Laudator Temporis Acti

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV 429 (Pompeii; tr. Alison E. Cooley and M.G.L. Cooley):

I beg you to elect Gaius Julius Polybius aedile. He brings good bread.

C(aium) Iulium Polybium / aed(ilem) o(ro) v(os) f(aciatis) panem bonum fert

Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), Still Life with Bread
On bread-making in Pompeii see Mary Beard, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (London: Profile Books, 2008), pp. 170-177.

Cicero, Against Catiline 4.16 (tr. C. Macdonald):

There is not a single one of us for whom these temples, the sight of the city, the possession of liberty, the very light of day and the soil of the fatherland we all share are not only precious but a joy and a delight.

quis est enim cui non haec templa, aspectus urbis, possessio libertatis, lux denique haec ipsa et commune patriae solum cum sit carum tum vero dulce atque iucundum?

Gabriel Harvey, letter to Edmund Spenser, in The Works of Spenser, Vol. VI (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, 1750), pp. 308-309:

I beseech you all this while, what News at Cambridge? Tully and Demosthenes nothing so much study'd as they were wont: Livy and Salust perhaps more, rather than less: Lucian never so much: Aristotle much named but little read: Xenophon and Plato reckoned amongst Discoursers, and conceited superficial Fellows; much verbal and sophistical Jangling; little subtle and effectual Disputing. Matchiavel a great Man: Castilio, of no small Repute: Petrarch and Boccace in every Man's Mouth: Galateo and Guazzo never so happy: but some acquainted with Unico Aretino: the French and Italian highly regarded: the Latin and Greek but lightly: The Queen Mother at the beginning or end of every Conference: All inquisitive after News; new Books, new Fashions, new Laws, new Officers, and some after new Elements, some after new Heavens and Hells too. Turkish Affairs familiarly known: Castles built in the air: Much ado, and little help: In no age so little so much made of; every one highly in his own Favour. Something made of nothing, in spight of Nature: Numbers made of Cyphers, in spight of Art. Oxen and Asses, notwithstanding the Absurdity it seem'd to Plautus, drawing in the same Yoak: the Gospel taught, not learnt; Charity cold; nothing good, but by Imputation; the Ceremonial Law in Word abrogated, the Judicial in effect disannull'd, the Moral abandon'd; the Light, the Light in every Man's Lips, but mark their Eyes, and you will say they are rather like Owls than Eagles. As of old Books, so of antient Vertue, Honesty, Fidelity, Equity, new Abridgments; every day spawns new Opinions: Heresy in Divinity, in Philosophy, in Humanity, in Manners, grounded upon hearsay; Doctors contemn'd; the Devil not so hated as the Pope; many Invectives, but no Amendment. No more ado about Caps and Surplices; Mr. Cartwright quite forgotten; the Man you wot of comfortable with a square Cap on his round Head. A number of our Preachers Sybbe to French Soldiers, at the first more than Men, in the end less than Women. Some of our pregnantest Wits of Hermogenes Metal. Old Men and Counsellors amongst Children; Children amongst Counsellors and Old Men. Every Younker speaks as politick as Bishop Gardner, or Dr. Wutton; as if every Man now-a-days having the framing of his own Horoscope, were born in Decimo Coeli domicilio, and had all the Wit, Wisdom, and Worship at command. Sed heus tu in aurem, Meministin', quod ait Varro, omnes videmus [sic, read videmur] nobis esse belli, festivi, Saperdae, cum sumus Canopi. David, Ulysses, and Solon, feign'd themselves Fools and Madmen; our Fools and Madmen feign themselves Davids, Ulysses's, and Solons. It is pity fair Weather should do any hurt; but I know what Peace and Quietness hath done with some melancholy Pickstraws. And will you needs have my Testimonial of your old Controller's new Behaviour? A busy and dizzy Head, a brazen Forehead, a leaden Brain, a wooden Wit, a copper Face, a stony Breast, a factious and elvish Heart, a Founder of Novelties, a Confounder of his own, and his Friends good Gifts; a Morning Book-worm, an Afternoon Malt-worm, a right Jugler; as full of Sleights, Wiles, Fetches, Casts of Legerdemain, Toys to mock Apes with, odd Shifts and knavish Practises, as his Skin can hold.

