Book IX, 23

The husbandman Archippus, when, smitten by grave sickness, he was just breathing his last and gliding to Hades, spoke thus to his sons: “I charge you, dear children, that ye love the mattock and the life of a farmer. Look not with favour on the weary labour of them who sail the treacherous waves and the heavy toil of perilous sea-faring. Even as a mother is sweeter than a stepmother, so is the land more to be desired than the grey sea.”