r man
may be richer than yourself. What pleasure is it for you, trembling to
deposit an immense weight of silver and gold in the earth dug up by
stealth? Because if you lessen it, it may be reduced to a paltry
farthing.

But unless that be the case, what beauty has an accumulated hoard?
Though your thrashing-floor should yield a hundred thousand bushels of
corn, your belly will not on that account contain more than mine: just
as if it were your lot to carry on your loaded shoulder the basket of
bread among slaves, you would receive no more [for your own share] than
he who bore no part of the burthen. Or tell me, what is it to the
purpose of that man, who lives within the compass of nature, whether he
plow a hundred or a thousand acres?

"But it is still delightful to take out of a great hoard."

While you leave us to take as much out of a moderate store, why should
you extol your granaries, more than our corn-baskets? As if you had
occasion for no more than a pitcher or glass of water, and should say,
"I had rather draw [so much] from a great river, than the very same
quantity from this little fountain." Hence it comes to pass, that the
rapid Aufidus carries away, together with the bank, such men as an
abundance more copious than what is just delights. But he who desires
only so much as is sufficient, neither drinks water fouled with the mud,
nor loses his life in the waves.

But a great majority of mankind, misled by a wrong desire cry, "No sum
is enough; because you are esteemed in proportion to what you possess."
What can one do to such a tribe as this? Why, bid them be wretched,
since their inclination prompts them to it. As a certain person is
recorded [to have lived] at Athens, covetous and rich, who was wont to
despise the talk of the people in this manner: "The crowd hiss me; but I
applaud myself at home, as soon as I contemplate my money in my chest."
The thirsty Tantalus catches at the streams, which elude his lips. Why
do you laugh? The name changed, the tale is told of you. You sleep upon
your bags, heaped up on every side, gaping over them, and are obliged to
abstain from them, as if they were consecrated things, or to amuse
yourself with them as you would with pictures. Are you ignorant of what
value money has, what use it can afford? Bread, herbs, a bottle of wine
may be purchased; to which [necessaries], add [such others], as, being
withheld, human nature would be uneasy with itself. What, to watch h