Sec. 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]
Sec. 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.
Sec. 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.
Sec. 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.
Sec. 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.
Sec. 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."
Sec. 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 Patrae, 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.
Sec. 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.
[881] Page 844, A. B. C.
[882] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: didousi] and
[Greek: echousi].
[883] See Livy, v. 25.
[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
Pausanias, iii. 12; x. 20. Herodotus, v. 17, 18; vii.
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.
[890] Homer, "Iliad," i. 154.
[891] "Odyssey," v. 264.
[892] "Odyssey," v. 333-375.
[893] "Odyssey," v. 439.
[894] "Odyssey," v. 291-295.
WHETHER "LIVE UNKNOWN" BE A WISE
PRECEPT.
Sec. 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?
Sec. 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
condition. Go and throw yourself into some dark place, that you and your
ailments may be unknown." So you say to a vicious man, "Go off with your
vice, and hide your deadly and irremediable disease from your friends,
fearful to show your superstitious fears, palpitations as it were, to
those who could admonish you and cure you." Our remote ancestors paid
public attention to the sick, and if any one had either had or cured a
similar complaint, he communicated his experience to the patient, and so
they say medical art became great by these contributions from
experience. We ought also in the same way to expose to everyone diseased
lives and the passions of the soul, and to handle them, and to examine
the condition of each,[898] and say, Are you a passionate man? Be on
your guard against anger. Are you of a jealous turn? Look to it. Are you
in love? I myself was in love once, but I had to repent. But nowadays
people deny and conceal and cloak their vices, and so fix them deeper in
themselves.
Sec. III. Moreover if you advise men of worth to live unknown and in
obscurity, you say to Epaminondas, Do not be a general; and to Lycurgus,
Do not be a legislator; and to Thrasybulus, Do not be a tyrannicide; and
to Pythagoras, Do not teach; and to Socrates, Do not discourse; and
first and foremost you bid yourself, Epicurus, to refrain from writing
letters to your friends in Asia, and from enrolling Egyptian strangers
among your disciples, and from dancing attendance on the youths of
Lampsacus, and sending books to all quarters to display your wisdom to
all men and all women, and leaving directions in your will about your
funeral. What is the meaning of those common tables of yours? what that
crowd of friends and handsome youths? Why those many thousand lines
written and composed so laboriously on Metrodorus, and Aristobulus, and
Chaeredemus, that they may not be unknown even in death, if[899] you
ordain for virtue oblivion, for art inactivity, for philosophy silence,
and for success that it should be speedily forgotten?
Sec. IV. But if you exclude all knowledge about life, like putting the
lights out at a supper party, that you may go from pleasure to pleasure
undetected,[900] then "live unknown." Certainly if I am going to pass my
life with the harlot Hedeia, or my days with Leontium, and spurn at
virtue, and put my _summum bonum_ in sensual gratifications, these are
ends that require darkness and night, on these oblivion and ignorance
are rightly cast. But if any one in nature sings the praises of the
deity and justice and providence, and in morals upholds the law and
society and the constitution, and in the constitution what is honourable
and not expedient, why should he "live unknown"? Is it that he should
instruct nobody, inspire in nobody an emulation for virtue, and be to
nobody a pattern in good?[901] Had Themistocles been unknown at Athens,
Greece would not have repelled Xerxes; had Camillus been unknown at
Rome, Rome would not have remained a state; had Plato been unknown to
Dion, Sicily would not have won its freedom. And as light, I take it,
makes us not only visible but useful to one another, so knowledge gives
not only glory but impetus to virtue. Epaminondas in obscurity up to his
fortieth year was no use to the Thebans, but when his merits became
known and he was put into power, he saved his state from ruin, and
liberated Greece from slavery, making his abilities efficacious in
emergency through his reputation like the bright shining of a light. For
Sophocles' words,
"Brightly shines brass in use, but when unused
It groweth dull in time, and mars the house,"[902]
are also appropriate to the character of a man, which gets rusty and
senile by not mixing in affairs but living in obscurity. For mute
inglorious ease, and a sedentary life devoted to leisure, not only
injure the body but also the soul: and as hidden waters overshadowed and
stagnant get foul because they have no outlet, so the innate powers of
unruffled lives, that neither imbibe nor pass on anything, even if they
had any useful element in them once, seem to be effete and wasted.
