Trophies of luxury

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Often appears with: rank, class, and social order · moderation, luxury, and excess · luxury and jewels · demetrius · courtly extravagance

Usually: description (1) · temptation (1) · censure (1) · indignation (1)

L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits primary

Lucius Annaeus Seneca · c. 59-65 CE (approx.)
BOOK I. The prevalence of ingratitude--How a benefit ought to be bestowed--The three Graces--Benefits are the chief bond of human society--What we owe in return for a benefit received--A benefit consists not of a thing but of the wish to do good--Socrates and > BOOK VII. (9/22)

Demetrius supposedly rejects accepting immense wealth because it entangles him in business transactions and luxury, describing elaborate, dehumanizing costs of courtly extravagance in vivid detail.

Demetrius on the fixed condition that he should not be permitted to give it away, I am sure that he would have refused to accept it, and would have said, IX. "I do not intend to fasten upon my back a burden like this, of which I never can rid myself, nor do I, nimble and lightly equipped as I am, mean to hinder my progress by plunging into the deep morass of business transactions. Why do you offer to me what is the …