offenders weep and beg them to cease, so most punishments by fine or bodily chastisement have no sharp touch, nor do they reach vice itself, but are only for show and sentiment. And whoever goes from this world to that incorrigible and impure, Justice takes him aside, naked as he is in soul, and unable to veil or hide or conceal his villainy, but descried all round and in all points by everybody, and shows him first to his good parents, if such they were, to let them see what a wretch he is and how unworthy of his ancestors; but if they were wicked too, seeing them punished and himself being seen by them, he is chastised for a long time till he is purged of each of his bad propensities by sufferings and pains, which as much exceed in magnitude and intensity all sufferings in the flesh, as what is real is more vivid than a dream. But the scars and marks of the stripes for each bad propensity are more visible in some than in others. Observe also, he continued, the different and various colours of the souls. That dark dirty-brown colour is the pigment of illiberality and covetousness, and the blood-red the sign of cruelty and savageness, and where the blue is there sensuality and love of pleasure are not easily eradicated, and that violet and livid colour marks malice and envy, like the dark liquid ejected by the cuttle fish. For as during life vice produces these colours by the soul being acted upon by passions and reacting upon the body, so here it is the end of purification and correction when they are toned down, and the soul becomes altogether bright and one colour. But as long as these colours remain, there are relapses of the passions accompanied by palpitation and throbbing of the heart, in some faint and soon suppressed, in others more violent and lasting. And some of these souls by being again and again corrected recover their proper disposition and condition, while others again by their violent ignorance and excessive love of pleasure[867] are carried into the bodies of animals; for one by weakness of reasoning power, and slowness of contemplation, is impelled by the practical element in him to generation, while another, lacking an instrument to satisfy his licentiousness, desires to gratify his passions immediately, and to get that gratification through the medium of the body; for here there is no real fruition, but only an imperfect shadow and dream of incomplete pleasure."
After he had said this, Thespesius' kinsman hurried him at great speed through immense space, as it seemed to him, though he travelled as easily and straight as if he were carried on the wings of the sun's rays. At last he got to an extensive and bottomless abyss, where his strength left him, as he found was the case with the other souls there: for keeping together and making swoops, like birds, they flitted all round the abyss, but did not venture to pass over it. To internal view it resembled the caverns of Bacchus, being beautiful throughout[868] with trees and green foliage and flowers of all kinds, and it breathed a soft and gentle air, laden with scents marvellously pleasant, and producing the effect that wine does on those who are topers; for the souls were elevated by its fragrance, and gay and blithe with one another: and the whole spot was full of mirth and laughter, and such songs as emanate from gaiety and enjoyment. And Thespesius' kinsman told him that this was the way Dionysus went up to heaven by, and by which he afterwards took up Semele, and it was called the place of Oblivion. But he would not let Thespesius stay there, much as he wished, but forcibly dragged him away, instructing and telling him that the intellect was melted and moistened by pleasure, and that the irrational and corporeal element being watered and made flesh stirs up the memory of the body, from which comes a yearning and strong desire for generation, so called from being an inclination to the earth,[869] when the soul is weighed down with moisture.
Next Thespesius travelled as far in another direction, and seemed to see a great crater into which several rivers emptied themselves, one whiter than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple of the rainbow, and others of various hues whose brightness was apparent at some distance, but when he got nearer the air became thinner and the colours grew dim, and the crater lost all its gay colours but white. And he saw three genii sitting together in a triangular position, mixing the rivers together in certain proportions. Then the guide of Thespesius' soul told him, that Orpheus got as far as here, when he came in quest of the soul of his wife,[870] and from not exactly remembering what he had seen spread a false report among mankind, that the oracle at Delphi was common to Apollo and Night, though Apollo had no communion with Night: but this, pursued the guide, is an oracle common to Night and the Moon, that utters forth its oracular knowledge in no particular part of the world, nor has it any particular seat, but wanders about everywhere in men's dreams and visions. Hence, as you see, dreams receive and disseminate a mixture[871] of simple truth with deceit and error. But the oracle of Apollo you do not know, nor can you see it, for the earthiness of the soul does not suffer it to soar upwards, but keeps it down in dependence on the body. And taking him nearer his guide tried to show him the light from the tripod, which, as he said, shone as far as Parnassus through the bosom of Themis, but though he desired to see it he could not for its brightness, but as he passed by he heard the shrill voice of a woman speaking in verse several things, among others, he thought, telling the time of his death. That, said the genius, was the voice of the Sibyl, who sang about the future as she was being borne about in the Orb of the moon. Though desirous then to hear more, he was conveyed into another direction by the violent motion of the moon, as if he had been in the eddies of a whirlpool, so that he heard very little more, only a prophecy about Mt. Vesuvius and that Dicæarchia[872] would be destroyed by fire, and a short piece about the Emperor then reigning,[873] that "though he was good he would lose his empire through sickness."
