SECTION CCXXXII.. Luxury in Declining Nations.

LUXURY IN DECLINING NATIONS.

In declining nations, luxury assumes an imprudent and immoral character. Enormous sums are expended for insignificant enjoyments. It may even be said that costly consumption is carried on there for its own sake. The beautiful and the true enjoyment of life makes place for the monstrous and the effeminate.

Rome, in the earlier part of the empire, affords us an example of such luxury on the most extensive scale.[232-1] Nero paid three hundred talents for a murrhine vase. The two acres (Morgen) of land which sufficed to the ancient citizens for a farm (Acker) were not now enough to make a fish-pond for imperial slaves. The sums carried by the exiles with them, to cover their traveling expenses and to live on for a time, were now greater than the fortunes of the most distinguished citizens had been in former times.[232-2] There was such a struggle among the people to surpass one another in procuring the freshest sea-fish that, at last, they would taste only such as they had seen alive on the table. We have the most exalted descriptions of the beautiful changes of color undergone by the dying fish; and a special infusion was invented to enable the epicure better to enjoy the spectacle.[232-3] Of the transparent garments of his time, Seneca says that they neither protected the body nor covered the nakedness of nature. People kept herds of sheep dyed in purple, although their natural white must have been much more agreeable to any one with an eye for the tasteful.[232-4] Not only on the roofs of houses were fish-ponds to be seen, but gardens even hanging on towers, and which must have been as small, ugly and inconvenient as they were costly.[232-5] Especially characteristic of the time was the custom of dissolving pearls in wine, not to make it more palatable, but more expensive.[232-6] The emperor Caligula, from simple caprice, caused mountains to be built up and cut away: nihil tam efficere concupiscebat, quam, quod posse effici negaretur.[232-7] This is the real maxim of the third period of luxury! People changed their dress at table, inconvenient as it was to do so, occasionally as often as eleven times. Perfumes were mixed with the wine that was drunk, much as it spoiled its taste, only that the drinkers might emit sweet odors from every pore. There were many so used to being waited on by slaves that they required to be reminded by them at what times they should eat and when they should sleep. It is related of one who affected superiority over others in this respect, that he was carried from his bath and placed on a cushion, when he asked his attendant: "Am I sitting down now?"[232-8] It is no wonder, indeed, that an Apicius should reach out for the poisoned cup when his fortune had dwindled to only centies sestertium, i. e., to more than half a million thalers.[232-9]

In this last period, the coarse debauchery of the earlier periods is added to the refined. Swarms of servants, retinues of gladiators who might be even politically dangerous,[232-10] monster banquets, at which Cæsar, for instance, entertained the whole Roman people, colossal palaces such as Nero's aurea domus, which constituted a real city; annoying ostentation in dress[232-11] again becomes the order of the day. The more despotic a state becomes, the more is the craving for momentary enjoyment wont to grow; and for the same reason that great plagues diminish frugality and morality.[232-12]

Let any one who would embrace the three periods of luxury in one view, compare the funeral ceremonies of the Greek age of chivalry (Homer, Il.), with those in Thucyd. (II, 34, ff.), Demosth. (Lept., 499 seq.), and the interment of Alexander the Great and, of his friend Hephaestion (Diodor., XVII, 115, XVIII, 26 ff.) Sullas (Serv. ad Virgil, Æneid VI, 861. Plutarch, Sulla, 38), and that of the wife of the emperor Nero (Plin., H. N. XII, 41). Roscher, loc. cit. 66 ff.]