Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, 1599. Rijksmuseum.
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Miscellany
“Why do you wrong the gods so much?” Greek poet Athenaeus asks a sober party guest in a late second-century work. “You’re no use to the city if you drink water, / because you’re hurting the farmer and the trader; / whereas I increase their income by getting drunk.”
You must not grow used to making money out of everything. One sees more people ruined than one has seen preserved by shameful gains.
—Sophocles, c. 442 BC
