Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

The Delay of the Deity
son from his birth to his death; and in like manner we
think it right that the city, which remains the same,
ought to be held responsible for the transgressions of
its former citizens with the same show of reason that
it shares in their glory and prestige; otherwise we
shall, without being aware of it, cast everything into
the river of Heracleitus into which he says nothing
goes twice because nature keeps all things in motion
and changes their form.
16. If then a city is a unit and a continuous thing,
the same is undoubtedly true of the family that
springs from one and the same beginning and en
genders a certain power and a natural bond of sym
pathy between all its members. That which is begot
ten is not as if it were the handiwork of an artisan,
separate from him who begets, for it is something
that proceeds out of him, not something framed by
him; consequently it possesses and bears within
itself some portion of its original that may rightfully
be chastised or honored. If I were not afraid I
should be thought to be jesting I would say
that the
statue of Kasander has suffered a greater wrong at
the hands of the Athenians when it was melted down,
and the body of Dionysius when after death it was
carried beyond their boundary by the Syracusans,
than their descendants in paying the penalty for the
deeds of these men. For in a statue of Kasander
there was no part of him, and the soul of Dionysius
had left the dead body long previously; but in the
case of Nysaeus and of Apollokrates and of Anti-
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