True, my father has supported me. But, if I bestow the same on him, I return more than I got, for he has joy, not only from being supported, but from being supported by a son, and he derives greater pleasure from the spirit of my act than from the act itself, but the food he gave me reached only the needs of the body. Tell me, if a man has attained so much eminence as to be renowned throughout the world by reason either of his eloquence or of his justice or his military prowess, if he has been able to encompass his father also in the greatness of fame, and by the glory of his name to dispel the obscurity of his birth, has he not conferred upon his parents a benefit that is beyond all estimate? Or would anyone ever have heard of Aristo and Gryllus except for the fact that Xenophon and Plato were their sons? It is Socrates that does not allow the name of Sophroniscus to die. It would take too long to recount all the others whose names endure only because they have been handed down to posterity owing to the exceptional worth of their children. Which was the greater benefit — what Marcus Agrippa9 received from his father, who was unknown even after having had a son like Agrippa, or what the father received from Agrippa, who, by the glory of a naval crown, gained a distinction that was unique among the honors of war, who reared in the city so many mighty works that not only surpassed all former grandeur, but later could be surpassed by none? Which was the greater benefit — what Octavius bestowed on his son, or what the deified Augustus bestowed on his father, obscured as he was by the shadow of an adoptive father?10 What joy would Octavius have experienced if he had seen his son, after he had brought the Civil War to an end, watching over well-established peace: he would not have recognized the good that he had himself bestowed, and would scarcely have believed, whenever he turned his gaze backward to himself, that so great a hero could have been born in his house. Why continue now to mention all the others who would long have been buried in oblivion, had not the glory of their sons rescued them from darkness, and kept them in the light even to this day?
Moreover, since the question is, not what son bestowed greater benefits on his father than he received from his father, but whether it is possible for any son to bestow greater benefits, even if the instances that I have cited are not convincing, and the benefits of parents are not overtopped by those of their sons, nevertheless that which no age has as yet produced still lies within the bounds of nature. If single acts may not be able to surpass the magnitude of a father’s services, yet several of them combined, together will exceed it.