Some of this sounds surprisingly modern, e.g.:

• All inquisitive after News; new Books, new Fashions, new Laws, new Officers, and some after new Elements, some after new Heavens and Hells too.
• In no age so little so much made of; every one highly in his own Favour.

Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), sermon preached at Stamford, in The Sermons of the Right Reverend Father in God, and Constant Martyr of Jesus Christ, Hugh Latimer, Vol. I (London: James Duncan, 1824), pp. 272-284 (at 280):

But some will say, our curate is naught, an asshead, a dodipole, a lack-latin...

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), "Translator's Note," Vergil, Aeneid Book VI: A New Verse Translation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), p. vii:

This translation of Aeneid VI is neither a "version" nor a crib: it is more like classics homework, the result of a lifelong desire to honour the memory of my Latin teacher at St. Columb's College, Father Michael McGlinchey....The set text for our A-level exam in 1957 was Aeneid IX but McGlinchey was forever sighing, "Och, boys, I wish it were Book VI."

Id., p. ix:

Michael McGlinchey created an inner literalist who still hunts for the main verb of a sentence and still, to the best of his ability, disentangles the subordinate clauses, although usually nowadays with the help of a crib from the Loeb Library or the old Penguin Classics.

Cicero, Against Catiline 4.12 (tr. C. Macdonald):

To my mind a man who does not soften his own grief and suffering by inflicting similar distress upon the man responsible is unfeeling and has a heart of stone.

mihi vero importunus ac ferreus qui non dolore et cruciatu nocentis suum dolorem cruciatumque lenierit.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), Minority Report (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 60, § 104:

There is an invariable tendency among inferior men to magnify their own importance and puissance by organizing a party....My belief is that such parties never accomplish anything valuable. They fall inevitably into the hands of crooked and self-seeking men, and in a little while they are full of obviously dubious doctrines. All of them attempt to discipline their members....The literature of the world is not written by such joiners. It is the exclusive product of independent men. One of their chief marks, indeed, is the fact that they do not believe what is generally believed, even by men of their trade.

Petrarch (1304-1374), Rerum Familiarum Libri 2.4.4 (tr. Aldo S. Bernardo):

But there is a certain something in the minds of mortals that I discern only vaguely and cannot put into words: a sad and destructive perversity, which shuts ears blocked against the salutary voices of advisers, and causes them constantly to do things that make them more miserable and to avoid anything that might lessen their grief. There is nothing that can be imagined that I would call more foolish.

sed est quedam in animis mortalium, quam et tenuiter video et verbis consequi nequeo, miserabilis et funesta perversitas, aures obstruentium adversus salutares consolatorum voces atque omnibus modis id agentium ut miseriores fiant neve aliquid quod dolorem lenire possit, obrepat; quo nichil excogitari potest, ne dicam esse, dementius.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), Hereward, the Last of the English, chapter I (Hereward to his mother Lady Godiva):

[Y]ou have done so many good deeds in your life, that it might be beneficial to you to do a bad one once in a way, so as to keep your soul in a wholesome state of humility.

Eugene Vanderpool (1906-1989), quoted by Mabel Lang, Graffiti and Dipinti (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies in Athens, 1976 = The Athenian Agora, Vol. XXI), p. v:

It is easy to read if you know what it says.

