Laudator Temporis Acti

Plato, Gorgias 451e (tr. Walter Hamilton):

You have heard, I suppose, people at parties singing the well-known song where they count up the best things: asserting that the greatest good is health, the next beauty, and the third, according to the author of the song, wealth honestly come by?

οἴομαι γάρ σε ἀκηκοέναι ἐν τοῖς συμποσίοις ᾀδόντων ἀνθρώπων τοῦτο τὸ σκολιόν, ἐν ᾧ καταριθμοῦνται ᾁδοντες ὅτι "ὑγιαίνειν μὲν ἄριστόν" ἐστιν, τὸ δὲ "δεύτερον καλὸν γενέσθαι, τρίτον δέ", ὥς φησιν ὁ ποιητὴς τοῦ σκολιοῦ, "τὸ πλουτεῖν ἀδόλως".

The song, from D.L. Page, Lyrica Graeca Selecta, no. 447 (tr. C.M. Bowra):

For a man health is the first and best possession,
Second best to be born with shapely beauty,
And the third is wealth honestly won,
Fourth are the days of youth spent in delight with friends.

ὑγιαίνειν μὲν ἄριστον ἀνδρὶ θνητῷ,
δεύτερον δὲ φυὴν ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι,
τὸ τρίτον δὲ πλουτεῖν ἀδόλως,
καὶ τὸ τέταρτον ἡβᾶν μετὰ τῶν φίλων.

E.R. Dodds on Plato, Gorgias 451e:

The fourth item is omitted by Plato, since it does not depend on any τέχνη. The verses probably reflect aristocratic Greek opinion pretty accurately (cf. Euthyd. 279 ab, Meno 87 e, Hipp. ma. 291 d), though a speaker in a comedy by Anaxandrides (fr. 17) derides them for putting beauty above wealth. Aristotle (Rhet. 1394^b11) and Sextus Empiricus (adv. math. 11.49) declare that the ordinary man everywhere puts health first, and the latter quotes a variety of writers from Simonides onward to the same effect. As to personal beauty, we learn from Aeschines (Timarch. 145 [sic, should be 134]) that Athenian parents prayed that their children might be καλοὺς κἀγαθοὺς τὰς ἰδέας καὶ τῆς πόλεως ἀξίους, and from Aristotle (E.N. 1099^b3) that ὁ τὴν ἰδέαν παναίσχης cannot be really happy. (Wilamowitz, Glaube der Hellenen, ii.254 f., asserted that the author of the quatrain had more than physical beauty in mind, but Plato does not take it so, and the addition of φυὰν makes it unlikely.) The list is confined to what Aristotle called τὴν ἐκτὸς χορηγίαν: the intellectual goods are conspicuously absent, and only ἀδόλως pays an implicit tribute to virtue. At the end of his life (Laws 661 a) Plato referred to this σκολιόν again, and reaffirmed against it his own belief that all natural good is relative to spiritual good (661 b, 631 bc): the "three best things" are best only for the man who is spiritually healthy; otherwise they can but add to his secret misery.