Oration 79
Imperial Dio Chrysostom Greek- Come now, in the gods' name, on what ground is it most fitting to admire and to take pride and to count blessed the greatest and most powerful of all cities? Is it for the excellence of its laws, and the fairness of its citizens, and the self-control of its magistrates? Or are these things small and of no account and easy for any chance comer, and ought one rather to count it blessed for the multitude of its people, and the abundance of its market, and the costliness of its buildings, and the woven stuffs of the Seres and the Babylonians, and because they roof their houses with gold, and everything is full of silver and amber and ivory—just such things as Homer described in the palaces of Alcinous and of Menelaus, well-nigh overpassing both the true and the possible—the whole city thus furnished; and, by Zeus, for its paintings and its statues, none of which profited their former owners, but, on the contrary, you might see those from whom they were carried off slaves and lowly and poor? 2. For if there were any profit in well-tempered bronze, and in mixing-bowls and altars and censers exquisitely wrought, the city of the Corinthians would be prosperous and would be inhabited for a long time, keeping safe its own dwellers and citizens; and if, again, in stones of fair colour and varied hue, the city of the Teans, or of the Carystians, and of certain Egyptians and Phrygians, among whom the mountains are of varied stone—and I, for my part, hear that the very ancient quarries of the mountains are of this same rock—yet nevertheless they are no better nor more fortunate than the very lowly and wretched. 3. And if it profited to possess gold, nothing would prevent the Ethiopians of the interior from seeming most blessed, among whom gold is held cheaper than lead is with us; and they say that there the malefactors are bound in thick fetters of gold—yet they are nonetheless prisoners and wicked and unjust. And to count blessed the rich and those who have much money, but who in all else differ in nothing from the utterly base, is like a man who, seeing the prisoners there coming forth from the gaol, should envy them, and should judge the most fortunate of all to be the one wearing the heaviest fetters. 4. And if ivory is a wonderful possession and worth fighting for, the Indians are far the most blessed and the best of all, among whom the bones of elephants are flung away and no one comes near them, just as here the bones of oxen and asses; and in many places, they say, the skulls of the elephants, tusks and all, are built into the walls. And what need is there to speak of the Celts, where they say a certain river brings down amber, and that much of it lies everywhere along the banks, cast up, like the pebbles with us upon the beaches? And formerly the children at their play used to fling it about; but now they too gather it and keep it, having learned from us that they are wealthy. 5. Do you, then, consider that all these—I mean the Celts and Indians and Iberians and Arabs and Babylonians—exact tribute from us, not of land nor of cattle, but of our folly? For when men, having prevailed in arms, compel the vanquished to pay them money, this is called tribute, and it is the lot of men not very fortunate nor brave to render levy to others; but when men, no one having marched against them nor compelled them, but through their simplicity and luxury—which they value above all things—willingly send money, over a long road and much sea, to those who cannot easily even set foot upon our land, is not what happens altogether worse and more shameful? 6. Save that in return for small and worthless stones and, by Zeus, the bones of beasts, they receive silver and gold, exchanging useless things for useful. And I most marvel, when I often reflect, that the Medes, having taken the goods of the Syrians, were content and rejoiced; and the Persians those of the Medes; and the Macedonians those of the Persians; and they thought at the time that they had become fortunate and were faring better, when they held the possessions of the wretched and the unfortunate. And these things I have said not idly to no purpose, but because of such things—for which men have all their zeal, and for which the multitude admire their possessors—there is no profit, but all of them together are not worth a single drachma; nor would men ever become happy who are senseless and foolish, not even if they should dwell in the park at Susa, which was, as they say, entirely raised aloft.