Take the noisy complaints you made to me just now, that they gorged on pork and cakes in the feasting—what do they amount to? Both of them are perhaps sweet and not disagreeable for the moment, but in the aftermath the matter is turned right round. Then, whereas you will get up on the next day without the headache their drinking gives them and the foul, smoky belching from over-fullness, they not only have the pleasure of all this but having spent most of the night in debauchery with boys or women or in any way their lechery takes them, without difficulty they pick up consumption or pneumonia or dropsy from their excessive indulgence. Again, would you find it easy to point out one of them who was not absolutely pale, looking very much like death? Or one who reached old age on his own feet and not carried on four men’s backs, all gold on the outside, but with his inside cobbled like the costumes in tragedy, patched up out of quite worthless rags? You paupers never taste or feed on fish, true enough, but don’t you see that you’ve no acquaintance with gout or pneumonia either, or of anything else that they catch for some other reason? Yet even they themselves don’t find it pleasant eating this food every day beyond what they want of these dishes; no, you’ll see them sometimes with a better appetite for vegetables and thyme than even you have for hare and pork.
 I say nothing of the other things that worry them—a
licentious son, a wife in love with a servant, a loved one who yields because he has to and not because he





 

wants. Altogether there’s a great deal you don’t know of—you only see their gold and purple, and whenever you see them riding out behind a white team you gape and do obeisance to them. Now if you ignored and despised them and neither turned to look at their silver carriage nor during conversation glanced at the emerald in their ring and touched their dress in admiration at its softness, but let them be rich for themselves alone, you may be quite sure they would come to you of their own accord and beg you to dine with them so that they might show you their couches and tables and cups, which are no use if people don’t see that they’re yours. In fact most of what they have you would find they get on your account, not for their own use, but to impress you poor people. This, then, is the advice I give you, knowing both ways of life as I do. And it is right that during the festival you should remember that after a little time you must all depart from life, the rich giving up their wealth and you your poverty. But I shall write to them as I promised and I know they will not despise my words.