The Wayfarer

Therefore Nero, not having examined the credibility of the author or the business itself, nor having sent scouts through whom he might know whether the things reported were true, further increased the rumor and sent men to carry away the loot as if it were already won. Triremes and a picked fleet were given to assist the haste, and for those days the people, through the credulity of the one who reported it, had spoken of nothing else. And by chance the five-year festival was being celebrated in the second cycle, and the chief matter assumed for the praise of the prince by the orators was that not only were the usual crops and gold confused with metals being born, but that the lands were producing with new fertility and the gods were bringing forward available riches, and other things which they feigned with the highest eloquence and no less adulation, secure in the ease of the one believing. Meanwhile, luxury grew on empty hope, and old wealth was being consumed as if new were offered, which he would squander for many years. Indeed, he was already giving gifts from it, and the expectation of wealth was among the causes of public poverty. For Bassus, having excavated his field and the broad lands around it, while he asserted that this or that place was the promised cavern, and not only soldiers but a crowd of country folk were employed in the work, finally, his madness having been laid aside, and seeing himself deceived for the first time by those false dreams, he escaped the shame and the wall by a voluntary death. Some reported that he was bound and soon released, his goods having been taken for the royal treasury. Thus he. Everyone observes that something like this happens daily in chymicis operibus alchemical works, in which, if not mere dreams, then thoughts similar to these frequently promise immense hopes to anyone who is too credulous. For whatever anyone has conceived in their mind even once, it will not be difficult to apply the sayings and works of the authors to it, agreeing in a miraculous way, to which, however, the expected effect of the matter in no way corresponds.