Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Hippomachus the trainer, when some people were praising a tall man with long arms as a natural boxer, said, "Yes -- if the crown had to be taken down from where it hangs." The same might be said to those who are utterly amazed at, and count blessed, fine estates and great houses and heaps of silver: "Yes -- if happiness were for sale and had to be bought." And yet one might say that many people would rather grow rich and, even while miserable, become blessed by paying money for it, than face the fact that freedom from grief, greatness of soul, steadiness, courage, and self-sufficiency are not for sale at any price. Wealth does not carry with it contempt for wealth, nor does the possession of superfluous things carry with it freedom from needing superfluous things. From which of the other evils, then, does wealth free us, if it does not even free us from the love of wealth itself? Drink has quenched the desire for drink, and food has cured the craving for food -- and the man who says, "Give Hipponax a cloak, for I am very cold," grows impatient and pushes it away when more cloaks than he needs are brought to him. But no amount of silver or gold quenches the love of money, nor does greed cease from acquiring more the more it acquires. One might say to wealth, as to a quack doctor, "Your medicine makes the disease worse." People in need of bread, of a house, of modest shelter, and of ordinary food, wealth takes hold of and fills instead with desires for gold and silver and ivory and emeralds and dogs and horses, shifting their craving away from necessities and toward things difficult, rare, hard to obtain, and useless.
For no one is poor who has enough; and no man has ever borrowed money in order to buy barley-meal or cheese or bread or olives. But one man's expensive house has made him a debtor; another has been ruined by the vineyard bordering his own land; grain-stores have ruined one man, vineyards another; Gallic mules have driven one man, and yoked horses -- "rattling their empty chariots" -- have driven another headlong into the pit of contracts, interest, and mortgages. Then, just as people who keep drinking after their thirst is quenched, or eating after their hunger is satisfied, vomit back up even what they took while genuinely thirsty or hungry, so those who crave useless and superfluous things end up unable even to hold on to what is necessary.
Such, then, are these people. But one might marvel even more, recalling Aristippus, at those who lose nothing, who have much, and yet who always need more. Aristippus used to say that a man who eats much and drinks much and is never satisfied goes to the doctors and asks what his condition is, what is wrong with him, and how he might be rid of it; but if a man who has five couches seeks ten, and having ten tables buys as many more again, and though he has many estates and much silver is never filled but strains after other things, lies sleepless, and remains unsatisfied in everything -- such a man does not think he needs anyone to treat him and show him the cause of his condition.
And yet, of two thirsty men, one might expect that the man who has not yet drunk will be rid of his thirst once he drinks; but the man who drinks continually and does not stop, we think, needs not filling but purging -- and we tell him to vomit, on the ground that he is troubled not by lack but by some sharpness or heat unnaturally present in him. So too, of those who go about acquiring wealth, the one in need and without resources will perhaps stop once he has acquired a hearth of his own, or found a treasure, or, with a friend's help, paid off his debt and been rid of his creditor. But the man who has more than enough and still reaches for more is not cured by gold or silver, nor by horses and sheep and cattle -- he needs to be purged and cleansed. For his condition is not poverty but insatiability and love of wealth, arising from a base and irrational judgment; and unless someone roots this out of the soul like a broad tapeworm, such men will never stop needing superfluous things -- that is, desiring things they do not need.
When a doctor comes in to a man who lies stretched on his bed, groaning and refusing to take food, and examines him and questions him and finds he has no fever, he says, "This is a sickness of the soul," and leaves. So too, when we see a man wasting away over money-making, groaning over his expenses, sparing himself no shameful or painful act that contributes to profit, while he has houses and land and herds and slaves along with their clothes -- what shall we say the man's condition is, if not poverty of the soul? For a material poverty, as Menander says, a single friend could relieve by his kindness; but that poverty of the soul not all men together, whether living or dead, could ever fill. Hence Solon's words, well aimed at such men: "of wealth no limit lies revealed to men." For to those who have sense, the wealth of nature is bounded, and the limit of need is present, marked out as if by a compass-point and a fixed radius. But this too is peculiar to the love of money: it is a desire that fights against its own fulfillment. The other desires cooperate with their own satisfaction -- no one, at any rate, abstains from the use of food because of love of food, nor from wine because of love of wine, in the way that men abstain from the use of money because of love of money.
And yet how is it not a kind of madness, or a pitiable condition, if a man does not use a cloak because he feels cold, nor bread because he is hungry, nor wealth because he loves wealth? But this is exactly the trouble of Thrasonides: "She is within, in my own house; I am free to have her, and I want to -- as madly in love as any man could be -- yet I do not." So too the miser: locking everything up and sealing it, counting it out to money-lenders and agents, gathering and pursuing still more, he wrangles with his household servants, with his farm laborers, with his debtors. "Apollo, have you ever seen a man more wretched, or a lover more ill-fated?"
