Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

The Delay of the Deity
medicines are not adapted to certain patients, though
helpful to others who are not actually sick, and yet
in a worse condition than the former. For this
reason the gods do not turn all the transgressions of
the parents upon their offspring, but if a virtuous son
is begotten by a wicked father, as it were, a sound
man, by one who is diseased, he averts the penalty
from the house, the offspring of one being, so to
speak, adopted into another. But it is fitting that a
young man who conforms himself to the likeness of
a corrupt family should also share the chastisement
of its villainies as a debt incurred by inheritance.
Antigonus was not punished on account of Demetrius,
any more than the heroes of the olden time,
Phyleus and Nestor, for the sake of Augeas and Neleus ;
since these men, though sprung from wicked fathers,
were themselves good men. But those who cherish
and take naturally to the baseness that is born in
them must also expect to be pursued to the end by
that justice which the likeness of vice demands. For
just as warts and livid spots and freckles that fathers
sometimes have, are not on their sons, but afterwards
reappear on the grandsons, and granddaughters; and
a certain Greek woman who had given birth to a
black child for which she was charged with adultery
until she proved that she was descended from an
Ethiopian in the fourth generation; and one of the
sons of Pytho of Nisibis, who recently died, and who
was said to be sprung from the Sparti, was born with
the print of a spear on his body in which case the
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