Omnibus nobis totidem ante nos sunt; nullius non origo ultra memoriam iacet. Platon ait neminem regem non ex servis esse oriundum, neminem servum non1 ex regibus. Omnia ista longa varietas miscuit et sursum deorsum 5fortuna versavit. Quis est generosus? ad virtutem bene a natura compositus. Hoc unum intuendum est: alioquin si ad vetera revocas, nemo non inde est ante quod nihil est. A primo mundi ortu usque in hoc tempus perduxit nos ex splendidis sordidisque alternata series. Non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus; nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit nostrum est: animus facit nobilem, cui ex quacumque condicione supra fortunam licet surgere.
We all have had the same number of ancestors; there is no one whose ancestry does not extend beyond recollection. Plato says that every king springs from slaves and there is not a slave who does not descend from kings. All sorts have widely mixed together and fortune has turned them upside down. Who is well-born? He who by his nature is suited to virtue. That is what should be considered: otherwise if you call back to antiquity, there is no one who does not reach a time before which there is no information. From the first beginning of the world up to the present, we have been brought out of origins that were alternatively splendid and sordid. An atrium full of smoke-stained statues does make a man noble; no one lived for our glory and that which existed before us is not ours: the soul makes one noble, for it is allowed to rise above fortune from any circumstance.
Seneca,
Epistulae, V.44.4-5. My translation.