Plutarch's Morals
[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 Theou
aleousi myloi, aleousi de lepta]. See Erasmus, "Adagia,"
p. 1864.
[814] Cf. Plato, "Republic," 472 A.
[815] See Note, "On Abundance of Friends," Sec. ii.
[816] Reading [Greek: ei gar].
[817] Or _a world_.
[818] See above, Sec. ii.
[819] Quoted also in "On restraining Anger," Sec. ii.
[820] It seems necessary to read either [Greek:
porizein] with Mez, or [Greek: horizein] with
Wyttenbach.
[821] Compare Aristophanes, "Vespae," 438.
[822] See Pausanias, viii. 27.
[823] Pindar.
[824] Homer, "Iliad," xv. 641, 642.
[825] See Thucydides, i. 127.
[826] See Pausanias, v. 17; viii. 24; ix. 41; x. 29.
[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," Sec. x.
[834] The reading is very doubtful. I adopt [Greek:
hedones men euthus kenen charin, elpidos eremon
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; Athenaeus, 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
Sec. xii.
[851] "Videtur idem cum _sorita_ esse."--_Reiske._
[852] Compare our author, "De EI a pud Delphos," Sec.
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, "Phaedrus," 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 Sec. 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.
[863] A rather far-fetched pedigree.
[864] See Pansanias, viii. 11; ix. 5, 10. See also Ovid,
"Metamorphoses," Book iii. 100-130.
[865] Compare "On Love," Sec. ii.
[866] At Mallus, in Cilicia. See Pausanias, i. 34.
[867] Reading [Greek: philedonias ischys] with Reiske.
[868] Reading [Greek: diapepoikilmenon on] with
Wyttenbach.
[869] A paronomasia on [Greek: genesis] as if [Greek:
epi gen 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: tribomenen triben atele].
[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.
[879] See Athenaeus, 687 B.
[880] Reading [Greek: dia] with Reiske.
AGAINST BORROWING MONEY.
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