Gnaeus Lentulus,10 the augur, who, before his freedmen reduced him to poverty, was the most conspicuous example of wealth — this man, who saw his four hundred millions (I have spoken with strict accuracy, for he did no more than “see” them!), was destitute of intelligence, as contemptible in intellect as he was in heart. Though he was the greatest miser, it was easier for him to disgorge coins than words — so great was his poverty when it came to talking. Though he owed all his advancement to the deified Augustus, to whom he had come with nothing but the poverty that was struggling under the burden of a noble name, yet, when he had now become the chief citizen of the state, both in wealth and influence, he used to make constant complaint, saying that Augustus had enticed him away from his studies; that he had not heaped upon him nearly so much as he had lost by surrendering the practice of eloquence. Yet the deified Augustus besides loading him with other benefits, had also rescued him from ridicule and vain endeavor!
Nor does greed suffer any man to be grateful; for incontinent hope is never satisfied with what is given and, the more we get, the more we covet; and just as the greater the conflagration from which the flame springs, the fiercer and more unbounded is its fury, so greed becomes much more active when it is employed in accumulating great riches.
And just as little does ambition suffer any man to rest content with the measure of public honors that was once his shameless prayer. No one renders thanks for a tribuneship, but grumbles because he has not yet been advanced to the praetorship; nor is he grateful for this if he is still short of the consulship; and even this does not satisfy him if it is a single one. His greed ever reaches to what is beyond, and he does not perceive his own happiness because he regards, not whence he came, but what he would reach.