Laudator Temporis Acti

Cicero, Letters to Atticus 7.2.4 (Brundisium, 25 November(?) 50; tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey, with his commentary):

I am glad your little daughter gives you pleasure and that you agree that affection for children is part of nature. Indeed if this is not the case there can be no natural tie between one human being and another, and once you abolish that, you abolish all society.

filiola tua te delectari laetor et probari tibi φυσικὴν esse τὴν <στοργὴν τὴν> πρὸς τὰ τέκνα. etenim si hoc non est, nulla potest homini esse ad hominem naturae adiunctio; qua sublata vitae societas tollitur.

στοργὴν τὴν add. Wesenberg

στοργὴν τὴν A necessary addition. The doctrine maintained by Stoics and others (cf. Madvig on Fin. III.62) that the affection of parents for their offspring is 'natural' should have been rejected by Atticus as a good Epicurean (cf. Usener, Epicurea, pp. 318 ff. [= fragment 523]). The fact that he admitted it is among the indications that the philosophy of Epicurus was not his lodestar (cf. Introd. p. 8, n. 5).