8
Our country’s feast of Bacchus was in old time celebrated in a more homely manner, though with great mirth and jollity. One carried in procession a vessel of wine and a branch of a vine, afterwards followed one leading a goat, another followed him bearing a basket of dried figs, and after all came a phallus. But all these are now despised and out of date, the procession being made with golden vessels and costly garments, driving of chariots and persons in masquerade. And just thus the things that are necessary and useful in riches are swallowed up by those that are unprofitable and superfluous.
9
The most of us commit the mistake of Telemachus. For he through inexperience, or rather want of good taste, when he saw Nestor’s house furnished with beds and tables, garments and carpets, and well stored with sweet and pleasant wine, did not look upon him as so happy a man in being thus well provided with things necessary and useful; but when he beheld the ivory, gold, and amber in Menelaus’s house, he cried out in amazement:— Such, and not nobler, in the realms above, My wonder dictates is the dome of Jove.Odyss. IV. 74. Whereas Socrates or Diogenes would have said rather:— What vain, vexatious, useless things I’ve seen, And good for nothing but to move one’s spleen. Thou fool, what is it thou sayest? When thou oughtest to have stripped thy wife of her purple and gaudy attire, that she might cease to live luxuriously and to run mad after strangers and their fashions, instead of this, dost thou adorn and beautify thy house, that it may appear like a theatre or a stage to all comers?
