alf
dead with terror, night and day, to dread profligate thieves, fire, and
your slaves, lest they should run away and plunder you; is this
delightful? I should always wish to be very poor in possessions held
upon these terms.

But if your body should be disordered by being seized with a cold, or
any other casualty should confine you to your bed, have you one that
will abide by you, prepare medicines, entreat the physician that he
would set you upon your feet, and restore you to your children and dear
relations?

Neither your wife, nor your son, desires your recovery; all your
neighbors, acquaintances, [nay the very] boys and girls hate you. Do you
wonder that no one tenders you the affection which you do not merit,
since you prefer your money to everything else? If you think to retain,
and preserve as friends, the relations which nature gives you, without
taking any pains; wretch that you are, you lose your labor equally, as
if any one should train an ass to be obedient to the rein, and run in
the Campus [Martius]. Finally, let there be some end to your search;
and, as your riches increase, be in less dread of poverty; and begin to
cease from your toil, that being acquired which you coveted: nor do as
did one Umidius (it is no tedious story), who was so rich that he
measured his money, so sordid that he never clothed him self any better
than a slave; and, even to his last moments, was in dread lest want of
bread should oppress him: but his freed-woman, the bravest of all the
daughters of Tyndarus, cut him in two with a hatchet.

"What therefore do you persuade me to? That I should lead the life of
Naevius, or in such a manner as a Nomentanus?"

You are going [now] to make things tally, that are contradictory in
their natures. When I bid you not be a miser, I do not order you to
become a debauchee or a prodigal. There is some difference between the
case of Tanais and his son-in-law Visellius, there is a mean in things;
finally, there are certain boundaries, on either side of which moral
rectitude can not exist. I return now whence I digressed. Does no one,
after the miser's example, like his own station, but rather praise those
who have different pursuits; and pines, because his neighbor's she-goat
bears a more distended udder: nor considers himself in relation to the
greater multitude of poor; but labors to surpass, first one and then
another? Thus the richer man is always an obstacle to one that is
hastening [to