Living
Maxims of Theognis: To beget and nurture a
Translated by Rev. J. Banks (Bohn, 1856) · From Hesiod, Callimachus and Theognis (Bohn, 1856)
To beget and nurture a child is easier than to implant right feelings: this at all events no one has yet contrived, in making the senseless sensible, and the mean noble; but if a god had granted this, I wot, to the sons of Æsculapius, to cure meanness, and the infatuated minds of men, many and great wages would they earn. And if mind were capable-of-being created and implanted in man, never would worthless son have been born, of worthy father, but he would have been heedful of prudent discourses. But by teaching you will never make the mean man noble.
This translation is printed as prose in its source edition.
Codex Note
Literal prose translation by the Rev. J. Banks (Bohn, 1856), printed as prose: the plain-sense companion to Frere’s verse version. Banks’s hyphenated compounds are his own.
Cite this poem
MLA
Megara, Theognis of. “Maxims of Theognis: To beget and nurture a.” Translated by Rev. J. Banks. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/theognis/185/.
Chicago
Megara, Theognis of. “Maxims of Theognis: To beget and nurture a.” Translated by Rev. J. Banks. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/theognis/185/.
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