Cicero, Against Catiline 2.25 (tr. C. Macdonald):

On our side fights decency, on theirs viciousness; on our side morality, on theirs debauchery; on ours good faith, on theirs deceit; on ours respect for right, on theirs crime; on ours firmness of purpose, on theirs wild irresponsibility; on ours honour, on theirs disgrace; on ours self-control, on theirs a surrender to passion; in short, justice, moderation, bravery, wisdom, all the virtues, contend with injustice, intemperateness, cowardice, folly, all the vices. In a word, plenty fights against poverty, incorrupt principles against corrupt, sanity against insanity, well-founded hope against general desperation.

ex hac enim parte pudor pugnat, illinc petulantia; hinc pudicitia, illinc stuprum; hinc fides, illinc fraudatio; hinc pietas, illinc scelus; hinc constantia, illinc furor; hinc honestas, illinc turpitudo; hinc continentia, illinc libido; hinc denique aequitas, temperantia, fortitudo, prudentia, virtutes omnes certant cum iniquitate, luxuria, ignavia, temeritate, cum vitiis omnibus; postremo copia cum egestate, bona ratio cum perdita, mens sana cum amentia, bona denique spes cum omnium rerum desperatione confligit.

Alison E. Cooley and M.G.L. Cooley, Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 110 (abbreviation of Ins. Or. expanded by me):

D109 An imperial doctor visits the latrine

Apollinaris, doctor of emperor Titus, has had a good shit here.
                                                                        (CIL IV 10619)

This graffito appears on the wall of a latrine in the 'House of the Gem', Ins[ula] Or[ientalis] I.1, Herculaneum.

The Latin (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum IV 10619):

Apollinaris medicus Titi Imp(eratoris) / hic cacavit bene

Heikki Solin, review of Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum ... Voluminis quarti supplementi pars tertia in Gnomon 45 (1973) 258-277 (at 272):

10619. Apollinaris medicus Titi Imp. brauch nicht Arzt des Titus sein, man kann gleich gut A. medicus, Titi Imp. (servus) verstehen.

Garrett G. Fagan, "Bathing for Health with Celsus and Pliny the Elder," Classical Quarterly 56.1 (May, 2006) 190-207 (at 204, n. 63):

I see no reason to think that Titus' doctor actually scribbled this report on the toilet wall, as is often assumed; see M. Della Corte, 'Le iscrizioni di Ercolano', RendNap 33 (1958), 239-308 (274 on this graffito); A. Maiuri, Ercolano: I nuovi scavi 1927-1958 (Rome, 1958), I.475 n. 136; id., Herculaneum (Rome, 1964³), 63; Neudecker (n. 59), 34. That this graffito juxtaposes an important person with bowel-related crudity, and so closely echoes the form of the vulgarity in the Baths of the Seven Sages, suggests to me it was designed, like the Sages' didascalia, to be a joke (see next note). If this is the case, the text constitutes another reflection of popular reception of 'high' medical precepts.

Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), p. 112, with note on p. 244:

What did the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose modest public facilities we have surveyed above, write on the walls of their latrines? Perhaps the most cited and surely one of the more apparently honest remarks is that of Apollinaris, a doctor of the emperor Titus, who wrote the following upon a visit to Herculaneum: APOLLINARIS. MEDICUS. TITI IMP. HIC. CACAVIT. BENE: "Apollinaris, doctor of the emperor Titus, crapped well here."⁶³ Rather than accepting the text at face value, I think it more likely that it was written as a joke.

63. CIL 4, suppl. 3, leg. 4, 10619. See A. and M. De Vos, Pompei, Ercolano, Stabia, 277. This graffito was found in the Casa della Gemma. An expression of professional pride combines with personal satisfaction, according to Neudecker, Die Pracht der Latrine, 34.

Antonio Varone, "Newly Discovered and Corrected Readings of iscrizioni 'privatissime' from the Vesuvian Region," in Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan, edd., Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 113-130 (at 119-120):

I note in this regard the rather formal message left in a refined style of handwriting, which one might call almost pompous, by none other than a famous doctor to his own contemporaries (and inadvertently to posterity) in the latrine of the luxurious Casa della Gemma in Herculaneum (Ins. Orientalis I, nr. 1), where he was likely a guest:¹⁸

Apollinaris medicus Titi imp(eratoris) | hic cacavit bene

Apollinaris, doctor of the emperor Titus, shat well here.