After this Thespesius and his guide turned to see those that were undergoing punishment. And at first they saw only distressing and pitiable sights, but after that, Thespesius, little expecting it, found himself among his friends and acquaintances and kinsfolk who were being punished, and undergoing dreadful sufferings and hideous and bitter tortures, and who wept and wailed to him. And at last he descried his father coming up out of a certain gulf covered with marks and scars, stretching out his hands, and not allowed to keep silence, but compelled by those that presided over his torture to confess that he had been an accursed wretch and poisoned some strangers that had gold, and during his lifetime had escaped the detection of everybody; but had been found out here, and his guilt brought home to him, for which he had already suffered much, and was being dragged on to suffer more. So great was his consternation and fear that he did not dare to intercede or beg for his father's release, but wishing to turn and flee he could no longer see his gentle and kind guide, but he was thrust forward by some persons horrible to look at, as if some dire necessity compelled him to go through with the business, and saw that the shades of those that had been notorious criminals and punished in their life-time were not so severely tortured here or like the others, but had an incomplete[874] though toilsome punishment for their irrational passions.[875] Whereas those who under the mask and show of virtue had lived all their lives in undetected vice were forced by their torturers with labour and pain to turn their souls inside out, unnaturally wriggling and writhing about, like the sea-scolopendras who, when they have swallowed the hook, turn themselves inside out; but some of them their torturers flayed and crimped so as to show their various inward vices which were only skinned over, which were deep in their soul the principal part of man. And he said he saw other souls, like snakes two or three or even more twined together, devouring one another in malignity and malevolence for what they had suffered or done in life. He said also that there were several lakes running parallel, one of boiling gold, another most cold of lead, another hard of iron, and several demons were standing by, like smiths, who lowered down and drew up by turns with instruments the souls of those whose criminality lay in insatiable cupidity. For when they were red-hot and transparent through their bath in the lake of gold, the demons thrust them into the lake of lead and dipped them in that; and when they got congealed in it and hard as hail, they dipped them into the lake of iron, and there they became wonderfully black, and broken and crushed by the hardness of the iron, and changed their appearance, and after that they were dipped again in the lake of gold, after suffering, he said, dreadful agony in all these changes of torment. But he said those souls suffered most piteously of all that, when they seemed to have escaped justice, were arrested again, and these were those whose crimes had been visited on their children or descendants.
For whenever one of these latter happened to come up, he fell into a rage and cried out, and showed the marks of what he had suffered, and upbraided and pursued the soul of the parent, that wished to fly and hide himself but could not. For quickly did the ministers of torture pursue them, and hurry them back again to Justice,[876] wailing all the while on account of their fore-knowledge of what their punishment would be. And to some of them he said many of their posterity clung at once, and just like bees or bats stuck to them, and squeaked and gibbered[877] in their rage at the memory of what they had suffered owing to them.
