(Long ago) Earth…had better things to offer - crops without cultivation,
fruit on the bough, honey in the hollow oak.
No one tore the ground with plowshares
or parcelled out the land
or swept the sea with dipping oars - 
Clever human nature, victim of your inventions,
disastrously creative,
why cordon cities with towered walls?
Why arm for war?

-Ovid, The Amores, Book 3 Elegy 8: The Curse of Money