The attention to defecation that is registered by the graffiti certainly is surprising, characterizing with crisp immediacy an entire scenario, as if giving us the cadence of a daily sigh of the society at that time.

18 CIL IV.10619. Image reproduced in Varone 2012, 500. Cf. Gasperini 1973, 338, and Solin 1973, 272. As Keegan has suggested to me, one could also imagine that the inscription was created by a member of the familia as a memory of a visit to the house by so distinguished a personage, and one who was also the author, according to Maiuri (1958, 475, n. 136), of a medical work used as a reference by Marcellus Empiricus. If so, one could think of similar inscriptions, found in other houses that, rather than a direct record of a distinguished guest, might be an indirect memory of such a visit, as, for example: Cucuta ab ra[t]ioni[b]us Neronis Augusti (CIL IV.8067–8068), found in the so-called Casa di Paquio Proculo (I.7.1, 20). The list of Vesuvian inscriptions found in latrines is given by Jansen 2011, 192 n. 61–62.

In other words, like "Washington slept here," Apollinaris shat here.

There is also a Doctor Apollinaris (Titus Julius Rosianus Apollinaris) mentioned on a tombstone erected by his freedmen Arescon and Callistus (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI 9584, now lost):

D(is) M(anibus) / T(ito) Iulio / Rosiano / Apollinari / medico / Arescon et / Callistus lib(erti) / patrono b(ene) m(erenti) f(ecerunt)

Thanks to Eric Thomson for pictures of the graffito and the latrine from Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum: Past and Future (London: Francis Lincoln, 2011) p. 294:

Labels: noctes scatologicae

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon, with Various Observations and Excursions. By Himself. Edited by George Birbeck Hill (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1900), p. 163 (footnotes omitted)

My temper is not very susceptible of enthusiasm; and the enthusiasm which I do not feel, I have ever scorned to affect. But, at the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal city. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation.

Marin Sorescu (1936-1996), "Ulysses," The Biggest Egg in the World, tr. Michael Hamburger (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1987) p. 28:

The mere thought of what awaits me at home —
Those suitors, the swine, blind
Drunk, their greasy armour hung up,
Nothing inside their heads but the board game,
The dice as limp as their members,
Nothing doing, even if
A woman much more alluring than Penelope
Were ready for them, (Can she
Really be old by now?)

True, on the other hand, that tearful
Demented female at the spinning-wheel
Who gets all the threads in a tangle, out of sheer greed!
I can imagine the welcome at the gate:
— What on earth have you been up to?
— Troy wasn't child's play. So please let up.
— All right, but Agamemnon! Clytemnestra's
Agamemnon. How come he could be back so soon
That his bones are rotting by now?
Wasn't it everyone's war? —
— I was at sea for ten years, because Neptune ...
— Leave Neptune out of it. Why don't you
Just tell me bluntly
With whom?
And for such a long time?
What kind of sea could that have been? —

Huh, if only I could build myself
A hovel here on the waves,
Put up a tiny tent
Here on this more sheltered patch
Between Scylla and Charybdis.

---

Când mă gândesc ce mă aşteaptă şi acasă,
Porcii aceia de peţitori,
Beţi chiori, slinoşi pe armurile din cuier
Jucând toată ziua table
Până li se înmoaie şi muşchii şi zarurile, de-a valma,
Că numai de însurătoare nu mai sunt buni
Chiar de-ar cere în căsătorie o babă
Mai ceva decât Penelopa
(O fi îmbătrânit, într-adevăr şi ea?)

