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Book III.13:1-66

MONEY THE ROOT OF CORRUPTION

Propertius

You ask why a night with eager women is expensive, and why our exhausted powers bemoan Venus’s losses. The reason for such ruin is clear and certain: the path to voluptuousness has been made too easy.

The Indian ants bring gold dust from the vaulted mine, and Venus’s conch, the nautilus, comes from the Red Sea, and Cadmus’s Tyre sends purple dyes, and the Arabian shepherd strong scented cinnamon. These weapons take sheltered modesty by storm: even those who show disdain like yours Penelope. Wives go out dressed in a spendthrift’s fortune, and drag the results of their disgrace in front of our faces. There’s no respect shown in asking or supplying, or if there is, money dispels any reluctance.

Happy that singular custom at the funerals of Eastern husbands that the reddening dawn colours with her chariot! Since when the last brand is thrown on the dead man’s bier, his dutiful crowd of wives stand round with spreading hair, and compete in a fatal contest, as to who shall follow the husband while alive: it is shame for them not to be allowed to die. The winners are inflamed and offer their breasts to the fire and rest their scorched faces on their husband. Here the race of brides is treacherous: here no girl has Evadne’s loyalty or Penelope’s sense of duty.

Happy were the young country folk, once, peaceable: whose wealth was in orchards and harvests. Their gifts were Cydonian apples shaken from the branches, and they gave punnets full of blackberries, now took violets in their hands, now brought back shining lilies mingled together in the virgins’ baskets, and carried grapes wrapped in their own leaves, or some multi-coloured bird of various hue.

With such blandishments as these the kisses of girls were won, given to sylvan youths in secret hollows. The skin of a roe deer was wholly sufficient to cover lovers, and the tall grass grew as nature’s bed. The pine leaned over them and threw its rich shadows round them: and it was not a sin to see the goddesses naked. The horned ram, head of the flock, led back his sated ewes himself to the empty fold of Pan the shepherd god. All the gods and goddesses by whom the land’s protected offered kindly words to our hearths: ‘Stranger, whoever you are who comes, you may hunt the hare on my paths, or the bird if perhaps you seek it: and whether you hunt your quarry with dogs or with a limed stick, call upon me, from the crag, for Pan to be your companion.’

But now the shrines decay in deserted groves: all worship money now piety is vanquished. Money drives out loyalty, justice is bought for money, money rules the law, and, without the law, then shame.

Scorched thresholds testify to Brennus’s sacrilege, attacking the Pythian kingdom of Apollo, the unshorn god: and then Parnassus shook its laurel-crowned summit, and scattered fearful snow over the army of Gaul. For money, vile Polymestor of Thrace, reared you, Polydorus, in impious hospitality. Amphiaraus is lost, and his horses swallowed up, so that you Eriphyla can cover your shoulders with gold.

I will speak: - and I wish that I might be my country’s true prophet! – Proud Rome is being destroyed by wealth. I speak truth, but no one will believe. Since, neither was Cassandra, the Trojan Maenad, believed to be truthful in the ruin of Pergama: only she cried out that Paris was forging Phrygia’s doom, only she that the deceitful horse was entering her house. Her frenzies were fitting for her father and her house: in vain her tongue experienced the true gods.