XV
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You must now allow me to tell you a little story! Asclepiodotus vouches for the tale. Once on a time a large party of miners was sent down by Philip into an old mine, long since abandoned, to ascertain its prospects and condition, and to see whether ancient avarice had left anything for posterity to glean. Down they went with plenty of light to last for days. In due time, when they were quite tired by the length of the road, they saw a sight to make their hair stand on end—huge rivers and vast reservoirs of sluggish waters, equal in size to any above ground, not pressed down either with a weight of earth above, but overarched with an open vault. I confess I felt lively satisfaction in reading the story. It showed me that the vices from which our age suffers are not new; they have been handed down from ancient days. Nor is it in our age that avarice has for the first time ransacked the reefs of soil and stone, searching in the dark for treasure badly hidden. Those ancestors of ours, whom we are always vaunting, our declension from whose standard we constantly bemoan, were also lured by hope to cut down the mountains and stand beneath the ruins to gloat over their filthy lucre.
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Before the time of Philip of Macedon there were kings who pursued treasure down to its deepest lurking-places; leaving the free air and light of day behind, they lowered themselves into those caverns, which no distinction of night from day could reach. What expectation could lead them on? What necessity caused man, whose head points to the stars, to stoop below, burying him in mines and plunging him in the very bowels of innermost earth to root up gold? The quest for the precious bane is no less perilous than its possession. For this he drove shafts and crawled round his dirty, uncertain booty, forgetful of day, forgetful of his better nature, which he abjured. On no dead man does earth lie so heavily as it lies on those on whom insistent avarice has cast earth’s weight, from whom it has withdrawn the light of day, whom it has buried in the depths where that noxious poison lurks. They had the hardihood to descend to a region where they found a new order of nature, forms of overhanging earth and winds raving through the blind void, where are dread fountains of waters whose streams none drink, and night reigns deep and unbroken. And then, after all that has come and gone, they dread the gods of the nether world!