Sophocles, when asked whether he could still have relations with a woman, said, "Hush, man -- I have become a free man, having escaped a raging and savage master because of my old age." For it is a pleasant thing when desires fade away together with the pleasures that once accompanied them -- desires which, as Alcaeus says, neither man nor woman can ever escape. But this is not the case with the love of wealth: like a heavy and bitter mistress, it compels one to acquire but forbids one to use, arousing the desire while taking away the pleasure.
Stratonicus used to mock the Rhodians for their extravagance, saying that they built as though they were immortal but bought provisions as though they had little time left to live. The miserly, by contrast, acquire as if they meant to spend lavishly, but use their possessions as if they were paupers, and while they endure the labor of acquisition, they never enjoy the pleasure of it. So when Demades came upon Phocion once at breakfast and saw his table plain and austere, he said, "I am amazed at you, Phocion, that being able to dine so well you engage in politics as you do" -- for Demades himself played the demagogue for the sake of his belly, and considering Athens too small a resource for his extravagance, he drew supplies from Macedonia. And it was for this reason that Antipater, seeing him grown old, said: "Like a sacrificial victim already used up, nothing is left of him but tongue and belly."
But you, wretched man, who would not marvel at you, if, though able to live so meanly, so inhumanly, so ungenerously, so harshly toward your friends and so ungenerously toward your fellow citizens, you still toil, lie sleepless, take on contract work, chase inheritances, and grovel before others -- when you have so great a resource for freedom from trouble as your own stinginess? They say a certain Byzantine, having caught an adulterer with his own ugly wife, said, "Poor fellow, what compulsion drove you? A rotten market-stall, and free of charge, too."
Come now, you stir things up and set them ablaze, wretch -- kings need to raise money, and so do the stewards of kings, and those in the cities who wish to be foremost and to rule. For them there is a necessity, on account of ambition, ostentation, and empty glory, to give feasts, to gratify their bodyguards, to send gifts, to maintain armies, to buy gladiators. But you throw so many matters into confusion, disturb yourself, and whirl yourself about, living the life of a snail because of your pettiness, and you endure every hardship without any benefit -- like the bathman's donkey, forever hauling wood and kindling, always covered in soot and ash, yet never getting a share of the bath, nor of warmth, nor of cleanliness.
And this I say concerning that asinine, ant-like love of wealth. But there is another kind, the beast-like kind, which practices false accusation, chases inheritances, cheats others, meddles in everyone's business, worries and counts up how many of its friends are still alive -- and then, when it has acquired all this from every quarter, enjoys none of it. Just as we shun and are more disgusted by vipers, blister-beetles, and venomous spiders than by bears and lions, because they kill and destroy people without gaining any use from those they destroy, so we ought to be more disgusted by those made wicked through stinginess and ungenerosity than by those ruined through extravagance -- for they take from others what they themselves are neither able nor by nature fit to use.
That is why the extravagant, once they find themselves amid abundance and have resources at their disposal, take a truce, as Demosthenes said of those who thought Demades had given up his wickedness: "You see him full now, just like lions." But for those whose public life aims at nothing pleasant or useful, there is no cessation of greed, nor any respite, since they are forever empty and forever in need of everything.
But surely, someone will say, they are guarding and hoarding it for their children and heirs. How so? They share nothing with them while they live; rather, just as the mice that live in the mines and eat gold-ore cannot be shared in by anyone until they are dead and cut open, so too here. And why, in fact, do these men want to leave much money and a great estate to their children and heirs? Evidently so that these in turn may guard it for others, and those others again for their own children -- just like earthenware pipes, which take nothing in for themselves, but each one simply passes along what it receives to the next, until some outsider, an informer or a tyrant, breaks through and shatters the one who guards it, diverting and channeling the wealth elsewhere; or, as people say, until one man, the wickedest of the family, arises and devours the whole of it. For it is not only the children of slaves who turn out undisciplined company, but, as Diogenes mocked it, also the children of misers: "It is better," he said, "to be a Megarian's ram than his son." For even those whom they seem to be educating, they ruin and warp further, implanting in them their own love of money and their own stinginess, building it into their heirs like a fortress guarding the inheritance.
For this is what they urge and teach: "Make a profit and be sparing, and reckon yourself worth exactly as much as you have." This is not education but a cinching and stitching shut, as one does a purse, so that it may hold and guard whatever is put into it. And yet a purse, once silver is put into it, becomes grimy and foul-smelling; but the children of misers, even before they inherit the wealth, are already infected with the love of wealth by their own fathers. And indeed they pay their fathers wages worthy of such teaching -- not loving them because they will receive much, but hating them because they have not yet received it. For having learned to admire nothing but wealth, and to live for nothing else but the possession of much, they treat their fathers' lives as an obstacle to their own, and think that whatever time is added to their fathers' lives is being taken away from their own.
