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This webpage reproduces the essay
On the Love of Wealth

by
Plutarch

as published in Vol. VII
of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1959

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

[image ALT: a blank space]

(Vol. VII) Plutarch, Moralia

Copyright

The work appears in pp1‑39 of Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library's edition of the Moralia, first published in 1959. The Greek text and the English translation (by Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson) are now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U. S. Copyright Code, since the copyright expired in 1987 and was not renewed at the appropriate time, which would have been that year or the year before. (Details here on the copyright law involved.)

 p2  Loeb Edition Introduction

The governing ideas of the essay On Love of Wealth are Aristotelian, though the source is ultimately Plato. Thus Plutarch quotes fragments of Aristotle (527A)1 and of Theophrastus (527B). In the Politics (I.8‑9, 1256 B26 – 1257 A14) Aristotle distinguishes natural wealth, which consists of what is necessary to life or useful for the society of a city or household,​2 from non-natural wealth, which consists of money and is unlimited.​3 It is on this distinction between the useful or necessary on the one hand and the superfluous  p3 on the other that Plutarch builds his argument.​4 He has been influenced by several points in the discussion of liberality in the Nicomachean Ethics (IV.1‑3, 1119 B21 – 1122 A17), whether directly or through the medium of some lost Peripatetic writing. Thus Aristotle makes the prodigal better than the illiberal man (1121 A18-B14; 1122 A13‑16); compare Plutarch, 525F‑526A.​5 In Aristotle illiberal men are of many kinds, some abstaining from the property of others, some not (1121 B17 – 1122 A13);​6 Plutarch distinguishes the avarice of the ant from that of the beast of prey (525E‑F). We may further note that Aristotle (1121 B12) calls illiberality incurable;​7 Plutarch explains the case, but prescribes no regimen (524D). Natural wealth is spoken of in the Eudemian  p4 Ethics (III.4.3‑5, 1231 B38 – 1232 A10); here we also find the word ἀποβολή as the opposite of acquisition (1231 B29 f., 38; cf. ἀποβάλλοντας in Plutarch, 524A), and the point that the prodigal falls short of necessities (1232 A9; cf. Plutarch, 524A).8

Plutarch does not of course confine himself to the Platonic and Aristotelian remarks on the subject, but also avails himself of points made by Cynics and other philosophers; reference to these will be found in the notes on the essay.

The plan is simple. After an introduction in which Plutarch says that wealth cannot purchase happiness he passes to ordinary misers and prodigals and shows the disadvantages of their condition: in both the desire for goods and money is insatiable, while in misers it is in conflict with its satisfaction. From these he passes to rapacious misers and prodigals, and pronounces the latter less offensive. The excuse that misers save their money for their children is shown to be absurd. Another excuse for the rich, that some (unlike misers) make lavish use of their wealth, is refuted by examining what is meant by "use." If the use is merely to obtain sufficiency, the rich are no better off than men of moderate means. If "use" is spending wealth on luxuries, wealth is a mere show and spectacle. The essay closes with a comparison of this theatrical wealth to the goods of philosophy.

 p5  The theme is discussed by Plutarch in the fragments On Wealth (Bern. VII, pp123 f.); he no doubt treated it also in the Protreptic to a Wealthy Young Man (No. 207 in the catalogue of Lamprias), of which no identified fragments survive.

A certain exuberance and fancifulness in the diction would incline one to date the essay early in Plutarch's career. A Latin translation by Erasmus appeared at Basle in 1514, another by Richard Pace at Venice in 1522. There is also a German translation by W. Ax.​9 Two French translations we have not seen.​10 The essay is No. 211 in the catalogue of Lamprias.

