perhaps that they
bring up children for want of heirs, because, forsooth, men
cannot be found to accept of another man's estate? ‘Sand,
dust, and the feathers of all the birds in the world, are not
so numerous’ as heirs are to other men's estates. Danaus
was the father of fifty daughters; but if he had wanted
issue, he might have had many more heirs. The case is
far otherwise with children; they make not acknowledgments nor curry favor nor pay their devotions, as expecting
the inheritance of due. But you may hear strangers who
hang about them that have no heirs, talking like the comedian:
O Demos, having after judgment bathed,
Drink, eat a morsel, take three oboli.
2
And what Euripides said,
'Tis money that procures us friends to choose,
And mightiest power o'er all things that men use,
does not universally hold true, but of such only as have
no children. To such the rich give banquets, such great
men honor, and for such only lawyers plead gratis. ‘A
rich man who has no known heir can do great matters.’
Many a man who has had a great number of friends and
followers, as soon as he has had a child, has been divested
of all his alliances and power. So that children do not
augment a man's power; but their whole power over their
parents' affection is due to Nature, and is shown no less
in men than in beasts.
