beginning of kindnesses be followed up by others, and confirmed by
other services. It is not a good thing to live, but to live well.
"But," say you, "I do live well." True, but I might have lived ill;
so that your part in me is merely this, that I live. If you claim
merit to yourself for giving me mere life, bare and helpless, and
boast of it as a great boon, reflect that this you claim merit for
giving me is a boon which I possess in common with flies and worms.
In the next place, if I say no more than that I have applied myself
to honourable pursuits, and have guided the course of my life along
the path of rectitude, then you have received more from your
benefit than you gave; for you gave me to myself ignorant and
unlearned, and I have returned to you a son such as you would wish
to have begotten.

XXXII. My father supported me. If I repay this kindness, I give him
more than I received, because he has the pleasure, not only of
being supported, but of being supported by a son, and receives more
delight from my filial devotion than from the food itself, whereas
the food which he used to give me merely affected my body. What? if
any man rises so high as to become famous among nations for his
eloquence, his justice, or his military skill, if much of the
splendour of his renown is shed upon his father also, and by its
clear light dispels the obscurity of his birth, does not such a man
confer an inestimable benefit upon his parents? Would anyone have
heard of Aristo and Gryllus except through Xenophon and Plato,
their sons? Socrates keeps alive the memory of Sophroniscus. It
would take long to recount the other men whose names survive for no
other reason than that the admirable qualities of their sons have
handed them down to posterity. Did the father of Marcus Agrippa, of
whom nothing was known, even after Agrippa became famous, confer