Laudator Temporis Acti

Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 178 (tr. Chris Carey):

If anyone were to ask you whether in your opinion the city is more renowned at the present time or in our ancestors' time, you would all agree that it was in our ancestors' time. And were men better then or now? Then they were outstanding, now they are far inferior.

εἰ γάρ τις ὑμᾶς ἐρωτήσειε, πότερον ὑμῖν ἐνδοξοτέρα δοκεῖ ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν εἶναι ἐπὶ τῶν νυνὶ καιρῶν ἢ ἐπὶ τῶν προγόνων, ἅπαντες ἂν ὁμολογήσαιτε, ἐπὶ τῶν προγόνων. ἄνδρες δὲ πότερον τότε ἀμείνους ἦσαν ἢ νυνί; τότε μὲν διαφέροντες, νυνὶ δὲ πολλῷ καταδεέστεροι.

T. Gwatkin and Evelyn S. Shuckburgh ad loc.:

The belief in the degeneracy of mankind, never very sincere perhaps, pervades all literature from Homer downwards; and seems founded partly on ignorance, partly on an uneasy feeling that we are not such fine fellows as we wish to be thought, 'to vex the boast so often made, that we are wiser than our sires.' (See, for instance, Homer Il. 5, 304; 12, 383; 20, 287; Ecclesiastes vii. 10; Vergil Aen. 12, 899; Juvenal 16, 65.)