Sec. V. Have you never noticed how when night comes on a tired languor
seizes the body, and inactive torpor overpowers the soul, and reason
shrinks within itself like a fire going out, and feeling quite worn out
is gently agitated by disordered fancies, only just indicating that the
man is alive? But when the sun rises and scares away deceitful dreams,
and brings on as it were the everyday world[903] and with its light
rouses and stimulates the thoughts and actions of everybody, then, as
Democritus says, "men form new ideas for the day," and betake themselves
to their various pursuits with mutual impetuosity, as if drawn by a
strong impulse.
Sec. VI. And I think that life itself, and the way we come into the world,
is so ordained by the deity that we should know one another. For
everyone comes into this great universe obscure and unknown casually and
by degrees, but when he mixes with his fellows and grows to maturity he
shines forth, and becomes well-known instead of obscure, and conspicuous
instead of unknown. For knowledge is not the road to being, as some say,
but being to knowledge, for being does not create but only exhibits
things, as death is not the reducing of existence to non-existence, but
rather the result of dissolution is obscurity. So people considering the
Sun as Apollo according to hereditary and ancient institutions, call him
Delius[904] and Pythius; whereas the lord of the world of darkness,
whether god or demon, they call Hades[905] (for when we die we go into
an unseen and invisible place), and the lord of dark night and idle
sleep. And I think our ancestors called man himself by a word meaning
light,[906] because by their relationship to light all have implanted in
them a strong and vehement desire to know and to be known. And some
philosophers think that the soul itself is light in its essence,
inferring so on other grounds and because it can least endure ignorance
about facts, and hates[907] everything obscure, and is disturbed at
everything dark, which inspires fear and suspicion in it, whereas light
is so dear and welcome to it that it thinks nothing otherwise delightful
bearable without it, as indeed light makes every pleasure pastime and
enjoyment gay and cheerful, like the application of some sweet and
general flavour. But the man who thrusts himself into obscurity, and
wraps himself up in darkness and buries himself alive, is like one who
is dissatisfied with his birth, and renounces his being.
Sec. VII. And yet _Pindar_ tells us[908] that the abode of the blest is a
glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night
in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever
in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there
the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the
past and present in social converse....[909] But the third road is of
those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls
to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night
belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be
punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do
not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ground,[910]
for it is destroyed by fire or has rolled away; nor does the carrying of
heavy burdens press upon and tire out the bodies of those that undergo
punishment,
"For their strength has no longer flesh and bones,"[911]
nor have the dead any vestige of body that can receive the infliction of
punishment that can make impression; but in reality the only punishment
of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter
annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912]
and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in
uselessness and idleness, ignorance and obscurity.
[895] Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very
personal Sec. iii.
[896] Euripides, Fragm. 930.
[897] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: Alla touto men
taute].
[898] Reading [Greek: ekastou] for [Greek: ekaston].
Reiske proposed [Greek: ekaston].
[899] Reading [Greek: ei] (for [Greek: hina]) with
Xylander and Wyttenbach.
[900] Reading with Wyttenbach.
[901] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, "Forte
[Greek: kalou], at Amiot."
[902] Frag. 742.
[903] "Dormiens quisque in peculiarem abest mumdum,
expergefactus in communem redit."--_Xylander._ Compare
Herrick's Poem, "_Dreames._"
[904] Bright.
[905] Invisible.
[906] [Greek: phos].
[907] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: echthairei].
[908] Reading [Greek: phesin] for [Greek: physin].
[909] Hiatus hic valde deflendus.
[910] As was fabled about Tityus, "Odyssey," xi.
576-579.
[911] "Odyssey," xi. 219.
[912] So Reiske, [Greek: potamin tes lethes].