From The Satyricon of Petronius (60 AD): with highlights:

Meantime I found it no easy task to overcome my thirst for revenge, and spent half the night in anxious debate. In hopes, however, of beguiling my melancholy and forgetting my wrongs, I rose at dawn and visited all the different colonnades, finally entering a picture gallery, containing admirable paintings in various styles. There I beheld Zeuxis’ handiwork, still unimpaired by the lapse of years, and scanned, not without a certain awe, some sketches of Protogenes’, that vied with Nature herself in their truth of presentment. Then I reverently admired the work of Apelles, of the kind the Greeks call “monochromatic”; for such was the exquisite delicacy and precision with which the figures were outlined, you seemed to see the very soul portrayed. Here was the eagle towering to the sky and bearing Ganymede in its talons. There the fair Hylas, struggling in the embraces of the amorous Naiad. Another work showed Apollo cursing his murderous hand, and bedecking his unstrung lyre with blossoms of the new-sprung hyacinth.

Standing surrounded by these painted images of famous lovers, I ejaculated as if in solitary self-communion, “Love, so it seems, troubles even the gods. Jupiter could discover no fitting object of his passion in heaven, his own domain; but though condescending to earthly amours, yet he wronged no trusting heart. Hylas’ nymph that ravished him would have checked her ardor, had she known Hercules would come to chide her passion. Apollo renewed the memory of his favorite in a flower; and all these fabled lovers had their way without a rival’s interference. But I have taken to my bosom a false-hearted friend more cruel than Lycurgus.”

But lo! while I am thus complaining to the winds of heaven, there entered the colonnade an old white-headed man, with a thought-worn face, that seemed to promise something mysterious and out of the common. Yet his dress was far from imposing, making it evident he belonged to the class of men of letters, so ill-looked upon by the rich. This man now came up to me, saying, “Sir! I am a poet, and I trust of no mean genius, if these crowns mean anything, which I admit unfair partiality often confers on unworthy recipients. ‘Why then,’ you will ask, ‘are you so poorly clad?’ Just because I am a genius; when did love of art ever make a man wealthy?

The sea-borne trafficker gains pelf untold;
The hardy soldier wins his spoil of gold;
The sycophant on Tyrian purple lies;
The base adulterer with Croesus vies.
Learning alone, in shuddering rags arrayed,
Vainly invokes th’ indifferent Muses’ aid!

“No doubt about it; if any man declare himself the foe of every vice, and start boldly on the path of rectitude, in the first place the singularity of his principles makes him odious, for who can approve habits so different from his own? Secondly, men whose one idea is to pile up the dollars cannot bear that others should have a nobler creed than they live by themselves. So they spite all lovers of literature in every possible way, to put them into their proper place–below the money-bags.”

“I cannot understand why poverty is always talent’s sister,” I said, and heaved a sigh.

“You do well,” returned the old man, “to deplore the lot of men of letters.”

“Nay!” I replied, “that was not why I sighed; I have another and a far heavier reason for my sorrow!”–and immediately, following the common propensity of mankind to pour one’s private griefs into another’s ear, I told him all my misfortunes, inveighing particularly against Ascyltos’ perfidy, and ejaculating with many a groan, “Would to heaven my enemy, the cause of my present enforced continence, had any vestige of good feeling left to work upon; but ’tis a hardened sinner, more cunning and astute than the basest pander.”

Pleased by my frankness, the old man tried to comfort me; and in order to divert my melancholy thoughts, told me of an amorous adventure that had once happened to himself.

[…]

Enlivened by this discourse, I now began to question my companion, who was better informed on these points than myself, as to the dates of the different pictures and the subjects of some that baffled me. At the same time I asked him the reason for the supineness of the present day and the utter decay of the highest branches of art, and amongst the rest of painting, which now showed not the smallest vestige of its former excellence.

“It is greed of money,” he replied, “has wrought the change. In early days, when plain worth was still esteemed, the liberal arts flourished, and the chief object of men’s emulation was to ensure no discovery likely to benefit future ages long remaining undeveloped. To this end Democritus extracted the juices of every herb, and spent his life in experimenting, that no virtue of mineral or plant might escape detection. In a similar way Eudoxus grew gray on the summit of a lofty mountain, observing the motions of the stars and firmament, while Chrysippus thrice purged his brain with hellebore, to stimulate its capacity and inventiveness. But to consider the sculptors only,–Lysippus was so absorbed in the modeling of a single figure that he actually perished from lack of food, and Myron, who came near embodying the very souls of men and beasts in bronze, died too poor to find an heir.

“But we, engrossed with wine and women, have not the spirit to appreciate the arts already discovered; we can only criticize Antiquity, and devote all our energies, in precept and practice, to the faults of the old masters. What is become of Dialectic? of Astronomy? of Philosophy, that richly cultivated domain? Who nowadays has ever been known to enter a temple and engage to pay a vow, if only he may attain unto Eloquence, or find the fountain of wisdom? Not even do sound intellect and sound health any longer form the objects of men’s prayers, but before ever they set food on the threshold of the Capitol, they promise lavish offerings, one if he may bury a wealthy relative, another if he may unearth a treasure, another if only he may live to reach his thirty million. The very Senate, the ensample of all that is right and good, is in the habit of promising a thousand pounds of gold to Capitoline Jove, and that no man may be ashamed of the lust of pelf, bribes the very God of Heaven. What wonder then if Painting is in decay, when all, gods and men alike, find a big lump of gold a fairer sight than anything those crack-brained Greek fellows, Apelles and Phidias, ever wrought.

From Satyricon Chapter 12