e and wealth, the objects of
desire to others, became a burden and a trouble. At first the love of
money, and then that of power, began to prevail, and these became, as
it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty,
integrity, and other honorable principles, and in their stead,
inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion, and general
venality. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one
thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue; to
estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according
to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest
heart. These vices at first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes
restrained by correction; but afterward, when their infection had
spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the
government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became
rapacious and insupportable.

At first, however, it was ambition, rather than avarice, that
influenced the minds of men--a vice which approaches nearer to virtue
than the other. For of glory, honor, and power, the worthy is as
desirous as the worthless; but the one pursues them by just methods;
the other, being destitute of honorable qualities, works with fraud
and deceit. But avarice has merely money for its object, which no wise
man has ever immoderately desired. It is a vice which, as if imbued
with deadly poison, enervates whatever is manly in body or mind. It is
always unbounded and insatiable, and is abated neither by abundance
nor by want.

But after Lucius Sulla, having recovered the government by force of
arms, proceeded, after a fair commencement, to a pernicious
termination, all became robbers and plunderers; some set their
affections on houses, others on lands; his victorious troops knew
neither restraint nor moderation, but inflicted on the citizens
disgraceful and inhuman outrages. Their rapacity was increased by the
circumstance that Sulla, in order to secure the attachment of the
forces which he had commanded in Asia, had treated them, contrary to
the practise of our ancestors, with extraordinary indulgence and
exemption from discipline; and pleasant and luxurious quarters had
easily, during seasons of idleness, enervated the minds of the
soldiery. Then the armies of the Roman people first became habituated
to licentiousness and intemperance, and began to admire statues,
pictures, and sculptured vases; to seize such