Laudator Temporis Acti

Euripides, Bacchae 201-203 (tr. E.T Coleridge):

The faith we inherited from our fathers, old as time itself, no reasoning shall cast down; no! though it were the subtlest invention of wits refined.

πατρίους παραδοχάς, ἅς θ᾽ ὁμήλικας χρόνῳ
κεκτήμεθ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος,
οὐδ᾽ εἰ δι᾽ ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν ηὕρηται φρενῶν.

Livy 39.15.2-3 (against the introduction of Bacchic rites in 186 B.C.; tr. J.C. Yardley):

Citizens: never has there been a meeting for which this formal prayer to the gods that we make together has been not only so appropriate but also so necessary, since it reminds you that these are the deities whom your ancestors ordained that you should venerate, worship and address in prayer—not those that besot men's minds with depraved foreign beliefs and as if with infernal stimuli drive them to all manner of criminal and immoral acts.

Nulli umquam contioni, Quirites, tam non solum apta sed etiam necessaria haec sollemnis deorum comprecatio fuit, quae vos admoneret hos esse deos quos colere venerari precarique maiores vestri instituissent, non illos qui pravis et externis religionibus captas mentes velut furialibus stimulis ad omne scelus et ad omnem libidinem agerent.

Related posts:

• Faith of Our Fathers (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.2.5)
• Faith of Our Fathers (Herodotus 1.172)
• That Old-Time Religion
• That Old-Time Religion Again