Catilinae Coniuratio
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
13.p58
13.p58
For why should I mention those displays of extravagance, which can be believed by none but those who have seen them; as that mountains have been leveled, and seas covered with edifices,
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by many private citizens; men whom I consider
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to have made a sport of their wealth,
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since they were impatient to squander disreputably what they might have enjoyed with honor.
13.p59
13.p59
But the love of irregular gratification, open debauchery, and all kinds of luxury,
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had spread abroad with no less force. Men forgot their sex; women threw off all the restraints of modesty. To gratify appetite, they sought for every kind of production by land and by sea; they slept before there was any inclination for sleep; they no longer waited to feel hunger, thirst, cold,
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or fatigue, but anticipated them all by luxurious indulgence. Such propensities drove the youth, when their patrimonies were exhausted, to criminal practices; for their minds, impregnated with evil habits, could not easily abstain from gratifying their passions, and were thus the more inordinately devoted in every way to rapacity and extravagance.