Aratus (1.1-1.2)

There is an ancient proverb, Polycrates,[*] which the philosopher Chrysippus puts not as it really is, but as he thought better:—

Who will praise a father, except happy sons?

But Dionysodorus of Troezen corrects him, and restores the true form thus:—

Who will praise a father, except unhappy sons?

And he says that the proverb stops the mouths of those who, being worthless in themselves, take refuge in the virtues of certain ancestors and are forever praising them. But surely for a man in whom, to use Pindar’s words,

the noble spirit naturally displayes itself as inherited from sires,

and who, like thee, patterns his life after the fairest examples in his family line,—for such men it will be good fortune to be reminded of their noblest progenitors, ever and anon hearing the story of them, or telling it themselves.