Complete Works of Saint Cyprian

...when the thing has been drained, the consumed destruction spreads. For you see that man who, conspicuous in a brighter garment, seems to himself to shine in purple. By what filth did he buy this, that he might shine? What arrogance of the proud did he first endure? What proud thresholds did he beset as a morning caller? How many insulting footsteps of the swollen with pride did he precede, crowded into the ranks of clients, so that a retinue of pomp might thereafter precede him even when he was greeted, subjected not to a human being, but to power? For he did not deserve to be honored by his character, but by his fasces. In short, you may see the shameful ends of these men. When the fowler of the times, the flatterer, has departed, when the deserter-follower has disgraced the naked side of the private citizen: then the wounds of the lacerated house strike the conscience; then the losses of an exhausted family estate are known, by which the favor of the crowd was redeemed and the popular breeze sought with falling and empty vows. A truly foolish and vain waste, to have wished to prepare at the price of a frustrating spectacle that which neither the people would accept nor the magistrate would lose.

But even those whom you deem rich, extending estate after estate and excluding the poor from the borders, stretching out infinite and boundless fields, for whom there is a maximum weight of silver and gold and either built-up mounds or buried hoards of huge sums of money: even among their riches, the anxiety of uncertain thought torments these men, lest a robber ravage, lest a murderer infest, lest the hostile envy of any wealthier neighbor disturb them with calumnious lawsuits. Neither food nor sleep reaches him in security; he sighs at the banquet, though he may drink from a gem a jeweled cup, and when a softer couch has laid his weary body to rest in a deep embrace with the feast, he lies awake on his feathers and does not understand, poor man, that these are beautiful torments to him, that he is bound by gold and is possessed rather than possessing...