Şi femeia aceea, plângăreaţă, pe de altă parte,
Care ţese-n neştire, de nervi,
De zgripţuroaică ce este, să încurce ea toate firele de pe lume!
Parcă văd că mă ia de la poartă-n primire:
— Unde-ai putut să fii până acum?
— Am făcut războiul Troii, nu fii scorpie ...
— Bine, bine, dar Agamemnon al Clitemnestrei
Cum de-a scăpat mai devreme, că a şi putrezit până acuma,
N-aţi avut toţi acelaşi război?
— Am rătăcit zece ani pe mare, întrucât Neptun ...
— Fără Neptun, te rog, spune clar
Cu cine?
Şi chiar până acum?
Chiar până acum?
Ce mare-a fost aia?

Of, să-mi fac o căsuţă
Aici pe valuri,
Să-mi ridic un cort în colţişorul ăsta
Mai ferit
Între Scyla şi Caribda.

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), "Penelope's Despair," Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, tr. Edmund Keeley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 91:

It wasn't that she didn't recognize him in the light from the hearth: it wasn't
the beggar’s rags, the disguise — no. The signs were clear:
the scar on his knee, the pluck, the cunning in his eye. Frightened,
her back against the wall, she searched for an excuse,
a little time, so she wouldn't have to answer,
give herself away. Was it for him, then, that she'd used up twenty years,
twenty years of waiting and dreaming, for this miserable
blood-soaked, white-bearded man? She collapsed voiceless into a chair,
slowly studied the slaughtered suitors on the floor as though seeing
her own desires dead there. And she said "Welcome,"
hearing her voice sound foreign, distant. In the corner, her loom
covered the ceiling with a trellis of shadows; and all the birds she'd woven
with bright red thread in green foliage, now,
on this night of the return, suddenly turned ashen and black,
flying low on the flat sky of her final enduring.

---

Δεν ήτανε πως δεν τον γνώρισε στο φως της παραστιάς· δεν ήταν
τα κουρέλια του επαίτη, η μεταμφίεση — όχι· καθαρά σημάδια:
η ουλή στο γόνατό του, η ρώμη, η πονηριά στο μάτι. Τρομαγμένη,
ακουμπώντας τη ράχη της στον τοίχο, μια δικαιολογία ζητούσε,
μια προθεσμία ακόμη λίγου χρόνου, να μην απαντήσει,
να μην προδοθεί. Γι' αυτόν, λοιπόν, είχε ξοδέψει είκοσι χρόνια,
είκοσι χρόνια αναμονής και ονείρων, για τούτον τον άθλιο,
τον αιματόβρεχτο ασπρογένη; Ρίχτηκε άφωνη σε μια καρέκλα,
κοίταξε αργά τους σκοτωμένους μνηστήρες, στο πάτωμα, σα να κοιτούσε
νεκρές τις ίδιες της επιθυμίες. Και: «καλωσόρισες», του είπε,
ακούγοντας ξένη, μακρινή, τη φωνή της. Στη γωνιά, ο αργαλειός της
γέμιζε το ταβάνι με καγκελωτές σκιές· κι όσα πουλιά είχε υφάνει
με κόκκινες λαμπρές κλωστές σε πράσινα φυλλώματα, αίφνης,
τούτη τη νύχτα της επιστροφής, γυρίσαν στο σταχτί και μαύρο
χαμοπετώντας στον επίπεδο ουρανό της τελευταίας της καρτερίας.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson.

Christian Gauss (1878-1951), The Papers of Christian Gauss. Edited by Katherine Gauss Jackson and Hiram Haydn (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 80:

I remember a distinguished philologist in Vienna used to open his course with an introductory lecture in which he always announced, "Gentlemen, in the interest of science we must accept this fact: that in medicine or philology there is nothing indecent."

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.

