manifold businesses of life. Justice teaches thee to prefer the right to the useful, to obey the general laws of mankind and never to enrich thy friends at other’s cost. Patience strengthens thy body so that it seeks never to yield to toil. Temperance guides thee to chaste desires. Prudence will have thee do nought without forethought, Constancy nought without decision and firm purpose. The deadly vices which Tartarus sends up from his monstrous abyss fly far from thee; but first and foremost thou banishest Avarice, mother of crimes, greedy for more the more she possesses, searching ever open-mouthed for gold; with her thou drivest out her most foul nurse, Ambition, who watches at the gate of the powerful and haunts their dwelling-places, cherishing the sale of honours for gold. This age’s more turbid stream of corruption has not drawn thee to follow its examples—corruption which had with lapse of time established crime and turned the custom of rapine into a law. Beneath thy rule the rich tremble not for the safety of ancestral lands or houses; no informer stalks the world set on making no matter whom his victim. Virtue suffers no eclipse by poverty. Thou exaltest men of all countries, asking what are their merits not their place of birth, what their character not whence their origin. A generous prince takes note of our life; rewards allure into the ways of virtue. Hence it comes that the arts of old flourish once more; the path to fortune is open to genius, while poesy again raises her despised head. Rich and poor strive with equal zeal towards their ends, for both see that, as poverty cannot depress merit, so riches cannot elevate incapacity.
Fair-fronted wantonness deceives thee not, wantonness,
luxuries, praedulce malum, quae dedita semper
corporis arbitriis hebetat caligine sensus
membraque Circaeis effeminat acrius herbis,
blanda quidem vultus, sed qua non taetrior ulla 135
interius: fucata genas et amicta dolosis
inlecebris torvos auro circumlinit hydros.