Plato in Italy

their own wealth, and since the ways to increase this are not always in their power, they turn all their efforts to diminishing those of others . . . And this is called taking care of the splendor of one’s family, of the decorum of one’s name, in a corrupt city, where the inhabitants do not know how to transmit any virtue along with their name to their children (*).

(*) If this work were not, as it is, an ancient manuscript, I would almost doubt that this passage was written after the invention of our fideicommissa legal arrangements for transferring inheritance and our majorats landed estates passed down to a single heir.