of candour, the beauty of truth; he who has given up his soul to
Pleasure, and will serve no other mistress, whose heart is set on
gluttony and wine and women, on whose tongue are deceit and hypocrisy;
he again whose ears must be tickled with lascivious songs, and the
voluptuous notes of flute and lyre;--let all such (he cried) dwell
here in Rome; the life will suit them. 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. '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! Thus reasoning, I withdrew myself out of range, as Zeus did
Hector,

Far from the scene of slaughter, blood and strife,