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; 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 moneylenders 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," 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,2 and " swam for it gazing on the distant shore,' ," 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." 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 1 "Odyssey," v. 264. 2 "Odyssey," v. 333-375. 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.. WHETHER "LIVE UNKNOWN" BE A WISE PRECEPT. § 1. He who uttered this precept1 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." 2 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 Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very personal § iii. 2 Euripides, Fragm. 930. 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? Has § II. Look at the matter in the following way.' 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,2 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. § III. Moreover if you advise men of worth to live un 1 Reading with Wyttenbach, ̓Αλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ταύτη. • Reading ἑκάστου for ἕκαστον. Reiske proposed ἑκάστων. LIVE UNKNOWN known 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 Chæredemus, that they may not be unknown even in death, if you ordain for virtue oblivion, for art inactivity, for philosophy silence, and for success that it should be speedily forgotten? § 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," 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?3 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 1 Reading &i (for iva) with Xylander and Wyttenbach. 2 Reading with Wyttenbach. 3 Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, " Forte xaλov, ut Amiot." |