Last of all he saw the souls of those that were to come into the world a second time, forcibly moulded and transformed into various kinds of animals by artificers appointed for the very purpose with instruments and blows, who broke off all the limbs of some, and only wrenched off some of others, and polished others down or annihilated them altogether, to fit them for other habits and modes of life. Among them he saw the soul of Nero tortured in other ways, and pierced with red-hot nails. And the artificers having taken it in hand and converted it into the semblance of a Pindaric viper, which gets its way to life by gnawing through its mother's womb, a great light, he said, suddenly shone, and a voice came out of the light, ordering them to change it into something milder, so they devised of it the animal that croaks about lakes and marshes, for he had been punished sufficiently for his crimes, and now deserved some favour at the hands of the gods, for he had freed Greece, the noblest nation of his subjects and the best-beloved of the gods.[878] So much did Thespesius behold, but as he intended to return a horrible dread came upon him. For a woman, marvellous in appearance and size, took hold of him and said to him, "Come here that you may the better remember everything you have seen." And she was about to strike him with a red-hot iron pin, such as the encaustic painters use,[879] when another woman prevented her; and he was suddenly sucked up, as through[880] a pipe, by a strong and violent wind, and lit upon his own body, and woke up and found that he was close to his tomb.
[806] In the temple at Delphi, the scene of the discussion, as we see later on, §§ vii. xii.
[807] Reading [Greek: edokei] with Reiske.
[808] Euripides, "Orestes," 420. Cf. "Ion," 1615.
[809] Thucydides, iii. 38.
[810] See the circumstances in Pausanias, iv. 17 and 22.
[811] Compare Petronius, "Satyricon," 44: "Dii pedes lanatos habent." Compare also "Tibullus," i. 9. 4: "Sera tamen tacitis Poena venit pedibus."
[812] Reading [Greek: maliota] (for [Greek: molis]) with Wyttenbach.
[813] An allusion to the proverb [Greek: Opse Theôu aleousi myloi, aleousi de lepta]. See Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 1864.
[814] Cf. Plato, "Republic," 472 A.
[815] See Note, "On Abundance of Friends," § ii.
[816] Reading [Greek: ei gar].
[817] Or _a world_.
[818] See above, § ii.
[819] Quoted also in "On restraining Anger," § ii.
[820] It seems necessary to read either [Greek: porizein] with Mez, or [Greek: horizein] with Wyttenbach.
[821] Compare Aristophanes, "Vespæ," 438.
[822] See Pausanias, viii. 27.
[823] Pindar.
[824] Homer, "Iliad," xv. 641, 642.
[827] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 266.
[828] Ibid. 265. Compare Pausanias, ii. 9; Ovid, A. A.
i. 655, 656.
[829] "Significat martyres Christianos, in tunica molesta fumantes."--_Reiske._ [830] Like the sword of Damocles. See Horace, "Odes," iii. 1. 17, 21.
[831] See also Pausanias, iii. 17.
[832] Surely [Greek: an anatrepoi] must be read.
[833] Compare "On Curiosity," § x.
[834] The reading is very doubtful. I adopt [Greek: hêdonês men euthus kenên charin, elpidos erêmon euriskousi.]
[835] Euripides, "Ino."
[836] See Herodotus, vi. 86; Juvenal, xiii, 199-207.
[837] The company are in the temple at Delphi, be it remembered.
[838] Called Iadmon in Herodotus, ii. 134, where this story is also told.
[839] Wyttenbach suggests Daulis.
[840] To Xerxes.
[841] The allusion is to the well-known story of Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus, who is supposed to have dwelt in the island of Sicily, where Agathocles was tyrant.
[842] See Pausanias, viii. 14.
[843] Two were to be sent for 1,000 continuous years. So the Oracle.
[844] See Pausanias ix. 30; Herodotus, v. 6.
[845] See Pausanias, vii. 27; Athenæus, 372 A.
[846] A former king of Thebes. See Pausanias, ix. 5.
[847] Called Daiphantes, Pausanias, x. 1.
[848] Reading [Greek: apistois] with Xylander.
[849] The famous plague. See Thucydides, ii. 47-54.
[850] The allusion is to the circumstances mentioned in § xii.
[851] "Videtur idem cum _sorita_ esse."--_Reiske._ [852] Compare our author, "De EI a pud Delphos," § xviii. See also Seneca, "Epist.," lviii. p. 483; and Plato, "Cratylus," 402 A.
[853] Sons of Dionysius.
[854] Sons of Cassander.
[855] "Iliad" vi. 146-149.
[856] Compare Plato, "Phædrus," 276 B. These gardens of Adonis were what we might call flowerpot gardens. See Erasmus, "Adagia."
