…I went on to inquire from him how he accounted for the decadence of our own times and how it had happened that the fine arts had withered and painting had vanished almost without a trace. “It was the love of money,” he replied, “that began our catastrophic decline. In earlier ages, merit and achievement were honored for themselves, the arts flowered, and there was the keenest kind of competition among men to discover any secret of Nature which might benefit posterity. Thus Democritus, for instance, extracted the essence of every known herb and then devoted the rest of his life to researches into the properties of minerals and plants. Eudoxus grew old sitting on his mountain top, painfully tracking down and recording the motions of the planets and stars, while Chrysippus, on three different occasions, dosed himself with hellebore to purge and invigorate his inventive powers. And if you turn to the plastic arts, you find examples of the same selfless dedication. Thus Lysippus, for instance, became so utterly absorbed in the formal problems of a statue that he forgot to eat and starved to death, while Myron, whose genius it was to render the very souls of animals and men in vivid bronze and stone, left no natural heir. "As for our own times, why, we are so besotted with drink, so steeped in debauchery, that we lack the strength even to study the great achievements of the past. One and all, we traduce the dead and slander our great tradition. We are professionals of corruption; vice is the subject we teach and learn. What, I ask you, has become of logic and dialectic? Where is astronomy now? What has become of that great and lovely highway of philosophy, once so thronged with students and amateurs? Who nowadays, tell me, goes to a temple and prays the gods to grant him the great gift of eloquence? Who asks to slake his thirst at the primal fount of philosophy? Why, even prayers for health and soundness of mind are out of fashion nowadays. Money is our only prayer…