The text is based on LC G Xυ I W Dzϕab y hki N M vw Ylq. Other MSS., J αsεe, are cited for an occasional conjecture. MS. 25 (B 120) in the Vallicella library is a copy of Stephanus' edition.

 p7  (523c) 1  When some persons praised a tall fellow with a long reach
D
as having the makings of a fine boxer, the trainer Hippomachus​11 remarked: "Yes, if the crown were hung up and to be got by reaching." So too we can say to those who are dazzled by fine estates, great houses, and large sums of money and regard them as the greatest of blessings: "Yes, if happiness were for sale and to be got by purchase." (Nevertheless many cases could be cited of men who would rather be rich though miserable than become happy by paying money to be so.) But money cannot buy peace of mind, greatness of spirit, serenity, confidence, and self-sufficiency.12

Having wealth is not the same as being superior to it, Enor is possessing luxuries the same as feeling no need of them. 2 From what other ills then does  p9 wealth deliver us, if it does not even deliver us from the craving for it?​13 Nay, drink allays the desire of drink, and food is a remedy for hunger; and one who says

A cloak I beg: Hipponax is acold​14

is annoyed when several are brought and rejects them; but neither silver nor gold allays the craving for money, nor does the greed of gain ever cease from acquiring new gains. No; one can say to wealth as to a pretentious physician:

Your physic but increases the disease.​15

FFinding us in want of a loaf, a house, a modest protection from the weather, and whatever comes to hand to supplement our loaf, wealth infects us with the desire for gold and silver and ivory and emeralds and hounds and horses, diverting our appetite from the necessities of life to what is difficult, rare, hard to procure, and useless. Indeed in what suffices no one is poor;​16 and no one has ever borrowed money to buy barley meal, a cheese, a loaf, or olives.​a Rather one man has run into debt for a splendid house, 524 another for an adjoining olive plantation, another for  p11 fields and vineyards; and there are still others that Galatian​17 mules or a set of horses

Rattling an empty chariot behind​18

have driven into a morass of bonds, usury, and mortgages. And then, as those who drink when no longer thirsty, or eat when no longer hungry, vomit up with the surfeit the rest as well that was taken to satisfy hunting or thirst, so those who seek the useless and superfluous do not even retain the necessary. Such then is the condition of one sort of lover of wealth.

3 Those on the other hand who part with nothing, though they have great possessions, but always want greater, would strike one who remembered what Aristippus said as even more absurd. B"If a man eats and drinks a great deal," he used to say, "but is never filled,​19 he sees a physician, inquires what ails him, what is wrong with his system, and how to rid himself of the disorder; but if the owner of five couches goes looking for ten, and the owner of ten tables buys up as many again, and though he has lands and money in plenty is not satisfied but bent on more, losing sleep and never sated by any amount, does he imagine that he does not need someone who will prescribe for him and point out the cause of his  p13 distress?"​20 CCertainly in the case of sufferers from thirst you would expect the one who had had nothing to drink to find his thirst relieved after drinking, while we assume that the one who drinks on and on without stopping needs to relieve, not stuff, himself, and we tell him to vomit, taking his trouble to be caused not by any shortage in anything but by the presence in him of some unnatural pungency or heat. So too with money-getters: he who is in want and destitute would perhaps call a halt once he got an estate or discovered a hidden treasure or was helped by a friend to pay his debt and get free from his creditor; whereas he who has more than enough and yet hungers for still more will find no remedy in gold or silver or horses and sheep and cattle, but in casting out the source of mischief and being purged. DFor his ailment is not poverty, but insatiability​21 and avarice, arising from the presence in him of a false and unreflecting judgement;​22 and unless someone removes this, like a tapeworm, from his mind, he will never cease to need superfluities — that is, to want what he does not need.

