Laudator Temporis Acti

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto iv, Stanzas 21-23:

And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
   Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne;
   His belly was up-blowne with luxury,
   And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne,
   And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne,
   With which he swallowed up excessive feast,
   For want whereof poore people oft did pyne;
   And all the way, most like a brutish beast,
He spued up his gorge, that all did him deteast.

In greene vine leaves he was right fitly clad;
   For other clothes he could not weare for heat,
   And on his head an yvie girland had,
   From under which fast trickled downe the sweat:
   Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat,
   And in his hand did beare a bouzing can,
   Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat
   His dronken corse he scarse upholden can,
In shape and life more like a monster, then a man.

Unfit he was for any worldly thing,
   And eke unhable once to stirre or go,
   Not meet to be of counsell to a king,
   Whose mind in meat and drinke was drowned so,
   That from his friend he seldome knew his fo:
   Full of diseases was his carcas blew,
   And a dry dropsie through his flesh did flow:
   Which by misdiet daily greater grew:
Such one was Gluttony, the second of that crew.

Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), Triumph of Bacchus
(Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inventory number 990)