Laudator Temporis Acti

Frederic Van der Meer (1904-1994), Augustine the Bishop (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961), p. 139 (notes omitted):

He knew the rich, their bad taste, the self-indulgence which ultimately made them its slaves, and their meanness, which often far exceeded that of poorer men. He knew what their houses looked like from the inside, with their golden ceilings, marble statues, couches of ivory with soft cushions upon them, their innumerable hangings and their curtains of silk, and the crowds of musicians that would be gathered before their doors on any occasion that offered a pretext—a birthday, a banquet or a wedding. He had seen those pretentious monuments beside the road—those tall mausoleums which caused Jerome to ask whether corpses really needed silk and marble before they could lie down and rot in comfort. And he asks his hearers whether they could tell a rich man's bones from those of a poor one if they could see them under the ground. Where, then, is rank? Augustine tells men that they should reflect on the state in which they were born: it is one of nakedness, and the nakedness of the rich is the same as the nakedness of the poor.