4 When a physician visits a patient lying limp in bed, moaning, and refusing food, and on examining  p15 and questioning him finds no fever, he pronounces the disorder mental and departs. We too, then, seeing a man absorbed in money-getting, Emoaning over his expenditures, and sticking at nothing base or painful that brings him money, though he has houses, land, herds, and slaves together with a supply of clothing, what are we to call his trouble but mental poverty? For poverty in money is a thing from which a single friend, as Menander​23 says, could deliver a man by his bounty. But that other poverty of the mind could never be replenished by all his friends together, whether in life or death.​24 It is to such as these, then, that Solon's​25 words are well applied:

No bourne of wealth is manifest to men,

Fsince for men of sense natural wealth does have a limit​26 and a bourne, which is drawn around it by utility as by a compass.27

Another peculiarity​28 of the love of money is this: it is a desire that opposes its own satisfaction.​29 The rest actually aid their satisfaction: no one refuses good food because he has a weakness for it, or wine because he is fond of the bottle, as men abstain from using money because they love it. Yet how can it  p17 be called anything but madness and misery when a man refuses to put on a cloak because he is cold, to eat a loaf because he is hungry, or to use​30 wealth because he loves it, and is instead in Thrasonides' plight:

525 My love is in my house, no law forbids;

And never lover in the wildest passion

Had better will to do it, but I don't​31 —

I've put away everything under lock and seal or laid it out with money-lenders and agents and yet I go on amassing and pursuing new wealth, and I wrangle with my servants, my farmers, my debtors —

Merciful Heaven! Have you ever seen

A man more wretched or more crossed in love?​32

5 Asked if he was able to enjoy a woman Sophocles​33 replied: "Hush, fellow, I am now a free man, delivered by old age from a set of mad and cruel masters." For it is a happy thing that when pleasures fail desires should fail as well, Bwhich Alcaeus​34 says . . .  p19 nor woman.​35 But it is otherwise with avarice: like an oppressive and vexatious mistress it compels us to make money but forbids the use of it, and arouses the desire but cheats us of the pleasure. Stratonicus indeed rallied the Rhodians for lavish spending, saying that they built as immortals and furnished their tables as if soon to die.​36 But while lovers of money acquire it as lavish spenders, they use it as churls, and endure the pains, but do not get the pleasures. Thus Demades once found Phocion at luncheon, Cand remarked, observing the austerity and plainness of his table: "I am astonished, Phocion, that when you can stomach such food you engage in politics." For Demades himself played the demagogue to fill his belly, and regarding Athens as no adequate provision for his prodigality laid in supplies from Macedon as well.​37 (Hence Antipater,​38 seeing him in his old age, said that like a carcass when the butchers had finished, nothing remained but the tongue and the gut.) As for you, unhappy wretch, is one not to be astonished that living as you do — a miser, unsocial, selfish, heedless of friends, Dindifferent to country — you nevertheless suffer hardships, lose sleep, engage in traffic, chase after legacies, and truckle to others despite this abundant provision for a life of ease, your meanness? We hear that a certain Byzantine said on finding an adulterer with his ill-favoured wife, "Poor fellow!  p21 What drives you to it? The dregs are foul!"​39 . . .​40 unhappy man! Let kings and royal stewards and those who would be foremost in their cities and hold office engage in money-getting. These are driven to it, their ambition and pretension and vainglory compel them, engaged as they are in giving banquets, bestowing favours, paying court, sending presents, supporting armies, buying gladiators. EBut you stir up this vast turmoil of affairs and harass and distract yourself when for meanness you live the life of a snail, and you put up with every discomfort and get no good of it, like a bathhouse keeper's ass​41 that carries faggots and kindling, always foul with smoke and ashes, but getting no bath or warmth or cleanliness.

6 We have been speaking of this avarice of the ass or ant.​42 But there is another, the avarice of the beast of prey; it runs to legal blackmail, to the pursuit of legacies, Fto cheating and intrigue and  p23 scheming, it counts the number of friends still alive, and after all this puts the ill-gotten wealth to no use. Thus as vipers, blister-beetles, and venomous spiders offend and disgust us more than bears and lions, because they kill and destroy men without using what they destroy, so too should men whose rapacity springs from meanness and illiberality disgust us more than those in whom it springs from prodigality, since the miserly take from others what they have no power or capacity to use themselves. 526Hence prodigals call a truce once they are affluent and well provided for (as Demosthenes said to those who imagined that Demades had ceased to be a scoundrel: "At present you see him like the lions, glutted");​43 whereas in those who follow no policy of pleasure or utility there is no suspension of greed or distraction from it by more pressing claims, as they are forever empty and still want the whole world.

