Stoic Paradoxes
Stoic Paradoxes Hellenistic Cicero, Marcus Tullius LatinI have often observed, Brutus, that your uncle Cato, when delivering his opinion in the Senate, would handle weighty themes drawn from philosophy, far removed as they are from this forensic and public usage of ours, and yet by his eloquence he managed nonetheless to make even those doctrines seem credible to the people.
And this is a greater achievement in him than it would be in you or in me, because we make more use of that kind of philosophy which has given birth to fluency of speech, and in which the things said do not differ much from popular opinion; whereas Cato, in my judgment a perfect Stoic, both holds views that are by no means approved among the crowd, and belongs to that school which pursues no flower of oratory and does not amplify its argument, but accomplishes what it has set out to prove by minute little questions, as it were by pin-pricks.
But nothing is so incredible that it cannot be made plausible by speaking, nothing so rough and uncultivated that it does not take on brilliance from oratory and become, as it were, refined. Since I held this view, I have acted with even more boldness than the man of whom I speak: for Cato is accustomed to discuss in the Stoic manner only such subjects as greatness of soul, self-restraint, death, every form of the praise of virtue, the immortal gods, and love of one's country, employing the ornaments of oratory; whereas I have, by way of amusement, cast into the form of commonplaces those very propositions which the Stoics scarcely uphold even in their lecture-halls and at their leisure.
And because these propositions are astonishing and run counter to everyone's opinion — they are even called by the Stoics themselves paradoxa — I wished to test whether they could be brought out into the light, that is, into the forum, and stated in such a way as to win assent, or whether learned discourse is one thing and popular discourse another; and I have written out these themes the more gladly because the propositions which they call paradoxa seem to me to be in the highest degree Socratic, and by far the truest of all.
You will receive, then, this little work, composed by lamplight during these now shorter nights — since that earlier gift of my longer vigils has already appeared under your name — and you will taste the kind of exercises which I have been accustomed to practise, when I transfer to this oratorical manner of ours the matters that are discussed in the schools as abstract theses. Yet I make no demand that you set this work down to my credit; for it is not such as could be placed upon the citadel, like that Minerva of Phidias, but only such that it may be evident it came from the same workshop.
PARADOX I — That the honourable is the only good.
I am afraid that to some of you this discourse may seem drawn from the disputations of the Socratics rather than from my own conviction; yet I will say what I think, and I will say it more briefly than so great a matter can be stated. Never, by Hercules, have I reckoned the moneys of those men, nor their splendid mansions, nor their wealth and power, nor those pleasures by which they are most enslaved, to be among the things that are good or worth seeking; for I saw that men who overflowed with these very things still longed most for the very things they had in abundance. For the thirst of desire is never filled nor satisfied; and those who possess such things are tormented not only by the craving to increase them but also by the fear of losing them.
In this matter I often miss the good sense of those most temperate men, our ancestors, who thought that these weak and changeable appendages of money ought to be called by the word "goods," when in fact and in their deeds they judged far otherwise. Can a thing that is good be an evil to anyone, or can anyone, in the midst of an abundance of good things, fail himself to be good? Yet we see that all those things are such that the wicked possess them and the upright lack them.
For this reason, let anyone laugh who wishes; true reason will nonetheless prevail with me more than the opinion of the crowd. I shall never say that a man has lost his goods if he has lost his cattle or his furniture, and I shall often praise that wise man — Bias, I think, who is counted among the Seven. When the enemy had captured his native city of Priene, and the rest were fleeing in such a way as to carry off much of their property, he was advised by someone to do the same. "Why, so I do," he said; "for I carry all that is mine with me."
He did not consider even his own the playthings of fortune which we actually call goods. What, then, someone will ask, is good? If that is truly said to be well done which is done rightly and honourably and with virtue, then I hold that only that which is right and honourable and done with virtue is good.
But these things may seem rather tiresome when they are argued at leisure; they are illustrated by the lives and deeds of the greatest men — these matters which, when discussed in words, seem to be debated more subtly than is needed. For I ask you: do those who left us this commonwealth so gloriously founded seem to have given any thought to silver for the sake of greed, or to pleasant retreats for the sake of delight, or to furnishings for the sake of luxury, or to banquets for the sake of pleasures? Set before your eyes each one of our kings.
Will you begin with Romulus? Or, after the founding of the free state, with those very men who set it free? By what steps, pray, did Romulus ascend to heaven — by those things which these men call goods, or by his exploits and virtues? And what of Numa Pompilius — do we suppose that his earthenware bowls and little clay urns were less pleasing to the immortal gods than the embossed dishes of the Salii? I pass over the rest, for they are all equal among themselves, except for Tarquin the Proud.