Piet van Boxel, "Robert Bellarmine, Christian Hebraist and Censor," History of Scholarship: A Selection of Papers from the Seminar on the History of Scholarship Held Annually at the Warburg Institute. Edited by C.R. Ligota and J.-L. Quantin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 251-275 (at 255):

Versed in Latin and with a good knowledge of Greek, Bellarmine had never been trained in Hebrew. At age 71, now a cardinal, he wrote about his time at the Jesuit school:

In those days N [Bellarmine] considered the Hebrew language very useful for the understanding of the Holy Scriptures and decided to study it. After having been taught the alphabet and some basic grammatical rules by somebody who knew the language, he himself wrote a Hebrew grammar according to a simpler method than that used by the rabbis and in a short time he learned the Hebrew language as far as seemed sufficient for a theologian. He then established an academy and studied Hebrew and Greek with some friends. In order to prove that his grammar was easier than others, he promised one of his students of the theological school, who knew no Hebrew at all, that if he were to teach him for eight days, he would be able to understand Hebrew books with the help of a dictionary, as he himself had managed to do.²³

²³ Döllinger and Reusch, Selbstbiographie (as in n. 2), 34. His claim to be able to teach a student Hebrew within eight days is clearly inspired by the legend that Jerome taught his spiritual daughter Blesilla the Hebrew language in a few days; see N. Frizon, La Vie du Cardinal Bellarmin, de la Compagnie de Jésus (Nancy, 1708), 78.

Domenico Comparetti (1835-1927), Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. E.F.M. Benecke (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Lim., 1908), p. 88, n. 35:

Many writers, feeling that their grammar is not above reproach, revolt strangely against the "tyranny of Donatus." Instances abound; it must suffice to quote the following curious passage from the Indiculus luminosus (No. XX.) of ALVARUS CORDUBENSIS (9th cent.): "Agant eructuosas quaestiones philosophi et Donatistae genis impuri, latratu canum, grunnitu porcorum, fauce rasa et dentibus stridentes, saliva spumosi grammatici ructent. Nos vero evangelici servi Christi discipuli rusticanorum sequipedi," etc. These words agree remarkably with a horrible biography of Donatus, inspired perhaps by this same repugnance for his grammar, which is found in a Paris MS. and has been several times published (most recently by Hagen, Anecdota Helvetica, p. 259). Yet Alvarus shows himself by his works to have been a diligent student of Vergil. Cp. AMADOR DE LOS RIOS, Hist. crit. de la lit. Españ., ii. p. 102 seqq.

For a translation of the Latin (Patrologia Latina 121: 534 C) see John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), Renaissance in Italy: The Revival of Learning, new ed. (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), p. 44:

'Let philosophers and impure scholars of Donatus,' writes a fanatic of Cordova, 'ply their windy problems with the barking of dogs, the grunting of swine, snarling with skinned throat and teeth; let the foaming and bespittled grammarians belch, while we remain evangelical servants of Christ, true followers of rustic teachers.'

There is a translation of the Life of Donatus published by Hagen in Maya Petrova, "Taking a New Look at the Ancient Tradition of Suetonius-Donatus' Biographies (A 9-th century biography of Aelius Donatus)," ΣΧΟΛΗ 10.1 (2016) 50-58 (at 57-58).

Homer, Iliad 6.476-481 (Hector speaking; tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Zeus, and you other immortals, grant that this boy, who is my son,
may be as I am, pre-eminent among the Trojans,
great in strength, as am I, and rule strongly over Ilion;
and some day let them say of him: "He is better by far than his father",
as he comes in from the fighting; and let him kill his enemy
and bring home the blooded spoils, and delight the heart of his mother.

Ζεῦ ἄλλοι τε θεοὶ δότε δὴ καὶ τόνδε γενέσθαι
παῖδ᾽ ἐμὸν ὡς καὶ ἐγώ περ ἀριπρεπέα Τρώεσσιν,
ὧδε βίην τ᾽ ἀγαθόν, καὶ Ἰλίου ἶφι ἀνάσσειν·
καί ποτέ τις εἴποι πατρός γ᾽ ὅδε πολλὸν ἀμείνων
ἐκ πολέμου ἀνιόντα· φέροι δ᾽ ἔναρα βροτόεντα        480
κτείνας δήϊον ἄνδρα, χαρείη δὲ φρένα μήτηρ.

