Kitap 3
7
Sometimes indeed men are actually praisedWhich shows that the acts are regarded as voluntary ( Peters). for deeds of this mixed class, namely when they submit to some disgrace or pain as the price of some great and noble object; though if they do so without any such motive they are blamed, since it is contemptible to submit to a great disgrace with no advantage or only a trifling one in view. In some cases again, such submission though not praised is condoned, when a man does something wrong through fear of penalties that impose too great a strain on human nature, and that no one could endure.
8
Yet there seem to be some acts which a man cannot be compelled to do,i.e., some acts are so repulsive that a man’s abhorrence of them must be stronger than any pressure that can be put on him to commit them; so that if he commits them he must be held to have chosen to do so. and rather than do them he ought to submit to the most terrible death: for instance, we think it ridiculous that Alcmaeon in Euripides’ playIn a play now lost, Eriphyle was bribed with a necklace to induce her husband Amphiaraus, king of Argos, to join the expedition of the Seven against Thebes. Foreseeing he would lose his life, he charged his sons to avenge his death upon their mother, invoking on them famine and childlessness if they disobeyed. The verse in question is preserved: μάλιστα μὲν μ’ ἐπῆρ’ ἐπισκήψας πατήρ. Alcmaeon, fr. 69 (Nauck). is compelled by certain threats to murder his mother!
