1
The course which ought to be taken for the training of free-born children, and the means whereby their manners may be rendered virtuous, will, with the reader’s leave, be the subject of our present disquisition.
2
In the management of which, perhaps it may be expedient to take our rise from their very procreation. I would therefore, in the first place, advise those who desire to become the parents of famous and eminent children, that they keep not company with all women that they light on; I mean such as harlots, or concubines. For such children as are blemished in their birth, either by the father’s or the mother’s side, are liable to be pursued, as long as they live, with the indelible infamy of their base extraction, as that which offers a ready occasion to all that desire to take hold of it of reproaching and disgracing them therewith. So that it was a wise speech of the poet who said,— Misfortune on that family’s entailed, Whose reputation in its founder failed. Eurip. Hercules Furens, 1261
2
Wherefore, since to be well born gives men a good stock of confidence, the consideration hereof ought to be of no small value to such as desire to leave behind them a lawful issue. For the spirits of men who are alloyed and counterfeit in their birth are naturally enfeebled and debased; as rightly said the poet again,— A bold and daring spirit is often daunted, When with the guilt of parents’ crimes ’tis haunted. Eurip. Hippol. 424.
