Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/323

Rh that men live to see, hear, and know when their children fall to gaming, revelling, masking, and banqueting, to drunkenness, wanton love, whoring, and such-like misdemeanours. So as in these regards this one mot of Euenus in an epigram of his, deserveth to be praised and remembered:

And yet for all this, fathers cease not still to nourish and bring up children, and such most of all who stand least in need of their children another day; for a mere mockery it were and a ridiculous thing, if a man should suppose that rich and wealthy men do sacrifice unto the gods, and make great joy at the nativity and birth of their children, because that one day they shall feed and sustain them in their old age, and inter them after they be dead; unless perhaps it may be said, they rejoice thus and be so glad to have and bring up children, for that otherwise they should leave none heirs behind them; as who would say, it were so hard a matter to find out and meet with those that would be willing to inherit the lands and goods of strangers. Certes, the sands of the sea, the little motes in the sun raised of dust, the feathers of birds together with their variable notes, be not so many in number as there be men that gape after heritages, and be ready to succeed others in their livings. Danaus (who, as they say, was the father of fifty daughters), if his fortune had been to be childless, I doubt not but he should have had more heirs than so to have parted his goods and state among them, and those verily after another sort than the heirs of his own body. For children yield their parents no thanks at all for being their inheritors, neither in regard thereof do they any service, duty or honour unto them; for why? they expect and look for the inheritance as a thing due and of right belonging unto them: but contrariwise you hear how those strangers that hang and hunt about a man who hath no children, much like to those in the comedies, singing this song: As for that which Euripides saith: