Laudator Temporis Acti

Prudentius, Against Symmachus 1.197-214 (tr. H.J. Thomson):

Once the vain superstition beset the fathers’ pagan hearts, it ran unchecked through a thousand generations one after another. The young heir bowed shuddering before anything which his hoary ancestors had designated as worshipful in their eyes. Children in their infancy drank in the error with their first milk; while still at the crying stage, they had tasted of the sacrificial meal, and had seen mere stones coated with wax and the grimy gods of the house dripping with unguent. The little one had looked at a figure in the shape of Fortune, with her wealthy horn, standing in the house, a hallowed stone, and watched his mother pale-faced in prayer before it. Then, raised on his nurse's shoulder, he too pressed his lips to the flint and rubbed it with them, pouring out his childish petitions, asking for riches from a sightless stone, and convinced that all one's wishes must be sought from thence. Never did he raise eyes and heart and turn them towards the throne of wisdom, but clung with credulous faith to his witless tradition, worshipping gods of his own house with the blood of lambs.

ut semel obsedit gentilia pectora patrum
vana superstitio, non interrupta cucurrit
aetatum per mille gradus. tener horruit heres
et coluit quidquid sibimet venerabile cani        100
monstrarant atavi. puerorum infantia primo
errorem cum lacte bibit. gustaverat inter
vagitus de farre molae; saxa inlita ceris
viderat unguentoque lares umescere nigros.
formatum Fortunae habitum cum divite cornu        105
sacratumque domi lapidem consistere parvus
spectarat matremque illic pallere precantem.
mox umeris positus nutricis trivit et ipse
impressis silicem labris puerilia vota
fudit opesque sibi caeca de rupe poposcit,        110
persuasumque habuit quod quis velit inde petendum,
numquam oculos animumque levans rationis ad arcem
rettulit, insulsum tenuit sed credulus usum
privatos celebrans agnorum sanguine divos.

See H.J. Rose, "The Religion of a Greek Household," Euphrosyne 1 (1957) 95-116 (at 96-98).