sage glowed with a passion
made up of scorn and pity, "what happiness can you bestow, or what
pleasure can you taste, who would never do anything to acquire it? You
who will take your fill of all pleasures before you feel an appetite for
any; you eat before you are hungry, you drink before you are athirst;
and, that you may please your taste, must have the finest artists to
prepare your viands; the richest wines that you may drink with pleasure,
and to give your wine the finer taste, you search every place for ice and
snow luxuriously to cool it in the heat of summer. Then, to make your
slumbers uninterrupted, you must have the softest down and the easiest
couches, and a gentle ascent of steps to save you from any the least
disturbance in mounting up to them. And all little enough, heaven knows!
for you have not prepared yourself for sleep by anything you have done,
but seek after it only because you have nothing to do. It is the same in
the enjoyments of love, in which you rather force than follow your
inclinations, and are obliged to use arts, and even to pervert nature, to
keep your passions alive. Thus is it that you instruct your
followers--kept awake for the greatest part of the night by debaucheries,
and consuming in drowsiness all the most useful part of the day. Though
immortal, you are an outcast from the gods, and despised by good men.
Never have you heard that most agreeable of all sounds, your own praise,
nor ever have you beheld the most pleasing of all objects, any good work
of your own hands. Who would ever give any credit to anything that you
say? Who would assist you in your necessity, or what man of sense would
ever venture to be of your mad parties? Such as do follow you are robbed
of their strength when they are young, void of wisdom when they grow old.
In their youth they are bred up in indolence and all manner of delicacy,
and pass their old age with difficulties and distress, full of shame for
what they have done, and oppressed with the burden of what they are to
do, squanderers of pleasures in their youth, and hoarders up of
afflictions for their old age.

"On the contrary, my conversation is with the gods, and with good men,
and there is nothing excellent performed by either without my influence.
I am respected above all things by the gods and by the best of mortals,
and it is just I should. I am an agreeable companion to the artisan, a
faithful security to masters of families, a kind