Moreover, the love born of eager
desire is not known among them; only that born of friendship.
Domestic affairs and partnerships are of little account, because,
excepting the sign of honor, each one receives what he is in need of.
To the heroes and heroines of the republic, it is customary to give
the pleasing gifts of honor, beautiful wreaths, sweet food, or splendid
clothes, while they are feasting. In the daytime all use white garments
within the city, but at night or outside the city they use red garments
either of wool or silk. They hate black as they do dung, and therefore
they dislike the Japanese, who are fond of black. Pride they consider
the most execrable vice, and one who acts proudly is chastised with the
most ruthless correction. Wherefore no one thinks it lowering to wait
at table or to work in the kitchen or fields. All work they call
discipline, and thus they say that it is honorable to go on foot, to do
any act of nature, to see with the eye, and to speak with the tongue;
and when there is need, they distinguish philosophically between tears
and spittle.
Every man who, when he is told off to work, does his duty, is considered
very honorable. It is not the custom to keep slaves. For they are
enough, and more than enough, for themselves. But with us, alas! it is
not so. In Naples there exist 70,000 souls, and out of these scarcely
10,000 or 15,000 do any work, and they are always lean from overwork
and are getting weaker every day. The rest become a prey to idleness,
avarice, ill-health, lasciviousness, usury, and other vices, and
contaminate and corrupt very many families by holding them in servitude
for their own use, by keeping them in poverty and slavishness, and by
imparting to them their own vices. Therefore public slavery ruins them;
useful works, in the field, in military service, and in arts, except
those which are debasing, are not cultivated, the few who do practise
them doing so with much aversion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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