'There's no doubt as to the truth of it. If a man has a detestation of vice and chooses the paths of virtue, he is hated on the ground that his morals are eccentric. No one approves of ways of life other than his own. Then there are those whose sole care is the acquisition of wealth; they are unwilling that anything should be thought to be a superior good to that which they themselves possess. And so they persecute lovers of literature with all their might.' This _vitiorum omnium inimicus_ then proceeds to tell a story which casts a startling light upon his 'eccentric morality'. Its undoubted humour can hardly be said to redeem its amazing grossness. He has scarcely finished the narration of his own shame when he is back again in another world--the world of letters. He laments the decay of art and philosophy. 'The passion for money-making has brought ruin in its train. While virtue went bare and was a welcome guest, the noble arts flourished, and men vied with one another in the effort to discover anything that might be of service to mankind.' He quotes the examples of Democritus, Eudoxus, Chrysippus in the world of science, of Myron in art. 'We have given ourselves up to wine and women, and take no pains to become acquainted even with the arts already discovered. We traduce antiquity by teaching and learning its vices only. Where is dialectic? Where is astronomy? Where is philosophy?' He sees that Encolpius is not listening, but is absorbed in the contemplation of a picture representing the sack of Troy, and seizes the opportunity of reciting a poem of his own upon the subject. The lines are for the most part neither original nor striking; they form a kind of abstract in iambics of the second Aeneid, from the appearance of Sinon to the emergence of the Greeks from the Trojan horse. But the work is finished and elegant,[318] and the simile which describes the arrival of the serpents that were to slay Laocoon is not unworthy of a more successful poet than Eumolpus is represented to have been: ecce alia monstra; celsa qua Tenedos mare dorso replevit, tumida consurgunt freta undaque resultat scissa tranquillo minans[319] qualis silenti nocte remorum sonus longe refertur, cum premunt classes mare pulsumque marmor abiete imposita gemit. respicimus; angues orbibus geminis ferunt ad saxa fluctus, tumida quorum pectora rates ut altae lateribus spumas agunt. Lo! a fresh portent; where the ridge of lofty Tenedos filled the sea, there breaks a swelling surge, and the broken waves rebound and threaten the calm: as when in the silent night the sound of oars is borne afar, when navies burden the main and the smitten deep groans beneath its freight of pine. We looked round: the waves bear towards the rocks two coiling snakes, whose swelling breasts, like tall ships, drive the water in foam along their sides.