Friday, December 22, 2023
Of Good Stock
Homer, Odyssey 4.62-64 (Menelaus to Odysseus' son Telemachus and Nestor's son Peisistratus; tr. A.T. Murray):
Dover = K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 91-92 (here an excerpt from p. 91, footnotes omitted):
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For in you two the breed of your sires is not lost, but ye are of the breed of men that are sceptred kings, fostered of Zeus; for base churls could not beget such sons as you.R.G.M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard on Horace, Odes 2.4.20:
οὐ γὰρ σφῷν γε γένος ἀπόλωλε τοκήων,
ἀλλ᾽ ἀνδρῶν γένος ἐστὲ διοτρεφέων βασιλήων
σκηπτούχων, ἐπεὶ οὔ κε κακοὶ τοιούσδε τέκοιεν.
For the idea that fine people must have fine parents cf. Hom. Od. 4. 64, 611 αἵματός εἰς ἀγαθοῖο, φίλον τέκος, οἷ᾽ ἀγορεύεις, h. Aphr. 132, Virg. Aen. 1.606, M. Marcovich, GRBS 16, 1975, 8, Dover 91 f.Marcovich = Miroslav Marcovich, "A New Poem of Archilochus: P. Colon. inv. 7511," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975) 5-14 (at 8):
People who breed animals select for breeding on the principle that good parents are more likely than bad parents to produce good offspring. On this analogy, it might be expected that good human parents will produce the best children, and Greeks sometimes asserted that this was so.Cf. also Plato, Alcibiades I 16 (120d-e; tr. W.R.M. Lamb):Eur. fr. 166: The folly that was his father's sickness is in him; just so, bad men are wont to spring from bad.Cf. Eur. frr. 215, 1068.
Eur. fr. 333: A good man cannot be begotten by a bad father.
SOC. Is it probable that noble races should produce better natures, or not?Related posts:
ALC. Clearly, noble races would.
ΣΩ. πότερον εἰκὸς ἀμείνους γίγνεσθαι φύσεις ἐν γενναίοις γένεσιν ἢ μή;
ΑΛΚ. δῆλον ὅτι ἐν τοῖς γενναίοις.
