ere is nothing in the
special nature of money to hinder its being taken away from those who
possess it against their will.'

'I admit it.'

'Why, of course, when every day the stronger wrests it from the weaker
without his consent. Else, whence come lawsuits, except in seeking to
recover moneys which have been taken away against their owner's will by
force or fraud?'

'True,' said I.

'Then, everyone will need some extraneous means of protection to keep
his money safe.'

'Who can venture to deny it?'

'Yet he would not, unless he possessed the money which it is possible to
lose.'

'No; he certainly would not.'

'Then, we have worked round to an opposite conclusion: the wealth which
was thought to make a man independent rather puts him in need of further
protection. How in the world, then, can want be driven away by riches?
Cannot the rich feel hunger? Cannot they thirst? Are not the limbs of
the wealthy sensitive to the winter's cold? "But," thou wilt say, "the
rich have the wherewithal to sate their hunger, the means to get rid of
thirst and cold." True enough; want can thus be soothed by riches,
wholly removed it cannot be. For if this ever-gaping, ever-craving want
is glutted by wealth, it needs must be that the want itself which can be
so glutted still remains. I do not speak of how very little suffices for
nature, and how for avarice nothing is enough. Wherefore, if wealth
cannot get rid of want, and makes new wants of its own, how can ye
believe that it bestows independence?'

SONG III.

THE INSATIABLENESS OF AVARICE.

Though the covetous grown wealthy
See his piles of gold rise high;
Though he gather store of treasure
That can never satisfy;
Though with pearls his gorget blazes,
Rarest that the ocean yields;
Though a hundred head of oxen
Travail in his ample fields;
Ne'er shall carking care forsake him
While he draws this vital breath,
And his riches go not with him,
When his eyes are closed in death.

IV.

'Well, but official dignity clothes him to whom it comes with honour and
reverence! Have, then, offices of state such power as to plant virtue in
the minds of their possessors, and drive out vice? Nay, they are rather
wont to signalize iniquity than to chase it away, and hence arises our
indignation that honours so often fall to the most iniquitous of men.
Accordingly, Catullus calls Nonius an "ulcer-spot," though "