The Instructor 2.10.115

Because of this purple, Tyre and Sidon and the coast of Laconia are most sought after; their dyers and purple fishers are highly esteemed, and the shellfish themselves, because the purple blooms from their blood. And deceitful women, and womanish men, mixing these deceitful dyes into dainty fabrics, run mad in their immoderation, no longer procuring linens from Egypt, but others from the land of the Hebrews and of the Cilicians. I say nothing of amorgine and byssus garments; luxury has outrun even their names. I think the covering should show what is covered to be better than itself, as the statue is better than the temple, the soul than the body, and the body than the clothing. But now it is quite the reverse: if their body were sold, it would never fetch a thousand Attic drachmas, while buying one garment for ten thousand talents they prove themselves more worthless and less valuable than the fabrics. Why, then, do you pursue rare and costly things instead of those at hand and cheap? Because you do not know what is truly beautiful and truly good; and instead of what is, what seems is pursued among the foolish, who, like the mad, imagine white to be black.