Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Gone to Pot
John Jay Chapman, letter to Robert and Nora Nichols (December 23, 1925), in "A Sampling of Letters and Obiter Dicta,"
Arion 2.2/3 (Spring, 1992 - Fall, 1993) 33-65 (at 43):
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It looks on all the surfaces as if the intellect of this country had gone to pot through the operation of the natural laws of wealth and prosperity — (and one sees no end or limit to them). I read Horace all the time and see much likeness between the luxury, riot, and folly that went on in the proconsular era, and our own epoch, but nothing of the blaze of intellect that accompanied the breakdown of the old Roman institutions and left behind it a shelf of books.Hat tip: Isaac Waisberg.