If anyone should ask Brutus what he aimed at in liberating his country, and likewise the other partners in that design — what they had in view, what they pursued — would any be found who could be supposed to have set before himself pleasure, or riches, or anything else at all beyond the duty of a brave and great-souled man? What drove Gaius Mucius against the life of Porsenna, with no hope of his own safety? What force held Cocles alone upon the bridge against all the forces of the enemy? What sent the father Decius, and the son, with lives devoted to death, into the armed ranks of the foe? What did the self-restraint of Gaius Fabricius, what did the frugal fare of Manius Curius, have in view? What did the two bulwarks of the Punic War, Gnaeus and Publius Scipio, who thought to block the coming of the Carthaginians with their own bodies? What of Africanus the elder? What of the younger? What of Cato, born in the years between their generations? What of countless others — for we abound in examples from our own land? Did any of them suppose that anything in life was to be sought except what seemed praiseworthy and glorious?
Let those scoffers at this discourse and this opinion come forward, then, and let them now judge for themselves whether they would rather be like one of these men who abound in marble halls gleaming with ivory and gold, in statues, in paintings, in chased gold and silver, in Corinthian works — or like Gaius Fabricius, who had none of these things and wished to have none.
And as for these possessions, which are carried now this way, now that, men are easily brought to deny that they are among the good things; but this one tenet they cling to with skill and defend with care: that pleasure is the highest good — a saying which to me seems to be the voice of cattle, not of men. When either a god, or, so to speak, Nature the mother of all things, has given you a soul than which nothing is more excellent or more divine, will you so debase and prostrate yourself as to think there is no difference between you and some four-footed beast? Is anything good which does not make better the one who possesses it?
For the more each man shares in the good, the more praiseworthy he is, and there is no good of which the one who has it cannot honourably boast. But which of these qualities belongs to pleasure? Does it make a man better or more praiseworthy? Or does anyone exalt himself by boasting and proclamation in the gaining of pleasures? And yet if pleasure, which is defended by the patronage of so many, is not to be reckoned among good things, and if the greater it is the more it dislodges the mind from its seat and station, then surely to live well and happily is nothing other than to live honourably and rightly.
PARADOX II — That virtue is sufficient of itself for a happy life.
Nor, indeed, have I ever thought Marcus Regulus wretched, or unhappy, or miserable; for it was not his greatness of soul that was tortured by the Carthaginians, nor his dignity, nor his good faith, nor his steadfastness, nor any virtue, nor, in short, his very soul, which, guarded by the protection of so many virtues and attended by so great a retinue, certainly could not itself be captured even when his body was taken. And we have seen Gaius Marius, who seemed to me, in prosperity, one of the most fortunate of men, and in adversity one of the greatest — and nothing more blessed than that can fall to a mortal.
You do not know, madman, you do not know how great is the strength that virtue possesses; you merely appropriate the name of virtue, but are ignorant of its true power. No one can fail to be supremely happy who is wholly self-dependent and who places all that is his own in himself alone. But for the man whose every hope and calculation and design hangs upon fortune, nothing can be certain, nothing that he may count on as remaining his for a single day. Such a man you may terrify, if you find one, with those threats of death or exile of yours; but as for me, whatever befalls me in so thankless a state will have come to me without even my protesting, far less my resisting. For why did I labour, or what did I accomplish, or upon what did my cares and reflections keep their vigils, if I produced nothing of the kind, attained nothing such, that I should stand in a condition which neither the recklessness of fortune nor the malice of enemies could shake? Do you threaten me with death,
as though I must depart altogether from among men — or with exile, as though I must withdraw from among the wicked? Death is terrible to those with whom all things are extinguished at the close of life, not to those whose praise cannot die; and exile is terrible to those for whom a place of habitation is, as it were, marked out, not to those who reckon the whole circle of the earth to be one city. All miseries, all distresses press upon you, who think yourself happy and flourishing; lusts torment you; you are racked day and night, you for whom what you have is not enough, and who fear that very thing will not be lasting; the consciousness of your evil deeds goads you; the dread of trials and laws unmans you; wherever you have looked, your own wrongs, like Furies, rise up to meet you and do not let you draw a free breath.
