llets, eggs, a hogshead of strong
wine: certainly in this manner you by little and little purchase that
farm, for which perhaps the owner paid three hundred thousand sesterces,
or more. What does it signify, whether you live on what was paid for the
other day, or a long while ago? He who purchased the Aricinian and
Veientine fields some time since, sups on bought vegetables, however he
may think otherwise; boils his pot with bought wood at the approach of
the chill evening. But he calls all that his own, as far as where the
planted poplar prevents quarrels among neighbors by a determinate
limitation: as if anything were a man's property, which in a moment of
the fleeting hour, now by solicitations, now by sale, now by violence,
and now by the supreme lot [of all men], may change masters and come
into another's jurisdiction. Thus since the perpetual possession is
given to none, and one man's heir urges on another's, as wave impels
wave, of what importance are houses, or granaries; or what the Lucanian
pastures joined to the Calabrian; if Hades, inexorable to gold, mows
down the great together with the small?

Gems, marble, ivory, Tuscan statues, pictures, silver-plate, robes dyed
with Getulian purple, there are who can not acquire; and there are
others, who are not solicitous of acquiring. Of two brothers, why one
prefers lounging, play, and perfume, to Herod's rich palm-tree groves;
why the other, rich and uneasy, from the rising of the light to the
evening shade, subdues his woodland with fire and steel: our attendant
genius knows, who governs the planet of our nativity, the divinity [that
presides] over human nature, who dies with each individual, of various
complexion, white and black.

I will use, and take out from my moderate stock, as much as my exigence
demands: nor will I be under any apprehensions what opinion my heir
shall hold concerning me, when he shall, find [I have left him] no more
than I had given me. And yet I, the same man, shall be inclined to know
how far an open and cheerful person differs from a debauchee, and how
greatly the economist differs from the miser. For there is some
distinction whether you throw away your money in a prodigal manner, or
make an entertainment without grudging, nor toil to accumulate more; or
rather, as formerly in Minerva's holidays, when a school-boy, enjoys by
starts the short and pleasant vacation.

Let sordid poverty be far away. I, whether borne in a large or small