[857] [Greek: euthys] seems the best reading, [Greek: aei] is flat.
[858] Apollo.
[859] See § xii.
[860] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 735, 736.
[861] Compare the French Proverb, "L'occasion fait le larron." And Juvenal's "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus."
[862] So Reiske very ingeniously.
[864] See Pansanias, viii. 11; ix. 5, 10. See also Ovid, "Metamorphoses," Book iii. 100-130.
[865] Compare "On Love," § ii.
[866] At Mallus, in Cilicia. See Pausanias, i. 34.
[867] Reading [Greek: philêdonias ischys] with Reiske.
[868] Reading [Greek: diapepoikilmenon on] with Wyttenbach.
[869] A paronomasia on [Greek: genesis] as if [Greek: epi gên neusis]. We cannot English it.
[870] Eurydice.
[871] "[Greek: mignymenon], Turn, et Bong.," _Reiske._ Surely the right reading.
[872] Latin Puteoli.
[873] Vespasian. See Suetonius, "Vespasian," ch. 24, as to the particulars of his death.
[874] The reading is very doubtful. I have followed Wyttenbach in reading [Greek: tribomenên tribên atelê].
[875] Such as that of the Danaides. So Wyttenbach.
[876] Adopting the arrangement of Wyttenbach.
[877] Compare Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 5-10.
[878] See Pausanias, vii. 17, for a sneaking kindness for Nero.
[880] Reading [Greek: dia] with Reiske.
AGAINST BORROWING MONEY.
§ I. Plato in his Laws[881] does not permit neighbours to use one another's water, unless they have first dug for themselves as far as the clay, and reached ground that is unsuitable for a well. For clay, having a rich and compact nature, absorbs the water it receives, and does not let it pass through. But he allows people that cannot make a well of their own to use their neighbour's water, for the law ought to relieve necessity. Ought there not also to be a law about money, that people should not borrow of others, nor go to other people's sources of income, until they have first examined their own resources at home, and collected, as by drops, what is necessary for their use? But nowadays from luxury and effeminacy and lavish expenditure people do not use their own resources, though they have them, but borrow from others at great interest without necessity. And what proves this very clearly is the fact that people do not lend money to the needy, but only to those who, wanting an immediate supply, bring a witness and adequate security for their credit, so that they can be in no actual necessity of borrowing.[882] § II. Why pay court to the banker or trader? Borrow from your own table.
You have cups, silver dishes, pots and pans. Use them in your need.
Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will furnish you with earthenware instead, purer than silver, for they will not smell strongly and unpleasantly of interest, a kind of rust that daily soils your sumptuousness, nor will they remind you of the calends and the new moon, which, though the most holy of days, the money-lenders make ill-omened and hateful. For those who instead of selling them put their goods out at pawn cannot be saved even by Zeus the Protector of Property: they are ashamed to sell, they are not ashamed to pay interest on their goods when out at pawn. And yet the famous Pericles made the ornament of Athene, which weighed forty talents of fine gold, removable at will, for "so," he said, "we can use the gold in war, and at some other time restore as costly a one." So should we too in our necessities, as in a siege, not receive a garrison imposed on us by a hostile money-lender, nor allow our goods to go into slavery; but stripping our table, our bed, our carriages, and our diet, of superfluities, we should keep ourselves free, intending to restore all those things again, if we have good luck.
§ III. So the Roman matrons offered their gold and ornaments as first-fruits to Pythian Apollo, out of which a golden cup was made and sent to Delphi;[883] and the Carthaginian matrons had their heads shorn, and with the hair cut off made cords for the machines and engines to be used in defence of their country.[884] But we being ashamed of independence enslave ourselves to covenants and conditions, when we ought to restrict and confine ourselves to what is useful, and dock or sell useless superfluities, to build a temple of liberty for ourselves, our wives, and children. The famous Artemis at Ephesus gives asylum and security from their creditors to debtors, when they take refuge in her temple; but the asylum and sanctuary of frugality is everywhere open to the sober-minded, affording them joyful and honourable and ample space for much ease. For as the Pythian Priestess told the Athenians at the time of the Median war that the god had given them wooden walls,[885] and they left the region and city, their goods and houses, and took refuge in their ships for liberty, so the god gives us a wooden table, and earthenware plate, and coarse garments, if we wish to live free.
Care not for fine horses or chariots with handsome harness, adorned with gold[886] and silver, which swift interest will catch up and outrun, but mounted on any chance donkey or nag flee from the hostile and tyrannical money-lender, not demanding like the Mede land and water,[887] but interfering with your liberty, and lowering your status. If you pay him not, he duns you; if you offer the money, he won't have it; if you are selling anything, he cheapens the price; if you don't want to sell, he forces you; if you sue him, he comes to terms with you; if you swear, he hectors; if you go to his house, he shuts the door in your face; whereas if you stay at home, he billets himself on you, and is ever rapping at your door.
§ IV. How did Solon benefit the Athenians by ordaining that debtors should no longer have to pay in person? For they are slaves to all money-lenders,[888] and not to them only, what would there be so monstrous in that? but to their slaves, who are insolent and savage barbarians, such as Plato represents the fiery torturers and executioners in Hades who preside over the punishment of the impious.
For they make the forum a hell for wretched debtors, and like vultures devour and rend them limb from limb, "piercing into their bowels,"[889] and stand over others and prevent their tasting their own grapes or crops, as if they were so many Tantaluses. And as Darius sent Datis and Artaphernes to Athens with manacles and chains in their hands for their captives, so they bring into Greece boxes full of bonds and agreements, like fetters, and visit the towns and scour the country round, sowing not like Triptolemus harmless corn, but planting the toilsome and prolific and never-ending roots of debts, which grow and spread all round, and ruin and choke cities. They say that hares at once give birth and suckle and conceive again, but the debts of these knaves and barbarians give birth before they conceive; for at the very moment of giving they ask back, and take up what they laid down, and lend what they take for lending.
§ V. It is a saying among the Messenians, that "there is a Pylos before Pylos, and another Pylos too." So it may be said with respect to these money-lenders, "there is interest before interest, and other interest too." Then of course they laugh at those natural philosophers who say that nothing can come of nothing, for they get interest on what neither is nor was; and they think it disgraceful to farm out the taxes, though the law allows it, while they themselves against the law exact tribute for what they lend, or rather, if one is to say the truth, defraud as they lend, for he who receives less than he signs his name for is defrauded. The Persians indeed think lying a secondary crime, but debt a principal one, for lying frequently follows upon debt, but money-lenders tell more lies, for they make fraudulent entries in their account-books, writing down that they have given so-and-so so much, when they have really given less. And the only excuse for their lying is covetousness, not necessity, not utter poverty, but insatiable greediness, the outcome of which is without enjoyment and useless to themselves, and fatal to their victims. For neither do they farm the fields which they rob their debtors of, nor do they inhabit their houses when they have thrust them out, nor use their tables or apparel, but first one is ruined, and then a second is hunted down, for whom the first one serves as a decoy. For the bane spreads and grows like a fire, to the destruction and ruin of all who fall into their clutches, for it consumes one after another; and the money-lender, who fans and feeds this flame to ensnare many, gets no more advantage from it but that some time after he can take his account-book and read how many he has sold up, how many turned out of house and home, and track the sources of his wealth, which is ever growing into a larger pile.
§ VI. And do not think I say this as an enemy proclaiming war against the money-lenders, "For never did they lift my cows or horses,"[890] but merely to prove to those who too readily borrow money what disgrace and servitude it brings with it, and what extreme folly and weakness it is. Have you anything? do not borrow, for you are not in a necessitous condition. Have you nothing? do not borrow, for you will never be able to pay back. Let us consider either case separately. Cato said to a certain old man who was a wicked fellow, "My good sir, why do you add the shame that comes from wickedness to old age, that has so many troubles of its own?" So too do you, since poverty has so many troubles of its own, not add the terrible distress that comes from borrowing money and from debt; and do not take away from poverty its only advantage over wealth, its freedom from corroding care. For the proverb that says, "I cannot carry a goat, put an ox on my shoulder," has a ridiculous ring. Unable to bear poverty, are you going to put on your back a money-lender, a weight hard to carry even for a rich man? How then, will you say, am I to maintain myself? Do you ask this, having two hands, two legs, and a tongue, in short, being a man, to love and be loved, to give and receive benefits? Can you not be a schoolmaster or tutor, or porter, or sailor, or make coasting voyages? Any of these ways of getting a livelihood is less disgraceful and difficult than to always have to hear, "Pay me that thou owest."
