Dialogues of the Dead (19.4)

And who was the heir under your final will? One of your family, no doubt?

Good heavens no; it was a pretty boy from Phrygia I’d just bought.

What sort of age was he?

Roughly about twenty.

Now I understand how he won your favour.

Oh well, he deserved to be my heir much more than they did, even if he was a barbarian and a pest. He’s already being courted by the noblest of them all. So he became my heir, and is now numbered among the aristocrats, and, despite his smooth chin and foreign accent, is credited with bluer blood than Codrus, greater beauty than NIreus, and more intelligence than Odysseus.

That doesn’t worry me. Let him even be Generalissimo of Greece, if he wishes to, so long as those fellows don’t inherit.