Less conspicuously admirable than one's ancestors. The contemporaries of Homer were striking examples of degeneracy; it required ten of them to raise a rock or a riot that one of the heroes of the Trojan war could have raised with ease. Homer never tires of sneering at "men who live in these degenerate days,&qupt; which is perhaps why they suffered him to beg his bread -- a marked instance of returning good for evil, by the way, for if they had forbidden him he would certainly have starved.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary