thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. But I very well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness and long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask most when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve to be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are less confident and more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved, considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see myself in company with those young wanton creatures: “Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus, Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret.”
[“In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the young tree on the hills.”--Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and sprightly humour?
“Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi.
Multo non sine risu, Dilapsam in cineres facem.”
[“As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning torch worn to ashes.”--Horace, Od., iv. 13, 21.]
They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to: “Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.” It is a commerce that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now, he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he confers none--it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can be content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us out of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have right to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: “Fate ben per voi,”--[“Do good for yourself.”]--or after the manner that Cyrus exhorted his soldiers, “Who loves himself let him follow me.”--“Consort yourself,” some one will say to me, “with women of your own condition, whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire.” O ridiculous and insipid composition!
“Nolo Barbam vellere mortuo leoni.”
[“I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion.”--Martial] Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that he never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more pleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties, or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in a pitiful and imperfect conjunction; [Which Cotton renders, “Than to be myself an actor in the second with a deformed creature.”]
I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for old curried flesh: and to this poor wretch: “O ego Di faciant talem to cernere possim, Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis, Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!”
[Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, “O would the gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms”] Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon, a young boy of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beauty that nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked him if it was possible for a wise man to be in love--“Yes,” replied he, “provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine.”
[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. The question was whether a wise man could love him. Cotton has “Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios.”]
Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly than another that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without the danger of having my throat cut? love, in my opinion, is not properly and naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood, “Quem si puellarum insereres choro, Mille sagaces falleret hospites, Discrimen obscurum, solutis Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:” [“Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks and ambiguous countenance.”--Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]
nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding of the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare: and the reason why the sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of adolescence ‘Aristogitons’ and ‘Harmodiuses’--[Plutarch, On Love, c.34.]-- is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort a little out of date, though not so much as in old age; “Importunus enim transvolat aridas Quercus.”
[“For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks.”
and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the advantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, to convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we give to love over our lives, ‘tis so much the better for us. Do but observe his port; ‘tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his school they proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are their ways for insufficiency there novices rule: [“Love ignores rules.” (Or:) “Love knows no rule.”
--St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]
Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertency and trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace; provided it be sharp and eager, ‘tis no great matter whether it be prudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing: you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous clutches.
As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in favour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour of mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a body that was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one of them take it into her head to make that noble Socratical bargain between body and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and generation at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she can get for them? Plato ordains in his Laws that he who has performed any signal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during the whole expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or any other amorous favour from any woman whatever. What he thinks to be so just in recommendation of military valour, why may it not be the same in recommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some woman take a fancy to possess over her companions the glory of this chaste love? I may well say chaste; “Nam si quando ad praelia ventum est, Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis, Incassum furit:” [“For when they sometimes engage in love’s battle, his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw.”
--Virgil, Georg., iii. 98.]
the vices that are stifled in the thought are not the worst.
To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in a torrent of babble, a torrent sometimes impetuous and hurtful, “Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum Procurrit casto virginis a gremio, Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat, Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur, Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor.”
[“As when an apple, sent by a lover secretly to his mistress, falls from the chaste virgin’s bosom, where she had quite forgotten it; when, starting at her mother’s coming in, it is shaken out and rolls over the floor before her eyes, a conscious blush covers her face.”
I say that males and females are cast in the same mould, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his Commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction betwixt their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; ‘tis according to the saying, “Le fourgon se moque de la paele.”
[“The Pot and the Kettle.”]
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age Certain other things that people hide only to show them Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act Dearness is a good sauce to meat Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese.
Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint Have ever had a great respect for her I loved Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong I am apt to dream that I dream I do not say that ‘tis well said, but well thought I had much rather die than live upon charity.
I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me If they can only be kind to us out of pity In everything else a man may keep some decorum In those days, the tailor took measure of it Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience Judgment of duty principally lies in the will Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs “Let a man take which course he will,” said he; “he will repent.”
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage Love them the less for our own faults Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love Men make them (the rules) without their (women’s) help Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime O, the furious advantage of opportunity!
Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing) Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise Sins that make the least noise are the worst Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe The best authors too much humble and discourage me The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous They better conquer us by flying They buy a cat in a sack They err as much who too much forbear Venus They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear Those within (marriage) despair of getting out Tis all swine’s flesh, varied by sauces To what friend dare you intrust your griefs Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality We ask most when we bring least We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary.
When jealousy seizes these poor souls When their eyes give the lie to their tongue Who escapes being talked of at the same rate Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Translated by Charles Cotton Edited by William Carew Hazlitt 1877 CONTENTS OF VOLUME 16.
VI. Of Coaches.
VII. Of the Inconvenience of Greatness.
VIII. Of the Art of Conference.
CHAPTER VI OF COACHES It is very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes, not only make use of those they think to be the true causes, but also of those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty and invention: they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously.
We cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause, and therefore crowd a great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them: “Namque unam dicere causam Non satis est, verum plures, unde una tamen sit.”
[Lucretius, vi. 704.--The sense is in the preceding passage.]
Do you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze?
We break wind three several ways; that which sallies from below is too filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, which, because it proceeds from the head and is without offence, we give it this civil reception: do not laugh at this distinction; they say ‘tis Aristotle’s.
I think I have seen in Plutarch’ (who of all the authors I know, is he who has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving as a reason for the, rising of the stomach in those who are at sea, that it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by which he proves that fear may produce such an effect. I, who am very subject to it, know well that this cause concerns not me; and I know it, not by argument, but by necessary experience. Without instancing what has been told me, that the same thing often happens in beasts, especially hogs, who are out of all apprehension of danger; and what an acquaintance of mine told me of himself, that though very subject to it, the disposition to vomit has three or four times gone off him, being very afraid in a violent storm, as it happened to that ancient: “Pejus vexabar, quam ut periculum mihi succurreret;” [“I was too ill to think of danger.” (Or the reverse:) “I was too frightened to be ill.”--Seneca, Ep., 53. 2] I was never afraid upon the water, nor indeed in any other peril (and I have had enough before my eyes that would have sufficed, if death be one), so as to be astounded to lose my judgment. Fear springs sometimes as much from want of judgment as from want of courage. All the dangers I have been in I have looked upon without winking, with an open, sound, and entire sight; and, indeed, a man must have courage to fear. It formerly served me better than other help, so to order and regulate my retreat, that it was, if not without fear, nevertheless without affright and astonishment; it was agitated, indeed, but not amazed or stupefied.
Great souls go yet much farther, and present to us flights, not only steady and temperate, but moreover lofty. Let us make a relation of that which Alcibiades reports of Socrates, his fellow in arms: “I found him,” says he, “after the rout of our army, him and Lachez, last among those who fled, and considered him at my leisure and in security, for I was mounted on a good horse, and he on foot, as he had fought. I took notice, in the first place, how much judgment and resolution he showed, in comparison of Lachez, and then the bravery of his march, nothing different from his ordinary gait; his sight firm and regular, considering and judging what passed about him, looking one while upon those, and then upon others, friends and enemies, after such a manner as encouraged those, and signified to the others that he would sell his life dear to any one who should attempt to take it from him, and so they came off; for people are not willing to attack such kind of men, but pursue those they see are in a fright.” That is the testimony of this great captain, which teaches us, what we every day experience, that nothing so much throws us into dangers as an inconsiderate eagerness of getting ourselves clear of them: “Quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est.”
[“When there is least fear, there is for the most part least Our people are to blame who say that such an one is afraid of death, when they would express that he thinks of it and foresees it: foresight is equally convenient in what concerns us, whether good or ill. To consider and judge of danger is, in some sort, the reverse to being astounded.
I do not find myself strong enough to sustain the force and impetuosity of this passion of fear, nor of any other vehement passion whatever: if I was once conquered and beaten down by it, I should never rise again very sound. Whoever should once make my soul lose her footing, would never set her upright again: she retastes and researches herself too profoundly, and too much to the quick, and therefore would never let the wound she had received heal and cicatrise. It has been well for me that no sickness has yet discomposed her: at every charge made upon me, I preserve my utmost opposition and defence; by which means the first that should rout me would keep me from ever rallying again. I have no after-game to play: on which side soever the inundation breaks my banks, I lie open, and am drowned without remedy. Epicurus says, that a wise man can never become a fool; I have an opinion reverse to this sentence, which is, that he who has once been a very fool, will never after be very wise. God grants me cold according to my cloth, and passions proportionable to the means I have to withstand them: nature having laid me open on the one side, has covered me on the other; having disarmed me of strength, she has armed me with insensibility and an apprehension that is regular, or, if you will, dull.
I cannot now long endure (and when I was young could much less) either coach, litter, or boat, and hate all other riding but on horseback, both in town and country. But I can bear a litter worse than a coach; and, by the same reason, a rough agitation upon the water, whence fear is produced, better than the motions of a calm. At the little jerks of oars, stealing the vessel from under us, I find, I know not how, both my head and my stomach disordered; neither-can I endure to sit upon a tottering chair. When the sail or the current carries us equally, or that we are towed, the equal agitation does not disturb me at all; ‘tis an interrupted motion that offends me, and most of all when most slow: I cannot otherwise express it. The physicians have ordered me to squeeze and gird myself about the bottom of the belly with a napkin to remedy this evil; which however I have not tried, being accustomed to wrestle with my own defects, and overcome them myself.
