By Fernand Pelez

At the very lowest computation, India, China, and the Arabian Peninsula withdraw from our empire one hundred million sesterces (a Roman coin) every year—so dearly do our luxuries and women cost us.

— Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia

جان ضايج لأن فلوس الرومان دتنصرف على التماثيل الهندية والمواعين الصينية والبخور العربية

Hesiod was composing poetry at around the same time as Homer [8th century B.C.]. In his 'Works and Days' he writes:

«I wish I did not have to live among the people of the Fifth Age [the Iron Age], but either had died earlier or been born later.
For now truly is a generation of iron who never rest from labour and sorrow by day or from perishing by night … But, notwithstanding the good mingled with their evils … [this generation] will know no favour for those who keep their oath or for the just or for the good … strength shall be right … the wicked will hurt the worthy … bitter sorrows will be left for us mortals, and there will be no help against evil».

According to Hesiod, iron hardened not only our ploughs but also our souls. Under its influence, our spirit was hammered and forged in fire, our brand-new desires quenched like the hissing metal in the smith’s cauldron. Virtues were tested and values destroyed just as our bounty burgeoned and our estates expanded. Strength begat new joys but weariness and injustices too. Zeus would have no choice, Hesiod foretold, but to one day destroy a humanity incapable of restraining its own, technologically induced, power.

— Technofeudalism, by Yanis Varoufakis

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وَقَالُوا مَا هِيَ إِلَّا حَيَاتُنَا الدُّنْيَا نَمُوتُ وَنَحْيَا وَمَا يُهْلِكُنَا إِلَّا الدَّهْرُ

[سورة الجاثية]

لَم يَترُكِ الدَهرُ مِن قَلبي وَلا كَبِدي
شَيْئًا تُتَيِّمُهُ عَينٌ وَلا جيدُ

— أبو الطيب المتنبي

بشِعركَ وصحبتِك يُصلَح بينهما

By Gustave Doré