Commodian — Instructiones 29

Learn, you who will die, to show good to all. In the people’s midst why make yourself another? You go where you do not know, and unaware you leave from there; you handle wickedly, though you thirst with the body itself. You lift yourself too high over riches and lead feast-days and do not look to the poor willingly — those now subject to you — nor do you even feed your parents. Alas, wretched ones! Let the middling flee farther from you. “The poor lived and went out,” you shout, drunk. Soon you are driven by furies when you yourself perish, Charybdis. Undisciplined, you rich are like cattle: you give law to those, for you spare yourselves. Put off, rich ones, being so evil-twisted toward God, that he may surely help you who now may have worked. Be common to the least while you have time; as the elm loves the vine, so yourselves the little ones. A terrible law to the evil and kind to the good — observe now, barren one; be subject in prosperous things; lift hearts of fraud, rich ones, and take up peace’s. Expiate your evil with good deeds from the Highest.