The Folly of Human Riches

Our best prophets, the helpless animals, the simple images of God, and the faithful slaves of our life in freedom are filled with insolence. Thus the perfect, the poor, the children, and the rustic ones are affected. Some toil, some grumble, and some learn what is not good to know.

Let us consider how even unarmed soldiers are harmed by this festival. They suffer financial loss and, for a single lapse, they offer the food-allowance of war. They are harmed in their ways and characters. For they learn lawlessness, the conveniences of tents, and a dissolution and softness of character, and childishness against the laws and the order for which they were set as guards.

For they mock and drag down the greatest authority, ascending like a chariot upon a stage, and ordaining spear-bearers with minds gone astray, and publicly doing things of the outcasts toward ruin. And these are the most solemn things of the procession. And as for the others, how could anyone say?

Does not even the hero, he who is lion-hearted, who after being armed was seen as wonderful by his own people and fearsome to his enemies, also become womanish when having uncovered himself? And he lets the tunic go down to the hips, and wraps the belt around his chest, and uses womanish sandals, and places the fillet upon his head, which is a law for women? And he carries the wool-filled basket and lowers the thread with his right hand, which once used to carry the trophy? And alternating the tone of the soul, does he speak more sharply and womanishly? These are the useful things of the festival; the...

These are the things concerning the public feast today. And those having ascended to the summit of human offices, the much-boasting officials, spend their wealth in vanity, scattering heaps of money toward the unfruitfulness of justice and the fruit of sin; of which the folly is so conspicuous, as high as the throne.

For having entered into many human thrones and having governed the greatest of royal authorities, they take ungraciously the greatest things from everything; some having embezzled the rations of poor soldiers, others many times having sold justice and truth, and others having exhausted the wealth of the royal treasuries without limit and having diligently gathered from everywhere; yet being sparing of no reproach, not being lacking, not being unjust; and provoking God, they sit now, and after a little time dividing the gold to vagabonds, ill-fated ones, and mimes and dancers and androgynes and women who are prostitutes, providing the body to the people; and again to impure and hopeless gladiators and to the beasts themselves. For it is evident, just as gold feeds the beasts, one buying meat for them, another the fodder.

And all these things are prepared with one haste, so that the names of their transactions may be written beforehand. Oh, the madness! Oh, the blindness! God promises to write the names of the nurturers of the poor in living books, the immortal ones, the incorruptible ones, which you do not make vanish and time does not erase; and those letters you will not see, nor will you make any account.