Nevizanus has an equally harsh opinion of rich men: wealth and wisdom cannot live together; riches admit folly, and commonly make the human heart foolish, stupefying people. As we see for ourselves, fools are lucky. Wisdom is not found in the land of those who live at ease.

Besides the natural contempt for learning and inborn idleness of such men, who will take no pains, there is Aristotle’s observation: where intelligence is greatest, fortune is least; where fortune is greatest, intelligence is very small. Great wealth and little wit commonly go together. Some have as much brain in their heads as in their heels. Besides this ingrained neglect of the liberal sciences and all the arts that should cultivate the mind, polish it, most have some foolish whim or other that governs them;

one is a sensualist or atheist, a second a gambler, a third a womaniser, all fit subjects for a satirist: One is mad with desire for married women, another for boys. One is mad about hawking, hunting, and cockfighting; another about carousing, riding, and spending; a fourth about building or fighting, and so on.

Damasippus goes mad buying old statues. He has a whim of his own that makes him talked about; Heliodorus the Carthaginian has another. In a word, as Scaliger concludes of them all, they are statues erected to folly, the very statues or pillars of foolishness.

Choose from all history the most admired person, and you will still find great things to praise and great things to condemn. As Berosus says of Semiramis, she surpassed all mortals in warfare, triumphs, and riches, and also in luxury, slaughter, and other vices. She had some good qualities, and many bad ones.

Alexander was a worthy man, but violent in his anger and overcome by drink. Caesar and Scipio were brave and wise, but vain and ambitious. Vespasian was a worthy ruler, but avaricious. Hannibal had great virtues and many vices: a thousand vices accompany one virtue. As Machiavelli says of Cosimo de’ Medici, he had two distinct persons within him.

My verdict on them all is that they resemble those changing pictures: stand in front and you see a pretty girl; from one side, an ape; from the other, an owl. At first glance all looks well, but examine them further and you find wisdom on one side and folly on the other, a few things deserving praise and the rest faulty beyond comparison. I will say nothing of their diseases, rivalries, discontents, wants, and similar miseries; let Poverty plead the rest in Aristophanes’ Wealth.

Among all these, the avaricious are the maddest. They have all the symptoms of melancholy—fear, sadness, suspicion, and so on—as will be demonstrated in its proper place. By far the largest dose of hellebore must go to the greedy.

And yet I think spendthrifts are much madder, whatever their station, whether they manage public money or their own. A German writer censured Richard, the rich Duke of Cornwall, when he sought to become emperor, for his lavish spending: he poured money like water at the feet of the prince-electors; he scattered money like water;

I condemn them. “Foolish England,” he says, “which willingly deprived herself of so much money; foolish princes of Germany, who sold their noble right for money.” Spendthrifts, those who offer bribes, and those who take them are fools; so are all who cannot save, disburse, or spend their money properly.

I might say the same of the angry, ill-tempered, envious, and ambitious: better for them to swallow undiluted Anticyra; of sensualists, atheists, schismatics, and heretics. All have disordered imaginations, says Nymannus, and their madness shall be evident, 2 Timothy 3:9.

Sabatus, an Italian, considers all seafarers mad. The ship is mad because it never stands still; the sailors are mad to expose themselves to such immediate dangers; the waters are raging mad, perpetually moving; the winds are as mad as the rest, knowing neither where they come from nor where they want to go; and maddest of all are those who go to sea, for they find forty fools abroad for every one at home. The man who said it was mad, and perhaps you are just as mad to read it.

Felix Platter thinks all alchemists mad, out of their wits. Athenaeus says as much of fiddlers and the Muses’ nightingales, musicians: all pipers go mad; the moment they blow, their minds fly away. Music comes in at one ear and wit goes out at the other.

The proud and vain are certainly mad, and so are the lustful. I can feel their pulses beating from here. Some are mad enough to wear cuckolds’ horns: they let others sleep with their wives and turn a blind eye.

To dwell on every particular would be a Herculean task: to enumerate mad building works, mad exertions, mad luxury; mad labours, mad books, undertakings and conduct, gross ignorance, ridiculous actions, absurd gestures; mad gluttony, the madness of country houses, mad quarrels, as Cicero calls them: the madness of villages;