their being aware of it— for
instance honors, and disgraces, and the prosperity and misfortunes of their children and
their descendants in general.
[
4]
But here too there is a
difficulty. For suppose a man to have lived in perfect happiness until old age, and to
have come to a correspondingly happy end: he may still have many vicissitudes befall his
descendants, some of whom may be good and meet with the fortune they deserve, and others
the opposite; and moreover these descendants may clearly stand in every possible degree of
remoteness from the ancestors in question. Now it would be a strange thing if the dead man
also were to change
1 with the fortunes of his family,
and were to become a happy man at one time and then miserable at another;
[
5]
yet on the other hand it would also be strange if ancestors were not
affected at all, even over a limited period, by the fortunes of their
descendants.
[
6]
But let us go back to our former difficulty,2 for perhaps it will throw light on the question3 we are now examining.
[7]
If we are to look to the end, and congratulate a man
when dead not as actually being blessed, but because he has been blessed in the past,
surely it is strange if at the actual time when a man is happy that fact cannot be truly
predicated of him,
