Money And Decadence

Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Two Epistles to Julius Cæsar, Epistle II., tr. John Selby Watson, in: Sallust, Florus, Velleius Paterculus (London, 1852), pp. VII-VIII., 273-4:

For, on frequently reflecting by what means eminent men had attained greatness, what conduct had strengthened people or nations with great accessions of power, and from what causes the mightiest kingdoms and empires had fallen to decay, I found that there were invariably the same causes of good and evil that those who rose had held riches in contempt, and those who fell had coveted them. . . .

For a man to erect a mansion or villa, and to decorate it with statues, tapestry, and other ornaments, and to make everything in it admirable except its possessor, is not to render riches an honour to himself, but to be himself a disgrace to them. Those, too, who are accustomed to overload their stomachs twice a day, and to pass no night without a mistress, when they have enslaved the mind that ought to have commanded, in vain seek to employ it, in its inefficient and infirm condition, as if it had been wisely improved for, from want of intellectual power, they mostly ruin alike their schemes and themselves. But these, and all other like evils, will have an end, if the respect that is paid to money be diminished, and if neither offices, nor any objects of general ambition, be set to sale.