Et qui l'osait?

Citizen

We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.

What authority surfeits on would relieve us: if they

would yield us but the superfluity, while it were

wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely;

but they think we are too dear: the leanness that

afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an

inventory to particularise their abundance; our

sufferance is a gain to them...

Politician or civil servant

 

I tell you, friends, most charitable care

Have the patricians of you. For your wants,

Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well

Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them

Against the state... Alack,

You are transported by calamity

Thither where more attends you, and you slander

The helms o' the state, who care for you like fathers,

When you curse them as enemies.

 

 

William Shakespeare,  Coriolanus Acte I, scène 1.  Dans cette pièce, Shakespeare suit fidèlement Les vies parallèles de Plutarque.