16
"Such folk,” said he, “should live in Rome, for every street and every square is full of the things they cherish most, A reminiscence of Aratus (Phaenom. 2): ‘ And every human-street and every square is full of the presence of God.” and they can admit pleasure by every gate—by the eyes, by the ears and nostrils, by the throat and reins, Its everflowing, turbid stream widens every street; it brings in adultery, avarice, perjury and the whole family of the vices, and sweeps the flooded soul bare of self-respect, virtue, and righteousness; and then the ground which they have left a desert, ever parched with thirst, puts forth a rank, wild growth of lusts.” That was the character of the city, he declared, and those all the good things it taught.
17
“For my part,” said he, “when I first came back from Greece, on getting into the neighbourhood of Rome I stopped and asked myself why I had come here, repeating the well-known words of Homer: Odyss. 11, 93. ‘Why left you, luckless man, the light of day’—Greece, to wit, and all that happiness and freedom— and came to see’ the hurly-burly here—informers, haughty greetings, dinners, flatterers, murders, legacy-hunting, feigned friendships? And what in the world do you intend to do, since you can neither go away nor do as the Romans do?”
18
“After communing with myself in this vein and pulling myself out of bowshot as Zeus did Hector in Homer, From out the slaughter, blood, and battle-din, Iliad 11, 163. I decided to be a stay-at-home in future. Choosing thereby a sort of life which seems to most people womanish and spiritless, I converse with Plato, Philosophy and Truth, and seating myself, as it were, high up in a theatre full of untold thousands, I look down on what takes place, which is of a quality sometimes to afford amusement and laughter, sometimes to prove a man’s true steadfastness.
