In this department even, humble as it is, we are still destined to find certain productions that are denied to the community at large, and the very cabbages pampered to such an enormous extent that the poor man’s table is not large enough to hold them. Asparagus, by Nature, was intended to grow wild,[933] so that each might gather it where he pleased—but, lo and behold! we find it in the highest state of cultivation, and Ravenna produces heads that weigh as much as three pounds[934] even! Alas for the monstrous excess of gluttony! It would be surprising indeed, for the beasts of the field to be forbidden the thistle for food, and yet it is a thing forbidden[935] to the lower classes of the community! These refined distinctions, too, are extended to the very water even, and, thanks to the mighty influence of money, there are lines of demarcation drawn in the very elements themselves. Some persons are for drinking ice, others for quaffing snow, and thus is the curse of the mountain steep turned into an appetizing stimulus for the palate![936] Cold is carefully treasured up for the summer heats, and man’s invention is racked how best to keep snow freezing in months that are not its own. Some again there are who first boil the water,[937] and then bring it to the temperature of winter—indeed, there is nothing that pleases man in the fashion in which Nature originally made it.
And is it the fact, then, that any herb of the garden is reared only for the rich man’s table? It is so—but still let no one of the angered populace think of a fresh secession to Mount Sacer or Mount Aventine; for to a certainty, in the long run, all-powerful money will bring them back to just the same position as they were in when it wrought the severance. For, by Hercules![938] there was not an impost levied at Rome more grievous than the market-dues, an impost that aroused the indignation of the populace, who repeatedly appealed with loud clamours to all the chief men of the state to be relieved from it. At last they were relieved from this heavy tax upon their wares; and then it was found that there was no tax more lucrative, more readily collected, or less obnoxious to the caprices of chance, than the impost that was levied in exchange for it, in the shape of a property-tax, extended to the poorest classes: for now the very soil itself is their surety that paid the tax will be, their means are patent to the light of day, and the superficial extent of their possessions, whatever the weather may chance to be, always remains the same.