Laudator Temporis Acti

Cicero, On the Republic 1.17.29 (Scipio speaking; tr. Niall Rudd):

That remark of Plato's (or whoever made it) strikes me as very apt. When he had been driven by a storm at sea to an unknown land and cast up on a lonely shore, and the others were in terror because they knew nothing of the place, he is supposed to have noticed some geometric figures drawn in the sand. On seeing them he cried 'Take heart! I see the traces of men!' He drew this conclusion, evidently, not from any crops which he saw growing in the fields, but from the signs of intellectual activity. That is why, Tubero, I have always valued learning, and educated men, and those interests of yours.

ut mihi Platonis illud, seu quis dixit alius, perelegans esse videatur, quem cum ex alto ignotas ad terras tempestas et in desertum litus detulisset, timentibus ceteris propter ignorationem locorum, animadvertisse dicunt in arena geometricas formas quasdam esse descriptas; quas ut vidisset, exclamavisse ut bono essent animo: videre enim se hominum vestigia. quae videlicet ille non ex agri consitura quapiam cernebat, sed ex doctrinae indiciis interpretabatur. quamobrem, Tubero, semper mihi et doctrina et eruditi homines et tua ista studia placuerunt.

quapiam Powell: quam codd.

The remark is elsewhere attributed to Aristippus: see Erich Mannebach, ed. Aristippi et Cyrenaicorum Fragmenta (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1961), pp. 3-4 (fragments 9A-9B, 9D-9E).