§ VII. The well-known Rutilius went up to Musonius at Rome, and said to him, "Musonius, Zeus Soter, whom you imitate and emulate, does not borrow money." And Musonius smilingly answered, "Neither does he lend."
For you must know Rutilius, himself a lender, was bantering Musonius for being a borrower. What Stoic inflatedness was all this! What need was there to bring in Zeus Soter? For all nature teaches the same lesson.
Swallows do not borrow money, nor do ants, although nature has given them no hands, or reason, or profession. But men have intellect in excess, and so ingenious are they that they keep near them horses, and dogs, and partridges, and jackdaws. Why then do you despair, who are as impressible as a jackdaw, have as much voice as a partridge, and are as noble as a dog, of getting some person to befriend you, by looking after him, winning his affections, guarding him, fighting his battles? Do you not see how many opportunities there are both on land and sea? As Crates says, "Miccylus and his wife, to ward off famine In these bad times, I saw both carding wool."
And King Antigonus asked Cleanthes, when he saw him at Athens after a long interval, "Do you still grind, Cleanthes?" And he replied, "I do, O king, but for my living, yet so as not to desert philosophy." Such was the admirable spirit of the man who, coming from the mill and kneading-trough, wrote with the hand that had baked and ground about the gods, and the moon, and stars, and the sun. But those kinds of labour are in our view servile! And so that we may appear free we borrow money, and flatter and dance attendance on slaves, and give them dinners and presents, and pay taxes as it were to them, not on account of our poverty (for no one lends money to a poor man), but from our love of lavish expenditure. For if we were content with things necessary for subsistence, the race of money-lenders would be as extinct as Centaurs and Gorgons are; it is luxury that has created them as much as goldsmiths, and silversmiths, and perfumers, and dyers in bright colours. For we do not owe money for bread and wine, but for estates, and slaves, and mules, and dining-rooms, and tables, and for our lavish public entertainments, in our unprofitable and thankless ambition. And he that is once involved in debt remains in it all his time, like a horse bitted and bridled that takes one rider after another, and there is no escape to green pastures and meadows, but they wander about like those demons who were driven out of heaven by the gods who are thus described by Empedocles:-- "Into the sea the force of heaven thrusts them, The sea rejects them back upon the land; To the sun's rays th' unresting earth remits them; The sun anon whirls them to heaven again."
So one after another usurer or trader gets hold of the poor wretch, hailing either from Corinth, or Patræ, or Athens, till he gets set on to by them all, and torn to bits, and cut into mince-meat as it were for his interest. For as a person who is fallen into the mire must either get up out of it or remain in it, and if he turns about in it, and wallows in it, and bedabbles his body all over in it, he contracts only the greater defilement, so by borrowing from one person to pay another and changing their money-lenders they contract and incur fresh interest, and get into greater liabilities, and closely resemble sufferers from cholera, whose case does not admit of cure because they evacuate everything they are ordered to take, and so ever add to the disease. So these will not get cleansed from the disease of debt, but at regular times in the year pay their interest with pain and agony, and then immediately another creditor presents his little account, so again their heads swim and ache, when they ought to have got rid of their debts altogether, and regained their freedom.