M.I. Finley (1912-1986), The World of Odysseus, 2nd ed. (1978; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 28:

There is no social conscience in these words, no trace of the Decalogue, no responsibility other than familial, no obligation to anyone or anything but one's own prowess and one's own drive to victory and power.

Usually sons are inferior to their fathers—see e.g. Homer, Odyssey 2.276-277 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

For few are the children who turn out to be equals of their fathers,
and the greater number are worse; few are better than their father is.

παῦροι γάρ τοι παῖδες ὁμοῖοι πατρὶ πέλονται,
οἱ πλέονες κακίους, παῦροι δέ τε πατρὸς ἀρείους.

Robert Byron (1905-1941), The Road to Oxiana (London: Picador, 1994), pp. 61-62:

Teherani: 'What's this book?'

Christopher: 'A book of history.'

Teherani: 'What history?'

Christopher: 'The history of Rum and the countries near it, such as Persia, Egypt, Turkey, and Frankistan.'

Assistant (opening the book): 'Ya Ali! What characters!'

Teherani: 'Can you read it?'

Christopher: 'Of course. It's my language.'

Teherani: 'Read it to us.'

Christopher: 'But you cannot understand the language.'

Isfahani: 'No matter. Read a little.'

Muleteers: 'Go on! Go on!'

Christopher: '"It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas against the king; but our surprise will vanish so soon as we form a just estimate of a king of France in the eleventh century."'

Teherani: 'What's that about?'

Christopher: 'About the Pope.'

Teherani: 'The Foof? Who's that?'

Christopher: 'The Caliph of Rum.'

Muleteer: 'It's history of the Caliph of Rum.'

Teherani: 'Shut up! Is it a new book?'

Assistant: 'Is it full of clean thoughts?'

Christopher: 'It is without religion. The man who wrote it did not believe in the prophets.'

Teherani: 'Did he believe in God?'

Christopher: 'Perhaps. But he despised the prophets. He said that Jesus was an ordinary man (general agreement) and that Mohammad was an ordinary man (general depression) and that Zoroaster was an ordinary man.'

Muleteer (who speaks Turkish and doesn't understand well): 'Was he called Zoroaster?'

Christopher: 'No, Gibbon.'

Chorus: 'Ghiboon! Ghiboon!'

Pierre Hadot (1922-2010), Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, tr. Michael Chase (1995; rpt. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 57:

This very rupture between the philosopher and the conduct of everyday life is strongly felt by non-philosophers. In the works of comic and satiric authors, philosophers were portrayed as bizarre, if not dangerous characters. It is true, moreover, that throughout all of antiquity the number of charlatans who passed themselves off as philosophers must have been considerable, and Lucian, for example, freely exercised his wit at their expense. Jurists too considered philosophers a race apart. According to Ulpian, in the litigation between professors and their debtors the authorities did not need to concern themselves with philosophers, for these people professed to despise money. A regulation made by the emperor Antoninus Pious on salaries and compensations notes that if a philosopher haggles over his possessions, he shows he is no philosopher. Thus philosophers are strange, a race apart. Strange indeed are those Epicureans, who lead a frugal life, practicing a total equality between the men and women inside their philosophical circle — and even between married women and courtesans; strange, too, those Roman Stoics who disinterestedly administer the provinces of the empire entrusted to them and are the only ones to take seriously the laws promulgated against excess; strange as well this Roman Platonist, the Senator Rogatianus, a disciple of Plotinus, who on the very day he is to assume his functions as praetor gives up his responsibilities, abandons all his possessions, frees his slaves, and eats only every other day. Strange indeed all those philosophers whose behavior, without being inspired by religion, nonetheless completely breaks with the customs and habits of most mortals.