"For mortals it is better not to be born than to be born; Children I bring to birth with bitter pains; And then when I have borne them they lack understanding. In vain I groan, that I must look on wicked offspring. While I lose the good. If the good survive, My wretched heart is melted by alarm. What is this goodness then? Is it not enough That I should care for one alone And bear the pain for this one soul?" And further to the same effect, "So now I think and have long so thought Man ought never children to beget, Seeing into what agonies we are born." But in the following verses he clearly attributes the cause of evil to the primal origins, when he speaks as follows: "O thou who art born for misfortune and disaster, thou art born a man, and thine unhappy life thou didst receive from the place where the air of heaven, which gives breath to mortals, first began to give food for all. Complain not of thy mortal state, thou who art mortal." Again he puts the same idea in these words: "No mortal is content and happy Nor is any born free from sorrow."
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Euripides, quoted and commented by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book III, Chapter III, 22-23
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