7 Someone will say, "But they preserve and lay up their goods for children and heirs." When in their lifetime they give them nothing? BNay, as with the mice that eat the gold ore in the mines,​44 the gold cannot be had until they dead and laid open. And why do they desire to leave children and heirs an accumulation of money and a great estate? Plainly  p25 that these may preserve it for others, and these for still others, like earthen pipes, taking nothing for themselves but each conveying to another what it receives, until some outsider, an informer or tyrant, cuts off and shatters the keeper of the wealth, thus intercepting and drawing off the flow of riches, or (as the saying goes) Cthe one member of the family who turns out worst consumes the property of all. For not only

The sons of slaves are wanton from neglect,

as Euripides​45 says, the sons of misers are so as well, as Diogenes doubtless implied in his taunt: "Better to be a Megarian's ram than his son."​46 For by the very means whereby they suppose that they are training their children, misers ruin them instead and warp their characters all the more, implanting in them their own avarice and meanness as though constructing in their heirs a fort to guard the inheritance. For their admonition and instruction comes to this: "Get profit and be sparing, and count yourself as worth exactly what you have."​47 This is not to educate a son, but to compress him and sew him shut, like a money bag,​48 Dthat he may hold tight and  p27 keep safe what you have put in. But whereas the bag gets dirty and foul-smelling only after the coin has been stored in it, the children of misers, before touching the money, catch the taint of avarice directly from their fathers. Note, however, that the young pay them for this instruction in the right coin, not loving their fathers because they are to inherit a fortune, but hating them because they have not got it already. For having been taught to look up to nothing but wealth and to live for nothing but great possessions, they consider that their fathers' lives stand in the way of their own, and conceive that time steals from them whatever it adds to their fathers; years. EHence even when the father is still alive the son behind his back finds one way or another to steal some pleasure from the money and spends it as if he had no interest in it, giving it to friends and lavishing it on his appetites, when still attending lectures and still at his studies. But when at his father's death the son takes over the keys and seals, his way of life is altered and his countenance becomes unsmiling, stern, and forbidding. Here is an end of . . .,​49 of ball-playing, of wrestling, of the Academy and the Lyceum. FThere is instead the interrogation of servants, inspection of ledgers, the casting up of accounts with stewards and debtors, and occupation and worry  p29 that deny him his luncheon and drive him to the bath at night.

The place of exercise where he was schooled

And Dircê's fount​50

are passed by; and if someone says, "Are you not going to hear the philosopher?" the answer is, "How could I? I have no time​51 now my father is dead." Poor soul! What has your father left to compare with what he has taken away, your leisure and your freedom? Rather it is not he, it is your wealth, that overwhelming and over­powering you, like the woman in Hesiod52

527 Singes without a brand and ages you ere your time,

bringing upon the mind like premature wrinkles and grey hairs the cares and distractions that come from avarice, whereby all high-heartedness and keenness and friendliness are blighted.

8 "Well," someone will say, "do you not observe that some people do make lavish use of their money?" To this we shall answer: And have you not heard from Aristotle​53 that some fail to use it, others use it ill, neither course being right? But whereas the first get no good or glory from what they have, the others actually get harm and disgrace from it.

 p31  BCome, first let us consider what is this "use," for which wealth is highly regarded. Is it the use of what suffices? Then the rich are no better off than men of modest means, and wealth, as Theophrastus​54 says, is "no wealth" and in truth "unenviable,"​55 if Callias, the wealthiest man of Athens, and Hismenias, the richest of Thebes, got the same use of what they had as Socrates and Epameinondas. For as Agathon dismissed the flute-players from the banquet to the women's quarters, holding the conversation of the company to be sufficient entertainment,​56 so too might you dismiss purple coverlets and expensive tables and all superfluities, when you see that the rich have the same service as the poor, and

