To Donatus 11

But perhaps we may seem to be choosing the worse things, and, out of eagerness to tear down, leading your eyes through things whose sad and repulsive sight offends the face and countenance of a better conscience. Now I will show you those things which worldly ignorance thinks good. There too you will see things to flee. What you think are honours, what fasces, what affluence in riches, what power in the camp, what splendour in the purple of the magistrate, what power in the licence of the principate: there is a hidden poison of flattering evils, and the face of smiling wickedness is indeed cheerful, but it is the alluring deceit of a hidden calamity. It is like a kind of poison, when, with sweetness sprinkled into deadly juices by a cunning to deceive, what is taken seems to be a drink with its flavour sweetened; when it has been drunk, the destruction swallowed spreads. You see, indeed, that man who, conspicuous in brighter clothing, seems to himself to shine in purple: with what degradation he bought the right to shine! What contempt of the arrogant he first endured, what proud doors he besieged as a morning caller, how many insulting footsteps of the swollen he walked before, crowded among the throngs of clients, so that later a retinue might also walk before him when he himself was greeted, subservient not to the man but to his power! For he did not deserve to be honoured for his character but for his fasces. Then see their shameful ends. When the flatterer, a fowler of the times, has gone away, when the deserter hanger-on has disgraced the bare side of the man now private, then the wounds of the ruined house strike the conscience, then the losses of the exhausted estate are known, by which the favour of the crowd was bought and the breeze of popularity sought with fleeting and empty wishes. A foolish and vain loss indeed, to have wished to procure by the pleasure of a disappointing show what the people would not accept and the magistrate would lose.