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The pudor of childhood was always esteemed at Rome: "adolescens pudentissimus" is the highest praise that can be given even to a grown youth; and there are signs that a feeling survived of a certain sacredness of childhood, which Juvenal reflects in his famous words, "Maxima debetur puero reverentia."
Equally elevated in tone, and with a temperate gravity peculiar to itself, is the part of the fourteenth satire which deals with the education of the young. We seem to hear once more in it the enlightened eloquence of Quintilian; in the famous Maxima debetur puero reverentia he sums up in a single memorable phrase the whole spirit of the instructor and the moralist.
Si quid vis, fac iterum. Ego vero deposita omni offensa cum puero in gratiam redii ususque beneficio eius in somnum delapsus sum. Sed non fuit contentus iteratione ephebus planae maturitatis et annis ad patiendum gestientibus. Itaque excitavit me sopitum et 'numquid vis? inquit. Et non plane iam molestum erat munus.
Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name. His highly respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter "those were his very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself in needy circumstances' he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I heartily wish he'd adopt me."
Here again we have one of those qualities to be found among mankind everywhere and always: the instinct opposed to change, even to those changes for the good we call progress, the disposition that made Horace deride the laudator temporis acti se puero of his day, the feeling of the man who laments the passing of the "good old times" and the military veteran who assures us that "the country, sir, is going to the dogs."
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