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In Tobit, a dying father tells his son to care for his mother all her life because she cared for him in the womb. The Stoic philosopher Hierocles grounds the same duty in the same debt, listing the food, bed, and bath owed to a mother in old age.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Tobit 4:3
Deuterocanon
3 Then he called his son Tobias, and when he came to him he said, "My son, when I die, give me a proper burial. Honor your mother and do not abandon her all the days of her life. Do whatever pleases her, and do not grieve her in anything. 4 Remember her, my son, because she faced many dangers for you while you were in her womb. And when she dies, bury her beside me in the same grave. 5 "Revere the Lord all your days, my son, and refuse to sin or to transgress his commandments. Live uprightly all the days of your life, and do not walk in the ways of wrongdoing;
Hierocles On Parents
How One Should Behave toward One's Parents
Classical
But reason persuades us to pay less attention to the body than to the soul; though attention to the former is necessary. We should, therefore, procure for our parents liberal food, and such as is adapted to the weakness of old age; and besides this, a bed, sleep, unction, a bath, garments; and in short, all the necessaries which the body requires, that they may never at any time experience the want of any of these; in thus acting, imitating their care about our nurture, when we were infants. Hence, we should compel ourselves to employ a certain prophetic attention to them, in order to discover what they particularly desire of things pertaining to the body, though they should not indicate the object of their wish. For they divined many things respecting us, when we frequently signified by inarticulate and mournful sounds, that we were in want of certain things, but were unable to indicate clearly the subjects of our wants. So that our parents, by the benefits which they formerly conferred upon us, become the preceptors to us of what we ought to bestow on them.
Date: c. 120 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... In an ancient society without old age pensions and senior care homes, the primary duty of caring for elderly parents devolved upon children. One of the Oxyrhynchus papyri (P. Oxy. 1210 ii.4-5; late first century BCE or early first century CE) refers to “men chosen by the parents from their sons to support them in old age,” presumably receiving a larger inheritance for this purpose. In such a context, I believe, we can see the principal original meaning of the Decalogue command to honor parents (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16). Drawing on the Decalogue, Ben Sira enunciates a fundamental principle widespread in the ancient world, that parents should be honored in their prime and cared for in their old age. [...] Since the primary addressees of the Decalogue were adult Israelite males rather than children (Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21), honoring their parents did not mean obeying household rules designed for children, but rather showing practical respect and care for parents, especially in old age ...”
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