that the body should along with wealth contract such a disease, how comest thou to overlook the soul, and when contracting not this scourge alone, but another also? For it is on fire all over with burning fevers and inflammations, and that burning fever none can quench, for wealth will not allow of this, having persuaded it that those things are gains, which are really losses, such as not enduring any one and doing everything at will. For no other soul will one find so replete with lusts so great and so extravagant, as theirs who are desirous of being rich. For what silly trifles do they not picture to themselves! One may see these devising more extravagant things than limners of hippocentaurs, and chimæras, and dragon-footed things, and Scyllas, and monsters. And if one should choose to give a picture of one lust of theirs, neither Scylla, nor chimæra, nor hippocentaur will appear anything at all by the side of such a prodigy; but you will find it to contain every wild beast at once. And perchance some one will suppose that I have been myself possessed of much wealth, seeing I am so true to what really comes of it. It is reported of one (for I will first confirm what I have said from the legends of the Greeks)—it is reported amongst them of a certain 292 king, that he became so insolent in luxury, as to make a plane tree of gold,820 and a sky above it, and there sate, and this too when invading a people skilled in warfare. Now was not this lust hippocentaurean, was it not Scyllæan? Another, again, used821 to cast men into a wooden bull. Was not this a very Scylla? And even him,822 the king I just mentioned, the warrior,823 wealth made, from a man a woman, from a woman, what shall I say? a brute beast, and yet more degraded than this for the beasts, if they lodge under a tree, take up with nature, and seek for nothing further; but the man in question overshot the nature even of beasts. What then can be more senseless than are the wealthy? And this arises from the greed- iness of their desires. But, are there not many that admire him? Therefore truly do they share in the laughter he incurs. That displayed not his wealth but his folly. How much better than that golden plane tree is that which the earth produceth! For the natural is more grateful than the unnatural. But what meant that thy golden heaven, O senseless one? Seest thou how wealth that is abundant maketh men mad? How it inflamed them? I suppose he knows not the sea even, and perchance will presently have a mind to walk upon it.824 Now 820 Ed. Par. refers to Herod. vii. 27, where such a tree is mentioned as given to Darius; also to Diod. Sic. xix. 49, and Brisson de Regn. Pers. l. i. c. 77. 821 Sav. ἐνέβαλλε. He must mean the brazen bull of Phalaris. 822 τέως δὲ τῶν πρότερον. And besides among them of earlier times, wealth made that king, the warrior, from a man, a woman; from a woman, what shall I say? Savile τὸν, which is better, and neglected by Ed. Par. The sequel shows that the same king is meant. 823 [The syntax is obscure, and the passage probably corrupt; but the general meaning is plain.—J.A.B.] 824 Alluding to Xerxes, see Herod. vii. 35. 515 Colossians 2:16-19