CSoon you'd hang the rudder o'er the hearth

And all for nought would be the patient toil

not

Of ox and mule​57

but of goldsmith, enchaser, perfumer, and cook, once we had been wise and sober enough to expel all that is useless from our state.​58 But if even those who are  p33 not rich equally possess enough for their needs, whereas wealth plumes itself on luxuries, and you approve of Scopas​59 the Thessalian, who when begged for some article in his house on the ground that there it was superfluous and not put to any use, exclaimed: "Why it is just these articles of superfluity, and not the indispensables, that give me the name of enviable and fortunate," Dyou must look to it or you will be like one who gives his approval to a pageant or a festival rather than to the business of living.

Our traditional festival of the Dionysia​60 was in former times a homely and merry procession. First came a jug of wine and a vine branch, then one celebrant dragged a he‑goat along, another followed with a basket of dry figs, and the phallos-bearer came last. But all this is nowadays unregarded and vanished, what with vessels of gold carried past, rich apparel, carriages riding by, and masks: so has what is necessary and useful in wealth been buried under what is useless and superfluous. 9 EBut we are most of us like Telemachus. In his innocence, or rather want of taste, when he saw Nestor's house with its couches, tables, clothes, coverlets, and pleasant wine, he expressed no admiration for one provided with all that  p35 was necessary or useful; but when he visited Menelaüs and beheld ivory, gold, and amber, he was struck with amazement and cried:

Olympian Zeus, methinks, has halls like this:

What riches past all telling! I behold

And marvel.​61

Socrates or Diogenes would have said:

What rubbish past all telling

and superfluity and vanity!

FI behold

And laugh.

Fool! You should strip your wife of her purple and adornments, that she may get over her fine airs and her infatuation with foreign guests,​62 and do you trick out your house instead like a theatre or stage for visitors?

10 Such is the felicity of wealth — a felicity of spectators and witnesses or else a thing of naught.​63 How different are self-mastery, the pursuit of wisdom, the knowing what we should about the gods,​64 though known to no man else! 528 These have in the soul a luminousness of their own and a surpassing radiance,65  p37 and make delight her constant companion, as by her sole power she grasps the Good, whether there is anyone to see, or whether no one, god or man, is witness.​66 Such is the nature of virtue, truth, the beauty​67 of mathematics — geometry and astronomy —; and with what of these do your trappings of wealth, your necklaces, your girlish baubles, compare? With no one to see or look on, wealth becomes sightless indeed​68 and bereft of radiance. For when the rich man dines alone with his wife or intimates Bhe lets his tables of citrus-wood and golden beakers rest in peace and uses common furnishings, and his wife attends without her gold and purple and dressed in plain attire. But when a banquet — that is, a spectacle and a show — is got up and the drama of wealth brought on, "out of the ships he fetched the urns and tripods,"​69 the repositories of the lamps are given no rest, the cups are changed, the cup-bearers are made  p39 to put on new attire, nothing is left undisturbed, gold, silver, or jewelled plate, the owners thus confessing that their wealth is for others. But mastery of self is in order whether the owner dines alone or gives a sumptuous feast.


The Loeb Editor's Notes:

1 The fragment (no. 56 Rose) is based on the Euthydemus (280 B5–281 E5), where the distinction between not using wealth and using it, and between using it well and ill is drawn.

2 This distinction between what is necessary to life and what is useful for the good life is probably implied in Plutarch's "necessary" and "useful." Plutarch does not dwell on the distraction, as this might have diminished the effect of his denunciation of unnecessary and superfluous wealth. In the Politics (VII.5.1, 1326 B32‑39) Aristotle points out that the standard for "utility" of possessions can be so restricted as to lead to meanness and so expanded as to lead to luxury.

