Laudator Temporis Acti

Pseudo-Plutarch, The Education of Children 20 = Moralia 14 A (tr. Frank Cole Babbitt):

Fathers ought above all, by not misbehaving and by doing as they ought to do, to make themselves a manifest example to their children, so that the latter, by looking at their fathers' lives as at a mirror, may be deterred from disgraceful deeds and words.

πρὸ πάντων γὰρ δεῖ τοὺς πατέρας τῷ μηδὲν ἁμαρτάνειν ἀλλὰ πάνθ᾿ ἃ δεῖ πράττειν ἐναργὲς αὑτοὺς παράδειγμα τοῖς τέκνοις παρέχειν, ἵνα πρὸς τὸν τούτων βίον ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον ἀποβλέποντες ἀποτρέπωνται τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἔργων καὶ λόγων.

Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (1957; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 5 (footnote omitted):

No son ever set a finer monument to his father than Horace did in the sixth satire of Book I. There is no need to recapitulate the passage: a reader who cannot afford the time to read it at leisure, and add to it Sat. I.4.105 ff., had better leave Horace alone.

Horace, Satires 1.6.68-71 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

If no one will justly lay to my charge avarice or meanness or lewdness; if, to venture on self-praise, my life is free from stain and guilt and I am loved by my friends—I owe this to my father.

si neque avaritiam neque sordes nec mala lustra
obiciet vere quisquam mihi, purus et insons,
ut me collaudem, si et vivo carus amicis;        70
causa fuit pater his.

Id., line 89:

Never while in my senses could I be ashamed of such a father.

Nil me paeniteat sanum patris huius.

Horace, Satires 1.4.105-126:

'Tis a habit the best of fathers taught me, for, to enable me to steer clear of follies, he would brand them, one by one, by his examples. Whenever he would encourage me to live thriftily, frugally, and content with what he had saved for me, "Do you not see," he would say, "how badly fares young Albius, and how poor is Baius? A striking lesson not to waste one's patrimony!" When he would deter me from a vulgar amour, "Don't be like Scetanus." And to prevent me from courting another's wife, when I might enjoy a love not forbidden, "Not pretty," he would say, is the repute of Trebonius, caught in the act. Your philosopher will give you theories for shunning or seeking this or that: enough for me, if I can uphold the rule our fathers have handed down, and if, so long as you need a guardian, I can keep your health and name from harm. When years have brought strength to body, and mind, you will swim without the cork." With words like these would he mould my boyhood; and whether he were advising me to do something, "You have an example for so doing," he would say, and point to one of the special judges; or were forbidding me, "Can you doubt whether this is dishonourable and disadvantageous or not, when so and so stands in the blaze of ill repute?"

                              insuevit pater optimus hoc me,        105
ut fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando.
cum me hortaretur, parce frugaliter atque
viverem uti contentus eo, quod mi ipse parasset:
"nonne vides, Albi ut male vivat filius, utque
Baius inops? magnum documentum, ne patriam rem        110
perdere quis velit." a turpi meretricis amore
cum deterreret: "Scetani dissimilis sis."
ne sequerer moechas, concessa cum venere uti
possem: "deprensi non bella est fama Treboni,"
aiebat. "sapiens, vitatu quidque petitu        115
sit melius, causas reddet tibi: mi satis est, si
traditum ab antiquis morem servare tuamque,
dum custodis eges, vitam famamque tueri
incolumem possum; simul ac duraverit aetas
membra animumque tuum, nabis sine cortice." sic me        120
formabat puerum dictis, et sive iubebat,
ut facerem quid, "habes auctorem quo facias hoc,"
unum ex iudicibus selectis obiciebat;
sive vetabat, "an hoc inhonestum et inutile factu
necne sit addubites, flagret rumore malo cum        125
hic atque ille?"