sentences:  The characters in the play quote or refer to the "Iliad" and to works by Empedocles, Themistocles, and Camillus.As the play opens, the aristocratic but impoverished Bussy, an unemployed soldier and an accomplished swordsman, is reflecting on the corrupt, avaricious, and violent society in which he lives.In the third line of his opening soliloquy, he expresses the radical view that "Who is not poor, is monstrous."