3 Cf. Plato, Republic, II.373D f., IX.591 D6‑E5 and [Andronicus] περὶ παθῶν (p19 Kreuttner; von Arnim, Stoicorum Vet. Frag. III.397, p97.18): φιλοχρηματία δὲ ἐπιθυμία ἄχρηστος ἢ (Wachsmuth wrongly excises ἄχρηστος ἢ: cf. 524F, 525BF) ἄμετρος χρημάτων. Both Aristotle (1256 B33 f.) and Plutarch (524E) quote in this connexion the same verse of Solon. The variant in Plutarch (ἀνθρώποισιν for ἀνδράσι κεῖται) is ancient (cf. Wilamowitz, Sappho und Simonides, pp270 f.): Plutarch is no doubt quoting from memory.

4 He does not ignore such uses of wealth as benefiting friends or munificence to one's country (525CD); these uses are however not stressed, but made incidental to the description of the miser's life.

5 Contrast Plato, Republic, VIII.550C‑562A, where prodigality, as producing the democratic man, is implied to be worse than love of wealth, which produces the oligarchic man, and Laws, V.743 B4. Aristotle's limiting of the meaning of "prodigal" (1119 B30 – 1120 A4) and his rating of the prodigal above the illiberal man are doubtless corrections of Plato. In 527A Plutarch says that the misuse of money is more injurious and shameful than the failure to use it. The idea is that of the Euthydemus (280 D7, E 5‑6), and doubtless came from the same lost work of Aristotle as the fragment. Here Aristotle and Plutarch had the prodigal sensualist in mind.

6 Cf. Plato, Laws, V.743 B5‑8.

7 Aspasius (In Ethica Nicomachea Quae Supersunt Comm., p102.3 f. Heylbut) on the passage interprets "hard to cure." The idea is found in Plato, Laws, V.743D: see also Cicero, Tusc. Disput. IV.9 (24). Galen (De Affectuum Dignotione, chap. x.5) makes the insatiable desire for money incurable after forty or at the utmost fifty.

8 Cf. Plato, Laws, V.743 B8. Unlike Aristotle (1119 B30–1120 A4), Plutarch does not restrict the meaning of the word "prodigal." Aristotle here is criticizing Plato's use in Republic, VIII.560 E2, 5. The source of many of Aristotle's remarks is Plato, Laws, V.742A ff. We note that Aristotle (1121 B33 πορνοβοσκοί) clears up the interpretation of βοσκημάτων αἰσχρῶν (743 D4), an expression that perplexed all commentators before Wilamowitz (Platon, II, 1919, p399).

9 Plutarch Moralia, Leipzig, 1942, pp114‑128.

10 Nouvelle Traduction de divers morceaux choisis des Oeuvres morales de Plutarque, par M. l'abbé Lambert . . . Paris, 1763.

Traduction de différents traités de morale de Plutarque, par M.***, Paris, 1777. Barbier attributes this version to the abbé Jacques Gaudin.

Thayer's Note: There are many translations of the Moralia into various languages; without mentioning all of them, it seems odd that the Loeb editor should not at least also have mentioned the English translation by Philemon Holland (1603), and the French translation by Ricard (1844), both of which include this essay.

11 Mentioned in the Life of Dion, chap. i.4 (958C). He appears to have lived in the second part of fourth century: cf. Athenaeus, XIII 584C.

12 Cf. Horace, Epist. II.2.155‑157:

"at si divitem prudentem reddere possent,

si cupidum timidumque minus te: nempe ruberes

viveret in terris te siquis avarior uno."

