podesta

Whilst reclining in a very hot (and very well deserved) bath, reading A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century I came across the following (slightly edited by me)

“As soon as wealth came to be a mark of distinction and an easy way to renown […] virtue began to decline.  Poverty was now looked on as a disgrace and a blameless life as a sign of ill-nature.  Riches made the younger generation a prey to luxury, avarice and pride […].  Honour and modesty, all laws divine and human, were alike disregarded in a spirit of recklessness and intemperance.”

(From Sallust, Catiline 10.6)

You could have lifted that from last year’s reviews of the year.