§ VIII. I now turn my attention to those who are rich and luxurious, and use language like the following, "Am I then to go without slaves and hearth and home?" As if any dropsical person, whose body was greatly swollen and who was very weak, should say to his doctor, "Am I then to become lean and empty?" And why not, to get well? And do you too go without a slave, not to be a slave yourself; and without chattels, not to be another man's chattel. Listen to a story about two vultures; one was vomiting and saying it would bring its inside up, and the other who was by said, "What harm if you do? For it won't be your inside you bring up, but that dead body we devoured lately." And so any debtor does not sell his own estate, or his own house, but his creditor's, for he has made him by law master of them. Nay, but by Zeus, says one, my father left me this field. Yes, and your father also left you liberty and a status in the community, which you ought to value more than you do. And your father begot you with hand and foot, but should either of them mortify, you pay the surgeon to cut it off. Thus Calypso clad and "dressed" Odysseus "in raiment smelling sweet,"[891] like the body of an immortal, as a gift and token of her affection for him; but when his vessel was upset and he himself immersed, and owing to this wet and heavy raiment could hardly keep himself on the top of the waves, he threw it off and stripped himself, and covered his naked breast with Ino's veil,[892] and "swam for it gazing on the distant shore,"[893] and so saved his life, and lacked neither food nor raiment. What then? have not poor debtors storms, when the money-lender stands over them and says, _Pay_?
"Thus spoke Poseidon, and the clouds did gather, And lashed the sea to fury, and at once Eurus and Notus and the stormy Zephyr Blew all together."[894] Thus interest rolls on interest as wave upon wave, and he that is involved in debt struggles against the load that bears him down, but cannot swim away and escape, but sinks to the bottom, and carries with him to ruin his friends that have gone security for him. But Crates the Theban, though he had neither duns nor debts, and was only disgusted at the distracting cares of housekeeping, gave up a property worth eight talents, and assumed the philosopher's threadbare cloak and wallet, and took refuge in philosophy and poverty. And Anaxagoras left his sheep-farm. But why need I mention these? since the lyric poet Philoxenus, obtaining by lot in a Sicilian colony much substance and a house abounding in every kind of comfort, but finding that luxury and pleasure and absence of refinement was the fashion there, said, "By the gods these comforts shall not undo me, I will give them up," and he left his lot to others, and sailed home again. But debtors have to put up with being dunned, subjected to tribute, suffering slavery, passing debased coin, and like Phineus, feeding certain winged Harpies, who carry off and lay violent hands on their food, not at the proper season, for they get possession of their debtors' corn before it is sown, and they traffic for oil before the olives are ripe; and the money-lender says, "I have wine at such and such a price," and takes a bond for it, when the grapes are yet on the vine waiting for Arcturus to ripen them.
[882] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: didousi] and [Greek: echousi].
[884] See Appian, lv. 26.
[885] See Herodotus, vii. 141-143; viii. 51.
[886] Reading with Reiske [Greek: katachrusa].
[887] The technical term for submission to an enemy. See 133.
[888] Reading with Reiske [Greek: daneistais]. Perhaps [Greek: aphanistais] originally came after [Greek: agriois], and got somehow displaced.
[889] See Homer, "Odyssey," xi. 578, 579, and context.
WHETHER "LIVE UNKNOWN" BE A WISE PRECEPT.
§ I. He who uttered this precept[895] certainly did not wish to live unknown, for he uttered it to let all the world know he was a superior thinker, and to get to himself unjust glory by exhorting others to shun glory.
"I hate the wise man for himself not wise."[896] They say that Philoxenus the son of Eryxis and Gnatho the Sicilian, being exceedingly greedy where good fare was going, would blow their nose in the dishes, to disgust all others at the table, that they alone might take their fill of the choicest dishes. So those that are insatiable pursuers of glory calumniate glory to others who are their rivals, that they may get it without antagonists. In this they resemble rowers, who face the stern of the vessel but propel it ahead, that by the recoil from the stroke of their oars they may reach port, so those that give vent to precepts like this pursue glory with their face turned in the opposite direction. For otherwise what need was there to utter a precept like this, or to write and hand it down to posterity, if he wished to live unknown to his own generation, who did not wish to live unknown to posterity?
§ II. Look at the matter in the following way.[897] Has not that "live unknown" a villainous ring, as though one had broken open graves? Is your life so disgraceful that we must all be ignorant of it? For my part I should say, Even if your life be bad do not live unknown, but be known, reform, repent; if you have virtue, be not utterly useless in life; if you are vicious, do not continue unreformed. Point out then and define to whom you recommend this precept. If to an ignorant or wicked or senseless person, you resemble one who should say to a person in a fever or delirium, "Be unknown. Don't let the doctor know your