Would my memory serve me, I should not think my time ill spent in setting down here the infinite variety that history presents us of the use of chariots in the service of war: various, according to the nations and according to the age; in my opinion, of great necessity and effect; so that it is a wonder that we have lost all knowledge of them. I will only say this, that very lately, in our fathers’ time, the Hungarians made very advantageous use of them against the Turks; having in every one of them a targetter and a musketeer, and a number of harquebuses piled ready and loaded, and all covered with a pavesade like a galliot--[Canvas spread along the side of a ship of war, in action to screen the movements of those on board.]--They formed the front of their battle with three thousand such coaches, and after the cannon had played, made them all pour in their shot upon the enemy, who had to swallow that volley before they tasted of the rest, which was no little advance; and that done, these chariots charged into their squadrons to break them and open a way for the rest; besides the use they might make of them to flank the soldiers in a place of danger when marching to the field, or to cover a post, and fortify it in haste. In my time, a gentleman on one of our frontiers, unwieldy of body, and finding no horse able to carry his weight, having a quarrel, rode through the country in a chariot of this fashion, and found great convenience in it. But let us leave these chariots of war.
As if their effeminacy--[Which Cotton translates: “as if the insignificancy of coaches.” ]--had not been sufficiently known by better proofs, the last kings of our first race travelled in a chariot drawn by four oxen. Marc Antony was the first at Rome who caused himself to be drawn in a coach by lions, and a singing wench with him.
[Cytheris, the Roman courtezan.--Plutarch’s Life of Antony, c. 3.
This, was the same person who is introduced by Gallus under the name of Lycoris. Gallus doubtless knew her personally.]
Heliogabalus did since as much, calling himself Cybele, the mother of the gods; and also drawn by tigers, taking upon him the person of the god Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach, another time four dogs, and another four naked wenches, causing himself to be drawn by them in pomp, stark naked too. The Emperor Firmus caused his chariot to be drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size, so that it seemed rather to fly than roll.
The strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head: that it is a kind of pusillanimity in monarchs, and a testimony that they do not sufficiently understand themselves what they are, when they study to make themselves honoured and to appear great by excessive expense: it were indeed excusable in a foreign country, but amongst their own subjects, where they are in sovereign command, and may do what they please, it derogates from their dignity the most supreme degree of honour to which they can arrive: just as, methinks, it is superfluous in a private gentleman to go finely dressed at home; his house, his attendants, and his kitchen sufficiently answer for him. The advice that Isocrates gives his king seems to be grounded upon reason: that he should be splendid in plate and furniture; forasmuch as it is an expense of duration that devolves on his successors; and that he should avoid all magnificences that will in a short time be forgotten. I loved to go fine when I was a younger brother, for want of other ornament; and it became me well: there are some upon whom their rich clothes weep: We have strange stories of the frugality of our kings about their own persons and in their gifts: kings who were great in reputation, valour, and fortune.
Demosthenes vehemently opposes the law of his city that assigned the public money for the pomp of their public plays and festivals: he would that their greatness should be seen in numbers of ships well equipped, and good armies well provided for; and there is good reason to condemn Theophrastus, who, in his Book on Riches, establishes a contrary opinion, and maintains that sort of expense to be the true fruit of abundance.
They are delights, says Aristotle, that a only please the baser sort of the people, and that vanish from the memory as soon as the people are sated with them, and for which no serious and judicious man can have any esteem. This money would, in my opinion, be much more royally, as more profitably, justly, and durably, laid out in ports, havens, walls, and fortifications; in sumptuous buildings, churches, hospitals, colleges, the reforming of streets and highways: wherein Pope Gregory XIII. will leave a laudable memory to future times: and wherein our Queen Catherine would to long posterity manifest her natural liberality and munificence, did her means supply her affection. Fortune has done me a great despite in interrupting the noble structure of the Pont-Neuf of our great city, and depriving me of the hope of seeing it finished before I die.
Moreover, it seems to subjects, who are spectators of these triumphs, that their own riches are exposed before them, and that they are entertained at their own expense: for the people are apt to presume of kings, as we do of our servants, that they are to take care to provide us all things necessary in abundance, but not touch it themselves; and therefore the Emperor Galba, being pleased with a musician who played to him at supper, called for his money-box, and gave him a handful of crowns that he took out of it, with these words: “This is not the public money, but my own.” Yet it so falls out that the people, for the most part, have reason on their side, and that the princes feed their eyes with what they have need of to fill their bellies.
