Italy was once lord of the world, Rome the queen of cities, boasting of twenty thousand inhabitants; now that once all-commanding country is held by petty princes, and Rome is a small village by comparison. Greece, once the home of civilized life and mother of learning and the humanities, is now desolate, the nurse of barbarism, a den of thieves. Germany, then uncultivated and forbidding, according to Tacitus, is now full of magnificent cities. Athens, Corinth, Carthage—what flourishing cities they were, now buried in their own ruins! “Haunts of ravens, wild animals, boars, and beasts,” like so many wildernesses, a refuge for wild creatures.

Venice was a poor fishing town; Paris and London were little clusters of cottages in Caesar’s time, and are now splendid centres of trade. Valois, Plantagenet, and Scaliger—what fortunate families, how likely to endure! Now utterly extinguished and uprooted.

Today he stands on high, full of favour, wealth, honour, and prosperity, at the top of Fortune’s wheel; tomorrow he is in prison, worse than ruined, his son a beggar. You are a poor, servile drudge, “the dregs of the people,” an outright slave; your son may become a prince, like Maximinus or Agathocles, a senator, or an army’s commander.

Now you stand bareheaded before him, work for him, drudge for him and his family, and accept his charity. Wait a little: perhaps his next heir will squander everything in dissipation and sink in rank while you rise, and he will beg from you. You will be his most honoured patron, he your devoted servant; his descendants will run and ride on errands for yours, and do as much for them. What happened with Frisgobald and Cromwell may happen for you.

City men swallow up country gentlemen and settle on their estates; after two or three generations their descendants squander everything in dissipation, and it returns to the city again.

A new occupant comes; For nature has made neither him, Nor me, nor anyone the permanent owner of the soil. He drove us out; Vice, or ignorance of crafty law, will drive him out in turn.

A lawyer buys out his poor client; after a while the client’s descendants buy him and his family out. So things go round, ebb and flow.

Now Umbrenus’s land, it was lately called Ofellus’s; It belongs permanently to no one, but passes for use Now to me, now to others.

As he said then, “Whose land are you? How many masters do you have?” So I say of land, houses, movable possessions, and money: mine today, his a moment later—whose tomorrow? In the end, as Machiavelli observes, virtue and prosperity produce repose; repose, idleness; idleness, dissipation; dissipation, destruction. From this we return to good laws; good laws produce virtuous actions; virtue, glory and prosperity. It is therefore no dishonour, as Guicciardini adds, for a flourishing man, city, or state to fall into ruin, nor a misfortune to be subject to nature’s law.

“Therefore earthly things must be trampled underfoot, heavenly things thirsted for.” Scorn, I say, this passing earthly condition; look up to heaven. Think about what you are, rather than what others are: “What place you hold in the scheme of things”; what you will be, what you may be.

Do, I say, as Christ himself did when he lived here on earth; imitate him as far as you can. How many great Caesars, mighty monarchs, tetrarchs, potentates, and princes lived in his day! What abundance, what luxury, what splendid retinues! How much gold and silver, what treasures, how many magnificent palaces they had! What provinces and cities, vast territories, fields, rivers, fountains, parks, forests, glades, woods, chambers, and so on!

Yet Christ had none of this; he wanted none of it, voluntarily rejected it all. He could not be ignorant, could not make a mistaken choice. He despised it all and chose what was safer, better, more certain, and less likely to be regretted: a humble condition, poverty itself. Why, then, do you hesitate to follow him, to imitate him and his apostles, to imitate all good men? Follow in his divine footsteps, and you will not go eternally astray, as too many worldly men do, persisting in their dissolute ways to their own destruction and ruin. You will not go wrong.

Whatever your fortune, be content with it. Trust in him, rely on him, place yourself wholly in his hands. Know this, in conclusion: “It depends neither on the one who wills nor on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.” It is as God wills, not as men will. “The Lord makes poor and makes rich, brings low and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:7–8); “he lifts the poor from the dust and raises the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes and let them inherit the seat of glory.” Everything is as he pleases—the manner, the time, and the person. He who appoints the end, though unknown to us, also appoints the means that serve it.

Yes, but their present circumstances crucify and torment most mortals. They have no such foresight to consider what may happen or is likely to happen; they see only what is, without considering why or from whom it comes. “This will torment them”: their present misfortunes grind down their souls, as does the envious eye they cast on other men’s prosperity. “The neighbour’s cattle have a larger udder.” How rich, how fortunate, how happy he is!

Meanwhile he does not consider the other man’s miseries, the infirmities of body and mind that accompany his position. He keeps dwelling on his own imagined troubles and wants, whereas, if the matter were properly examined, he is in no distress at all and has no cause to complain.

Put away your complaints: The man who has what he needs to use is not poor.

He is not poor; he is not in need. Nature is content with bread and water, and whoever can rest satisfied with those may rival Jupiter himself in happiness. In that golden age, “the shade gave healthful sleep, and the gliding stream gave drink”: the trees gave wholesome shade to sleep beneath, and the clear rivers supplied drink.