Photius on the dedication

He dedicates these works (the four books of Extracts, Sayings, and Precepts) to the person for whose sake he says he undertook the labor of collecting them: his own son Septimius.⁵ His collection was drawn from ⟨philosophers and⟩ poets, orators, and men who had distinguished themselves in public life. As he himself says, he gathered extracts from some, sayings from others, and precepts from others again, and sent them to his son to train and improve a natural capacity that was somewhat weak in remembering what he read.⁶