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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.

Footnotes:

[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.