Liberality itself is not in its true lustre in a sovereign hand: private men have therein the most right; for, to take it exactly, a king has nothing properly his own; he owes himself to others: authority is not given in favour of the magistrate, but of the people; a superior is never made so for his own profit, but for the profit of the inferior, and a physician for the sick person, and not for himself: all magistracy, as well as all art, has its end out of itself wherefore the tutors of young princes, who make it their business to imprint in them this virtue of liberality, and preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so well spent as what they give (a doctrine that I have known in great credit in my time), either have more particular regard to their own profit than to that of their master, or ill understand to whom they speak. It is too easy a thing to inculcate liberality on him who has as much as he will to practise it with at the expense of others; and, the estimate not being proportioned to the measure of the gift but to the measure of the means of him who gives it, it comes to nothing in so mighty hands; they find themselves prodigal before they can be reputed liberal. And it is but a little recommendation, in comparison with other royal virtues: and the only one, as the tyrant Dionysius said, that suits well with tyranny itself. I should rather teach him this verse of the ancient labourer: [“That whoever will have a good crop must sow with his hand, and not pour out of the sack.”--Plutarch, Apothegms, Whether the Ancients were more excellent in Arms than in Learning.]
he must scatter it abroad, and not lay it on a heap in one place: and that, seeing he is to give, or, to say better, to pay and restore to so many people according as they have deserved, he ought to be a loyal and discreet disposer. If the liberality of a prince be without measure or discretion, I had rather he were covetous.
Royal virtue seems most to consist in justice; and of all the parts of justice that best denotes a king which accompanies liberality, for this they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves, whereas all other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others.
An immoderate bounty is a very weak means to acquire for them good will; it checks more people than it allures: “Quo in plures usus sis, minus in multos uti possis...Quid autem est stultius, quam, quod libenter facias, curare ut id diutius facere non possis;” [“By how much more you use it to many, by so much less will you be in a capacity to use it to many more. And what greater folly can there be than to order it so that what you would willingly do, you cannot do longer.”--Cicero, De Offic., ii. 15.]
and if it be conferred without due respect of merit, it puts him out of countenance who receives it, and is received ungraciously. Tyrants have been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those very men they have unjustly advanced; such kind of men as buffoons, panders, fiddlers, and such ragamuffins, thinking to assure to themselves the possession of benefits unduly received, if they manifest to have him in hatred and disdain of whom they hold them, and in this associate themselves to the common judgment and opinion.
The subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking, and regulate their demands, not by reason, but by example. We have, seriously, very often reason to blush at our own impudence: we are over-paid, according to justice, when the recompense equals our service; for do we owe nothing of natural obligation to our princes? If he bear our charges, he does too much; ‘tis enough that he contribute to them: the overplus is called benefit, which cannot be exacted: for the very name Liberality sounds of Liberty.
In our fashion it is never done; we never reckon what we have received; we are only for the future liberality; wherefore, the more a prince exhausts himself in giving, the poorer he grows in friends. How should he satisfy immoderate desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled?
He who has his thoughts upon taking, never thinks of what he has taken; covetousness has nothing so properly and so much its own as ingratitude.
The example of Cyrus will not do amiss in this place, to serve the kings of these times for a touchstone to know whether their gifts are well or ill bestowed, and to see how much better that emperor conferred them than they do, by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown subjects, and rather of them whom they have wronged than of them on whom they have conferred their benefits, and so receive aids wherein there is nothing of gratuitous but the name. Croesus reproached him with his bounty, and cast up to how much his treasure would amount if he had been a little closer-handed. He had a mind to justify his liberality, and therefore sent despatches into all parts to the grandees of his dominions whom he had particularly advanced, entreating every one of them to supply him with as much money as they could, for a pressing occasion, and to send him particulars of what each could advance. When all these answers were brought to him, every one of his friends, not thinking it enough barely to offer him so much as he had received from his bounty, and adding to it a great deal of his own, it appeared that the sum amounted to a great deal more than Croesus’ reckoning. Whereupon Cyrus: “I am not,” said he, “less in love with riches than other princes, but rather a better husband; you see with how small a venture I have acquired the inestimable treasure of so many friends, and how much more faithful treasurers they are to me than mercenary men without obligation, without affection; and my money better laid up than in chests, bringing upon me the hatred, envy, and contempt of other princes.”
The emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public spectacles by reason that their authority in some sort (at least in outward appearance) depended upon the will of the people of Rome, who, time out of mind, had been accustomed to be entertained and caressed with such shows and excesses. But they were private citizens, who had nourished this custom to gratify their fellow-citizens and companions (and chiefly out of their own purses) by such profusion and magnificence it had quite another taste when the masters came to imitate it: “Pecuniarum translatio a justis dominis ad alienos non debet liberalis videri.”
[“The transferring of money from the right owners to strangers ought not to have the title of liberality.”
Philip, seeing that his son went about by presents to gain the affection of the Macedonians, reprimanded him in a letter after this manner: “What!
hast thou a mind that thy subjects shall look upon thee as their cash-keeper and not as their king? Wilt thou tamper with them to win their affections? Do it, then, by the benefits of thy virtue, and not by those of thy chest.” And yet it was, doubtless, a fine thing to bring and plant within the amphitheatre a great number of vast trees, with all their branches in their full verdure, representing a great shady forest,