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Now I will tell what happens to these admirable fathers when they have badly brought up and badly educated their sons. When their sons are enrolled in the ranks of men, and disdain the sane and orderly life, and throw themselves headlong into disorderly and slavish pleasures, then, when it is of no use, the fathers regret that they have been false to their duty in the education of their sons, being now distressed at their wrongdoing. For some of them take up with flatterers and parasites, abominable men of obscure origin, corrupters and spoilers of youth, and others buy the freedom of courtesans and prostitutes, proud and sumptuous in expense; still others give themselves up to the pleasures of the table, while others come to wreck in dice and revels, and some finally take to the wilder forms of evildoing, such as adultery and bacchanalian routs, ready to pay with life itself for a single pleasure. But if these men had become conversant with the higher education, they perhaps would not have allowed themselves to be dominated by such practices, and they would at least have become acquainted with the precept The explanation may be found in the Palatine Anthology, v. No. 301 (the Greek Anthology, in the L.C.L. vol. i. p. 291, No. 302), or in Plutarch, Moralia, 1044 B, or in Athenaeus, iv. 48 (p. 158 F). of Diogenes, who with coarseness of speech, but with substantial truth, advises and says, Go into any brothel to learn that there is no difference between what costs money and what costs nothing.
