And I straightway reminded them of the divine Constantine**183 and certain other rulers who had honoured their sons with the title of Caesar first and afterwards promoted them to the exalted position of emperor. Then, drawing together the threads of my argument, more in the manner of a syllogism, I made this comparison: ‘That is how they treated their own sons, men of their own flesh and blood. Isaac here is only a son by adoption . . .’ and, having thrown in the word adoption, I left the rest of the sentence in suspense.
30. However, they knew what I meant, and they proceeded to enumerate a host of reasons for their ‘common movement’ — a euphemism they produced for ‘rebellion’. Instead of refuting their arguments out of hand, I replied as if I were taking their part. I exaggerated their misfortunes ‘Yes, I know these things and often my heart has bled because of them. Your anger,’ I said, ‘your anger is justified, and so is the despair you feel at your sufferings.’ And having pacified them with these words, I shook them with a sudden assault from the flank. ‘Those are terrible things, terrible indeed, but they do not justify revolution: nothing whatever is a legitimate excuse for that.
Not even suffered indignity
Now suppose that you were emperor (here I carried on the argument with a direct reference to their leader) and suppose you were to become very ill-tempered, and the leader of the Senate, shall we say, or the commander-in-chief of the army entered into a conspiracy and got accomplices to aid him in his evil design, engineering a plot to dethrone yourself and at the same time excusing himself with a recital of all his sufferings and a description of the indignity with which he had been treated — would the pretexts he put forward justify the plot in your eyes?’ When Isaac said ‘No!’ I went on, ‘But in your case you have not even suffered indignity, except inasmuch as you have failed to get what you had previously set your heart on.
As for the terrible sufferings you speak of, those have been caused by other men, not by the present emperor.’ As he did not reply to this, (for he was not so much concerned with arguing persuasively himself as with listening to the simple truth from me) I pressed him still further: ‘Well then, change your mind. Be persuaded by your better judgment. Honour your father in his old age, and you will inherit the throne by legal means.’
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