by yourself, and without me, you are taking an unreasonable view of parental rights. According to the harshest theory indeed, a son belongs to the father rather than to the mother; a more reasonable theory is that he belongs equally to both. If you regard it as a deprivation to you that you should sometimes share your son with his father, how do you think a father feels who is allowed no share in him at all? Be more generous and send him to me for a short stay: he shall soon return to you, and bring what befits the son of Phalaris and Erythia, that you and he—though I am not with you—may live together in abundance. Who are bound to a man by a closer tie, that he should pray to have enough and to spare for their sake, if he neglects wife or child? My care as a husband and a father is for you; on you, my dearest ones, I wish to bestow no small share of my wealth, and to do so soon, for several reasons, but chiefly because of old age, which is coming upon me, and because of the grievous disease which has lately befallen me; for it warns me to regard each day as it comes as if it were the last day of my life, when the debt of mortality falls due. As for the voyage from Crete to Agrigentum, or back again, the