13 Cf. Teles, p35.9‑36 (ed. Hense2).

14 Hipponax, frag. 17 (ed. Bergk), 24B (ed. Diehl); quoted also in Mor. 1058D, 1068B.

15 Kock, Com. Att. Frag. III, p494, Adespota, no. 455.

16 Cf. Teles, p7.4 (ed. Hense2), Seneca, Ep. XXV.4 (Epicurus, Frag. 602 Usener), Favorinus, On Exile, col. 17.1‑2, Clement, Paed. II.14.5 (p164 Stählin2), and P. Wendland, "Philo und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe" (in Beiträge zur Gesch. d. griech. Philosophie und Religion, Berlin, 1895), pp9‑15.

17 Or possibly Gallic.

18 Homer, Il. XV.453. "Empty" also means "vain."

19 Cf. Xenophon, Symp. IV.37. The comparison of misers to sufferers from dropsy — who though full of fluid desire drink — was first made by Diogenes: cf. Stobaeus, Anth. III.10.45 (p419 Hense with the note), and Teles, p39.3 (ed. Hense2).

20 Cf. Horace, Epist. II.2.146‑148:

"si tibi nulla sitim finiret copia lymphae,

narrares medicis: quod quanto plura parasti

tanto plura cupis, nulline faterier audes?"

21 Cf. the fragment On Wealth, xxi.2 (vol. VII, p123 Bern.). For the idea that we can have enough of everything but wealth, cf. Aristophanes, Plutus, 188‑197. The word "insatiable" is frequently applied in Plato to wealth and the desire for it: cf. Republic, IV.442 A6‑7, VIII.562 B6, IX.578 A1; Laws, VIII.831 D4, 832 A10, IX.870 A4‑5, XI.918 D6.

22 Cf. Diels and Kranz, Frag. d. Vorsokratiker6, II, p190, Democritus, B 223.

23 Citharistes, Frag. 2 (vol. I, p108 Körte).

24 The dead friend might leave a legacy.

25 Frag. 1.71 (Anth. Lyr. Gr.3 fasc. 1 Diehl); quoted by Aristotle, Politics, I.3.9 (1256 B33) in the same connexion.

26 Cf. Epicurus, Sent. Sel. 15, Frag. 471 (ed. Usener); Philo, De Vita Cont. 17 (p48 Conybeare, with his note): and Seneca Ep. XVI.8‑9: "exiguum natura desiderat, opinio immensum . . . naturalia desideria finita sunt; ex falsa opinione nascentia ubi desinant non habent."

27 A favourite expression: see Mor. 513C and note.

28 Insatiability was the first (524D). These are peculiar to the love of money as contrasted to the desires for necessities, that is, for natural wealth.

29 Cf. Teles, p38.3 f. (ed. Hense2), and Mor. 519C‑D.

30 Cf. Teles, pp33.4‑34 (ed. Hense2); Horace, Sat. II.3.104‑110.

31 Menander, The Rejected Lover, frag. 5 (vol. I, p127 Körte).

32 Menander, The Rejected Lover, frag. 6 (vol. I, p128 Körte).

33 Cf. Plato, Republic, I.329B‑C, quoted also in Mor. 788E; cf. further the allusion in Mor. 1094E.

34 Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec.4 III, p183, frag. 108.

35 The Greek is corrupt.

36 Said of the Agrigentines by Empedocles in Diogenes Laert. VIII.63, by Plato in Aelian, Var. Hist. XII.29; of the Megarians by Diogenes in Tertullian, Apol. 39,º and without mention of the author in Jerome, Epist. 123.15. Cf. Aristotle in Diogenes Laert. V.20.

37 He was in Macedonian pay.

38 Cf. Life of Phocion, chap. i.3 (741F); Mor. 183F.

39 Cf. Mor. 235E and the proverb: "You must drain the dregs with the wine" (Aristophanes, Plutus, 1085, and Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroem. Gr. II, p212).

40 The Greek is corrupt.

41 In a somewhat similar connexion Aristotle speaks of a richly caparisoned horse (Protrepticus, frag. 37 Rose, 3 Walzer). Aristo of Chios (cf. Gnom. Vat. no. 120, ed. Sternbach) compares the rich and miserly to asses loaded with gold and silver but eating fodder. Cf. also P. Wendland, Anaximenes von Lampsakos, p94, note 1.

