1Since I am in doubt whether I looked up to your father, a man of the greatest dignity and integrity, more than I loved him, and since I am singularly fond of you, both for his memory and for your own honour, I must needs wish, and even strive as far as lies in me, that your son may turn out like his grandfather; 1for my part I would rather it were his maternal grandfather, although he has been blessed with a paternal one too who was famous and of proven worth, and his father and uncle are also conspicuous for illustrious renown. 2He will grow up like all of these only if he has been steeped in honourable studies, and it matters greatly from whom above all he receives them.
3Until now the requirements of boyhood have kept him within your household, and he has had teachers at home, where there is little or even no occasion for going astray. 3Now his studies must be carried beyond the threshold, now we must look round for a Latin rhetorician whose school is marked by strictness, decency and, above all, purity. 4For our young man has, along with the other gifts of nature and fortune, exceptional beauty of body, and at this slippery time of life one must seek for him not only a teacher but also a guardian and guide. 5I think, then, that I can point out Julius Genitor to you.
5He is loved by me; 5yet my affection for the man, which was born from my judgement, does not stand in the way of my judgement. 5He is a man of blameless life and serious, even a little rough and stern for this licentious age. 6How much he is worth in eloquence you may believe from many people, for the gift of speaking is open and exposed and is seen at once; 6but a man's life has deep recesses and great hiding-places, and for Genitor's life take me as guarantor. 6Your son will hear nothing from this man that will not profit him, will learn nothing that it would have been better not to know, and he will be reminded by him no less often than by you and me of the ancestral portraits that weigh upon him, of the names he has to uphold, and how great they are.
7So, with the gods' favour, hand him over to a teacher from whom he may learn first morals, then eloquence, which is ill learned without morals. 7Farewell.