From my reading tonight...

O happy was that long lost age
Content with nature's faithful fruits
Which knew not slothful luxury.
They would not eat before due time
Their meal of acorns quickly found,
And did not know the subtlety
Of making honey sweeten wine,
Or how the power of Tyrian dyes
Could colour shining flocks of silk.
A grassy couch gave healthy sleep,
A gliding river healthy drink;
The tallest pine-tree gave them shade.
Men did not plunder all the world
And cut a path across the seas
With merchandise for foreign shores.
War horns were silent in those days
And blood unspilt in bitter hate
To horrify the reddening earth.
What reason then for enmity,
To seek the frenzied clash of arms,
When all men saw was gaping wounds
Without return for blood so spilt?
Would that our age could now return
To those pure ways of leading life.
But now the passion to possess
Burns fiercer than Mount Etna's fire.
Alas for the man, whoever he was,
Who first dug heaps of buried gold
And diamonds content to hide,
And gave us perils of such price!

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, Chapter V