Sure Peleus ne’er begat a son like thee,

Nor Thetis gave thee birth: the azure sea

Produc’d thee, or the flinty rocks alone

Were the fierce parents of so fierce a son.

He charges him not only upon the circumstance of his birth, but his subsequent education, which he has called fierce and savage. Virgil, to the Homeric description, has added these words:

And fierce Hyrcanian tygers gave thee suck.

Undoubtedly, in forming the manners, the nature of the milk takes, in a great measure, the disposition of the person who supplies it, and then forms from the seed of the father, and the person and spirit of the mother, its infant offspring. And besides all this, who can think it a matter to be treated with negligence and contempt, that while they desert their own offspring, driving it from themselves, and committing it for nourishment to the care of others, they cut off, or at least loosen and relax, that mental obligation, that tie of affection, by which nature binds parents to their children? For when a child is removed from its mother, and given to a stranger, the energy of maternal fondness by little and little is checked, and all the vehemence of impatient solicitude is put to silence. And it becomes much more easy to forget a child which is put out to nurse, than one of which death has deprived us. Moreover, the natural affection of a child, its fondness, its familiarity, is directed to that object only from which it receives its nourishment, and thence (as in infants exposed at their birth) the child has no knowledge of its mother, and no regret for the loss of her. Having thus destroyed the foundations of natural affection, however children thus brought up may seem to love their father or mother, that regard is in a great measure not natural, but the result of civil obligation and opinion.” These sentiments, which I heard Favorinus deliver in Greek, I have, as far as I could, related, for the sake of their common utility. But the elegancies, the copiousness, and the flow of his words, scarcely any power of Roman eloquence could arrive at, least of all any which I possess.

DO IT YOURSELF

Attic Nights

Aulus Gellius

Translated by the Rev. W. Beloe, 1795

Aulus Gellius was one of Aesop’s greatest admirers. In this snippet from his commonplace book, the Attic Nights (see Story 82 above) he retells a fable of Aesop’s whose message is that if you want something done, you should do it yourself.