Filium hominis - the son of man.

"Imbedded in a cosmos where everything was immortal, mortality became the hallmark of human existence. Men are "the mortals," the only mortal things in existence, because unlike animals they do not exist only as members of a species whose immortal life is guaranteed through procreastion. The mortality of men lies in the fact that individual life, with a recognizable life-story from birth to death, risese out of biological life... This mortality: to move along a rectinlinear line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order. The task and potential greatness of mortals lies in their ability to produce things.. which would deserve to be and... are at home in everlastingness, so that through them mortals could find their place in a cosmos where everything is immortal except themselves." - Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition)

“The father dead has euchered the son out of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more so than his goods. He will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life. He will not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness.” - Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian)

These two ideas, put into words by authors much smarter than me, explain the understading I've formed of my role on earth as the son of a great man. I've not yet arrived at a solution. As a member of the mortals, having fallen on the side of the divide between man which has been grouped among animals, whose father moves rectilinearly through a cyclical universe, I'm not sure self awareness is enough to escape the event horizon.

As Arendt notes: Socrates never stopped to write down his thoughts, as the moment he did would've broken him from eternity. Someone had to be there to transcribe them "so that through them mortals could find their place in a cosmos where everything is immortal except themselves." The odds are against the sons of great men. It makes me feel better that Augustus was adopted. Regardless, where I've landed is where my father put me: to strive to do the right thing. I used to think the hard part of that recipe was finding the right thing to do.