That is why, while their fathers are still living, they steal some furtive pleasure however they can, and enjoy it as though it belonged to someone else, sharing it with friends, spending it on their desires while still, so to speak, listening and still learning. But when their fathers die and they take possession of the keys and the seals, a different shape of life comes over them, and a joyless face -- stern, unapproachable: no more revelry, no ball-games, no wrestling, no Academy, no Lyceum, but the cross-examination of household slaves, the checking of account-books, calculations with stewards or debtors, endless business, and anxious care that robs them even of their breakfast and drives them to the bathhouse at night. The exercise-grounds where they were raised, and the waters of Dirce, are left behind; and if someone says, "Will you not go hear the philosopher?" he answers, "How can I? I have no leisure -- my father is dead."
Poor wretch, what has been left to you of the sort that has been taken from you -- your leisure and your freedom? Or rather, it is not your father but wealth itself that has poured over you and taken hold of you -- as in Hesiod, the woman "withers you without fire and lays you in premature old age," bringing upon your soul, as though they were untimely wrinkles or gray hairs, the cares born of love of money and of endless business, under which everything noble, everything ambitious, everything humane in you withers away.
What then? someone will say -- do you not see that some people actually use their money lavishly? But have you not heard, we shall answer, Aristotle saying that some do not use it while others misuse it, exactly as if it did not belong to them at all? The former get no benefit or adornment from what is their own; the latter are actually harmed and disgraced by it. Come, then, let us examine the first case. What sort of use is this, for the sake of which wealth is so admired? Is it the use of what suffices, or of what is superfluous? If it is the use of what suffices, then the rich have nothing more than those who possess a moderate amount. But "wealth is blind, and unwealthy," as Theophrastus says, and truly not to be envied, if Callias, the richest of the Athenians, and Ismenias, the wealthiest of the Thebans, used their riches no differently than Socrates and Epaminondas did.
For just as Agathon sent the flute-girl away from the symposium to the women, thinking the conversation of those present would be enough, so you might send away purple bedspreads and costly tables and all superfluous things, on seeing the rich using the very same things the poor use: "You would not quickly set your rudder up above the smoke, and the labors of oxen and toiling mules would perish." Instead you would banish, in a fine and sober expulsion of foreigners, the goldsmiths and engravers and perfumers and cooks -- all the useless things. But if what suffices is common to both the non-rich and the rich, while wealth prides itself on its excess, then do you really admire Scopas the Thessalian, who, when asked for something in his house that was, so he said, superfluous and useless to him, replied, "But it is precisely by these superfluous things that we are happy and blessed, not by those necessary ones"? See that you are not praising a procession or a festival more than a way of life.
The ancestral festival of the Dionysia was once celebrated in the old days simply and cheerfully, in the manner of the common people: a jar of wine and a vine-branch, then someone led a goat, another followed carrying a basket of dried figs, and on top of it all the phallus. But now all this has been overlooked and has vanished, as gold vessels are carried about, and costly robes, and teams of animals driven along, and masks. So the necessary and useful parts of wealth have been buried under useless and superfluous things. And most of us suffer the fate of Telemachus: for he too, out of inexperience -- or rather out of poor taste -- on seeing Nestor's house furnished with couches
tables, cloaks, coverlets, sweet wine—he did not call the man blessed who had a good supply of necessary or even useful things. But when at Menelaus's house he beheld ivory and gold and amber, he was amazed and said, "Such, surely, is the hall of Olympian Zeus within—how many things, how countless! Awe holds me as I look." Socrates, however, or Diogenes, would have said, "How many wretched things, how useless and vain! Laughter holds me as I look. What are you saying, you fool, who ought to have taken away your wife's purple and her jewelry, so that she might stop indulging herself and craving foreign luxuries, yet instead you deck out your house again like a theater or a stage for those who enter it? Such is the happiness that wealth affords—one that needs spectators and witnesses, before all of whom it must be paraded, or else it is nothing."
But this is not at all like moderation, like philosophy, like knowing what one ought to know about the gods. Even if it escapes the notice of all mankind, it has its own private radiance and a great light within the soul, and it creates a joy that dwells together with the soul itself as it lays hold of the good—whether anyone knows it or it goes unnoticed by both gods and all mankind alike. Such is virtue, such is truth, and such is the beauty of the mathematical sciences, geometry and astronomy, compared to which all these trappings and necklaces of wealth, and its girlish spectacles, deserve to be set aside.
For is not wealth truly blind and lightless, when no one is watching or looking on? For the rich man, when he dines alone with his wife or with his intimates, gives no trouble either to his golden tables or to his golden cups, but makes use of whatever comes to hand, and his wife is present without gold, without purple, plain and simple. But whenever a dinner party—that is, a procession and a theatrical show—is got up, and a rich man's drama is staged, then "out of the ships he brought forth cauldrons and tripods"; they cling to their lamps and bustle about the cups, they change the wine-pourers, they change everyone's clothes, they set everything in motion—gold, silver, jeweled ware—simply proclaiming their wealth to all. But moderation, even when a man dines alone, is needed just as much, and so is justice.