Wherefore, just as it can be well with no man who is wicked and foolish and base, so no good and wise and brave man can be wretched; nor, indeed, is the life unworthy of praise of one whose virtue and character are to be praised, nor again is a life to be shunned which is to be praised — and it would be a thing to shun, if it were wretched. For this reason, whatever is praiseworthy ought rightly to seem also happy and flourishing and worth seeking.
PARADOX III — That offences are equal, and right actions equal.
"It is a small matter," he says. But the fault is great; for offences are to be measured not by the outcomes of events but by the vices of men. The thing in which one offends may be greater in one case and less in another; but the very act of offending, however you turn it, is one and the same. Whether a pilot wreck a ship laden with gold or a ship laden with straw, there is some difference in the cargo, but none in the pilot's incompetence. If lust has slipped into an unknown woman, the harm extends to fewer people than if a man had been wanton with some highborn and noble maiden; yet he has offended none the less, if indeed to offend is, as it were, to cross a line — and once you have done this, the fault is committed: how far you advance, once you have crossed it, does nothing to increase the guilt of the crossing. Surely no one is permitted to offend; and what is not permitted is held fast by this one thing alone, that it is proved to be not permitted; and if this can never become greater or less — since the offence lies in this, that it was not permitted, which is always one and the same — then the offences that arise from it must necessarily be equal.
But if the virtues are equal among themselves, the vices too must necessarily be equal; and that the virtues are equal — that no one can be made better than a good man, or more temperate than a temperate man, or braver than a brave man, or wiser than a wise man — can very easily be perceived. Or will you call a man good who has returned a deposit committed to him without any witness, when he could have made a profit of ten pounds of gold with impunity, if the same man would not do the same in the case of ten thousand? Or call a man temperate who has restrained himself in some one lust but given way in another?
Virtue is single, consonant with reason and a constant perpetuity; nothing can be added to it to make it more virtue, nothing taken away while the name of virtue remains. For indeed, if good deeds are right deeds, and nothing is more right than the right, then assuredly nothing better than the good can be found either. It follows, therefore, that vices too are equal, since the distortions of the soul are rightly called vices. And since the virtues are equal, right actions, because they proceed from the virtues, ought to be equal; and likewise offences, because they flow from vices, must necessarily be equal.
"You take this," he says, "from the philosophers." I was afraid you would say I took it from the pimps. "Socrates used to argue in that way." Well said, by Hercules; for that man is recorded by tradition to have been learned and wise. But still I ask you — since we are contending with words, not with fists — ought we to inquire what porters and day-labourers have felt, or what the most learned of men have felt? Especially since no opinion could be found more true, or even more useful to human life, than this one. For what power is there that would keep men back from all wickedness more than if they came to feel that there is no distinction among offences — that they offend equally whether they lay hands on private men or on magistrates — that into whatever house they have brought outrage, the stain of lust is the same?
"Does it then make no difference" — for someone will say this — "whether a man kill his father or kill a slave?" If you set these cases down bare, I could not easily judge of what kind they are. If to deprive a father of life is in itself a crime, then the Saguntines, who chose that their parents should die free rather than live as slaves, were parricides; therefore life can sometimes be taken from a parent without crime, and cannot often be taken from a slave without wrong. The cause, then, and not the nature of the deed, draws the distinction; and since, to whichever cause it has attached itself, the act becomes the weightier, then, if it is joined to both, the offences must necessarily become equal.
There is, however, this difference: that in the killing of a slave, if it is done wrongfully, the offence is committed once, whereas in the violation of a father's life many offences are committed: he who begot you is violated, he who reared you, he who taught you, he who established you in your place and home and in the commonwealth; by the multitude of offences the deed stands out, and on that account is worthy of a greater penalty. But in life we ought to consider not what penalty attaches to each offence, but how far each man is permitted to go: whatever ought not to be done we must reckon a crime, whatever is not permitted we must hold an abomination. "Even in the smallest matters?" Even so — if indeed we cannot fix a limit to circumstances, we can keep a limit in our souls.
If an actor has moved a little out of time, or if a verse has been pronounced one syllable too short or too long, he is hissed and driven from the stage; and will you, in life, which ought to be more measured than any gesture and more harmonious than any verse, say that you have offended only by a syllable? I do not listen to a poet in trifles; and in the fellowship of life shall I listen to a citizen who measures out his offences by the finger? Suppose, if you like, that they really are slighter — how can they be made to seem lighter, when whatever offence is committed is committed by a disturbance of reason and order, and once reason and order have been disturbed, nothing can be added by which a greater offence might seem possible?
PARADOX IV — That every fool is mad.
