While reading--and enjoying--Edmund White's autobiography (My Lives, Bloomsbury, 2005), I came across a passage that caused me to muse: "now that's a familiar theme."

(White is doing research for his biography of Jean Genet at the time)

"...I began to see that in the old Mediterranean world an established man of means who took a long-term interest in a poor young man was simply considered a benefactor -- and no one questioned what they did when the lights went off. Parents were happy that the son suddenly had a few opportunities; the man of means was happy to have a protege..."