Laudator Temporis Acti

Aristophanes, Wealth 48-50 (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):

It's so obvious, even a blind man could see it: in our age, the key to real success is to avoid every wholesome practice.
     
                               δῆλον ὁτιὴ καὶ τυφλῷ
γνῶναι δοκεῖ τοῦθ᾿, ὡς σφόδρ᾿ ἐστὶ συμφέρον
τὸ μηδὲν ἀσκεῖν ὑγιὲς ἐν τῷ νῦν γένει.

50 γένει γρV: βίῳ R: ἔτει V: χρόνῳ Π1 γρV cett.

Alan H. Sommerstein on line 50:

in the present state of the world: lit. "in the present race (genos)", i.e. in this last and worst of the five Hesiodic ages of the world with their five different human races (gold, silver, bronze, heroic, iron: Works and Days 109-201), the fifth of which is developing towards a state in which "there will be no gratitude for a man who keeps his oath [cf. 61 below] or for a good or honest man, but rather they will honour a man who does outrageous evil; the only justice will be violence, and there will be no shame" (ibid. 190-3). Cf. Critias fr. trag. 21 "there is no justice in the present genos", Men. Thph. F 1.14-15 "If a man is good, well-born, really noble, it's no help to him in the present genos". The true reading genei (dative case of genos) is preserved only as a marginal variant in V; it seems to have been early corrupted into the nonsensical etei "year" (V in text), of which khronōi "time" (most mss., and a fifth-century papyrus) and biōi "life" (R) arc attempted corrections. R's reading (for which cf. Men. Kolax 1) gives good sense, but does not help to explain how the other readings arose.