Miscellanies 1.29.180

Hence very finely did the Egyptian priest in Plato say: “O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, having in your souls no ancient opinion from ancient tradition; and there is no old man among the Greeks.” By “old men” he meant, I think, those who know the more ancient things, that is, ours; and conversely by “young” those who relate as old and ancient the newer things practiced by the Greeks, things of yesterday and the day before. He added, then, “learning gray with time,” we using the metaphor in a barbarian way, unaffected and not precise. Indeed the right-minded approach the whole fiction of the interpretation simply. Of the Greeks he says that their conceit differs little from children's myths; for we must not understand children's myths, nor myths made for children; but he called the myths themselves children, as the Greeks who think themselves wise see little, hinting at the “learning gray with time,” the most ancient truth among the barbarians; to which word he opposed the “child myth,” exposing the mythical character of the attempts of the moderns as, like children, having nothing older, and showing that both their myths and their reasonings are alike childish.