Miscellanies 3.3.22

Let our discussion of self-control go on. We were saying that the Greeks, seeing the troubles, said many things against the begetting of children, and that the Marcionites, taking these godlessly, are ungrateful to the Creator. For the tragedy says: “Not to be born is better for mortals than to be born. Then I bear children with bitter pains; and having borne them, if I bear fools, I groan in vain, seeing them bad, while losing the good; and if they are saved, I melt my wretched heart with dread. What good is this? Is it not enough for one soul to be distraught and have toils for it?” And again likewise: “To me it seems, now and long ago, that men should never beget children, seeing into how many toils we beget them.” And in what is said further he clearly traces the cause of evils back to the beginnings, saying thus: “You who were born to misfortune and to fare ill, you became a man and received the misfortune of life from the time when this ether began to nourish all, giving breath to mortals. Do not, then, being mortal, take mortal things amiss.”