16
Our streets and market-places are filled with the things they love best. They may take in pleasure through every aperture, through eye and ear, nostril and palate; nor are the claims of Aphrodite forgotten. The turbid stream surges everlastingly through our streets; avarice, perjury, adultery,—all tastes are represented. Under that rush of waters, modesty, virtue, uprightness, are torn from the soul; and in their stead grows the tree of perpetual thirst, whose flowers are many strange desires. Such was Rome; such were the blessings she taught men to enjoy.
17
‘As for me,’ he continued, ‘on returning from my first voyage to Greece, I stopped short a little way from the city, and called myself to account, in the words of Homer, for my return. Ah, wretch! and leav’st thou then the light of day—the joyous freedom of Greece, And wouldst behold— the turmoil of Rome? slander and insolence and gluttony, flatterers and false friends, legacy-hunters and murderers? And what wilt thou do here? thou canst not endure these things, neither canst thou escape them!
18
Thus reasoning, I withdrew myself out of range, as Zeus did Hector, Far from the scene of slaughter, blood and strife, and resolved henceforth to keep my house. I lead the life you see—a spiritless, womanish life, most men would account it— holding converse with Philosophy, with Plato, with Truth. From my high seat in this vast theatre, I look down on the scene beneath me; a scene calculated to afford much entertainment; calculated also to try a man’s resolution to the utmost.
