Book 12
1
"Shall we then allow this child of ours to be infected with some dangerous contagion and to draw a spirit into its mind and body from a body and mind of the worst character? This, by Heaven! is the very reason for what often excites our surprise, that some children of chaste women turn out to be like their parents neither in body nor in mind. Wisely then and skilfully did our Maro make use of these lines of Homer: Iliad xvi. 33 ff. The horseman Peleus never was thy sire, Nor Thetis gave thee birth; but the gray sea Begat thee, and the hard and flinty rocks; So savage is thy mind. For he bases his charge, not upon birth alone, as did his model, but on fierce and savage nurture, for his next verse reads: And fierce Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck. Aen. iv. 366f. And there is no doubt that in forming character the disposition of the nurse and the quality of the milk play a great part; for the milk, although imbued from the beginning with the material of the father's seed, forms the infant offspring from the body and mind of the mother as well.