42 Cf. Crates, frag. 10.7 (Diels, Poet. Philos. Frag. p220).

43 The phrase recurs in the Life of Alexander, chap. xiii.2 (671B),º and Life of Demosthenes, chap. xxiii.6 (856F).

44 Cf. Theophrastus, frag. 174.8 (ed. Wimmer); Pliny, N. H. VIII.57 (222).

45 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Eur. 976, p675.

46 Cf. Aelian, Var. Hist. XII.56 and Diogenes Laert. VI.41.

47 Cf. Horace, Sat. I.1.62 with Heinze's note.

48 The money bag is worth no more than what it contains: cf. Stobaeus, Anth. IV.31.33 (p744.9‑12 Hense), and Seneca, Ep. LXXXVII.18 with Teles, p. lxxxiii (ed. Hense2).

49 kolophon is unexplained and possibly corrupt.

Thayer's Note: the critical note to the Greek reads:

οὐ κολοφών (‑ωφὼν W ϕ lac; ‑οφῶν [L illegible] C G Xυ w[?]): οὐ κόλυμβος (?); οὐ κολαφισμός? Post.

Another plausible emendation, at least to my mind, is οὐ κότταβος.

50 Euripides, Phoenissae, 368.

51 For wealth preventing the study of philosophy cf. Teles, pp45.2‑46.6 (ed. Hense2), and Seneca, Ep. XVII.3.

52 Works and Days, 705; quoted also in Mor. 100E.

53 Frag. 56 (ed. Rose); cf. Life of Pelopidas, chap. iii.2 (279B).

54 Frag. 78 (ed. Wimmer); cf. frag. 86f, from the Life of Lycurgus, chap. x.2 (45C), and Mor. 679B.

55 Cf. Mor. 226E and 679B, and Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroem. Gr. II, p253.25.

56 Cf. Plato, Symposium, 176E and Protagoras, 347C‑D.

57 Hesiod, Works and Days, 45‑46, also quoted in Mor. 157F.

58 Cf. Life of Lycurgus, chap. ix.4 (44E).

59 Cf. Life of Cato the Elder, chap. xviii (346F‑347A).

60 For the rural Dionysia of Attica cf. Aristophanes, Acharnians, 247 ff. M. P. Nilsson (Studia de Dionysiis Atticis, Lund, 1900, p91) believes that Plutarch is comparing the Attic festival, known to him through his reading, with the festival as celebrated in great cities in his own time.

Thayer's Note: For details as available on the Web, see Dionysia

61 Homer, Od. IV.74‑75.

62 Helen had once gone off with Paris.

63 Cf. Mor. 679B and Lucian, Nigrinus, 23.

64 Cf. Aristotle, frag. 664 (ed. Rose), quoted in Mor. 545A, and Plato, Republic, 580C with Shorey's note.

65 Cf. Aristotle in Diogenes Laert. V.17: "Sight gets light from the surrounding air, the soul from studies [or mathematics]."

66 Cf. Plato, Rep. 580C.

67 Cf. Plato, Gorgias, 475A.

68 Cf. Mor. 679B. Wealth is proverbially "blind," that is, no respecter of merit (cf. Plato, Republic, VIII.554B with Shorey's note and Zwicker in Pauly-Wissowa, XXI.1, coll. 1045 f.). In this paragraph — and also in Mor. 679B and the Life of Lycurgus, chap. x.3 (45C‑D) — Plutarch takes "blind" in the sense of "dark" or "unseen."

69 Homer, Il. XXIII.259. Achilles orders the cauldrons and kettles which are to be prizes at the funeral games to be taken out of storage in the ships.


Thayer's Note:

a Nonsense; I've done it myself, when I was living on the edge in my twenties, as have many other people. Surely Plutarch must have meant something else; yet I find no fault with the translation.


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