Observe how much the lovers of gold are prepared to suffer. They commit themselves to sea voyages in the roughest winter weather; they are so heated up with avarice, that they don't dread any cold; they are tossed about by the winds, hoisted up and dumped down by the waves; pursued by unimaginable dangers to the point of death.
Amatores auri videte quanta patiantur. Hiemalibus asperitatibus se navigando committunt: sic fervent avaritia, ut nulla formident frigora; iactantur ventis, suspenduntur et deprimuntur fluctibus; ineffabilibus periculis usque ad mortem agitantur.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, December 21, 2024
The Price of Gold
Augustine, Sermons 331.5 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 1462; tr. Edmund Hill):