You, indeed, I declare to be not foolish, as you often are, nor wicked, as you always are, but raving mad. * * * * * * to be unconquered in the necessities of life * * he can. Will the soul of the wise man be conquered and stormed — fenced about as it is, as with walls, by greatness of counsel, by endurance of human fortunes, by contempt of fortune, in short by all the virtues — that soul which cannot even be driven from the state? For what is a state? Is it every gathering, even of savage and brutish men? Is it even every multitude of runaways and brigands herded together into one place? Surely you will deny it. There was, then, no state at that time, when the laws had no force in it, when the courts lay prostrate, when the custom of the fathers had perished, when, the magistrates having been driven out by the sword, the very name of the Senate had no place in the commonwealth; that concourse of robbers, that brigandage established in the forum under your leadership, and the remnants of the conspiracy turned from the frenzies of Catiline to your own crime and madness — these were no state.
And so I was not driven from a state, which had no existence; I was summoned into a state, when there was in the commonwealth a consul — who then was none — when there was a senate — which then had perished — when there was a free consent of the people, and the memory of law and equity, which are the bonds of a state, had been recovered. And see how I despised those weapons of your brigandage: the abominable wrong hurled and let loose against me by you I always counted; but I never thought that it reached me, unless perhaps you imagined, when you were pulling down my walls or carrying your wicked torches against my house, that something of mine was falling or going up in flames.
Nothing is mine, nor any man's, which can be carried off, snatched away, or lost. If you had robbed me of the divine consciousness of my own soul — that by my cares, my vigils, my counsels the commonwealth stands, in the teeth of your bitterest opposition — if you had blotted out the immortal memory of this everlasting service; still more, if you had robbed me of that mind from which these counsels flowed — then I would confess that I had received a wrong. But since you neither did this nor could do it, your wrong gave me a glorious return, not a calamitous departure. Therefore I was always a citizen, and most of all at that time when the Senate was commending my safety to foreign nations as that of an excellent citizen; while you are not a citizen even now — unless perhaps the same man can be both an enemy and a citizen. Or do you distinguish a citizen from an enemy by birth and place, and not by spirit and deeds?
You wrought slaughter in the forum, you held the temples with armed brigands, you set fire to the houses of private men and to sacred shrines: why was Spartacus an enemy, if you are a citizen? And can you be a citizen, on whose account the state for a time ceased to exist? And do you call me by your own name, when all men think that the commonwealth went into exile at my departure? Will you never, most insane of men, look about you? Will you never consider either what you do or what you say? Do you not know that exile is the penalty of crimes, and that my journey was undertaken on account of the most glorious deeds done by me?
All the criminal and impious men whose leader you profess to be, whom the laws would have visited with exile, are exiles, even if they have not changed their abode. Or when all the laws bid you be an exile, will you not be an exile? Is not he to be called an exile who has gone about armed with a weapon? Your dagger was caught before the Senate. He who has slain a man? You have slain very many. He who has caused a conflagration? The temple of the Nymphs was burned down by your hand. He who has seized the temples? You pitched your camp in the forum.
But why do I cite the common laws, by all of which you are an exile? Your closest friend brought in a special law concerning you, that, if you had entered the secret rites of the Good Goddess, you should go into exile — and you are even accustomed to boast that you did so. How then, cast into exile by so many laws, do you not shudder at the name of exile? "I am at Rome," he says. Yes, and you were in the secret place too. It is not, then, where each man happens to be that he will hold the right of that place, if it is not lawful for him by the laws to be there.
PARADOX V — That every wise man is free, and every fool a slave.
Let this man, then, be praised as a commander, or even be so called, or be thought worthy of the name! In what way, pray, or over what free man will he hold command, when he cannot command his own desires? Let him first curb his lusts, despise pleasures, restrain his anger, check his greed, repel the other blemishes of the soul; then let him begin to command others, when he has himself ceased to obey those most base masters, disgrace and shame: but so long as he obeys them, he is to be reckoned not only no commander, but no free man at all. For this has been admirably maintained by the most learned men — whose authority I would not invoke if I had to deliver this discourse before rustics; but since I am speaking before men of the greatest discernment, to whom these things are not unheard of, why should I pretend that I have wasted whatever pains I have spent on these studies? — it has been said, then, by the most erudite men, that no one is free except the wise man.
For what is freedom? The power of living as you will. Who, then, lives as he wills, except the man who lives rightly, who rejoices in his duty, for whom the path of life has been considered and provided beforehand; who obeys the laws not out of fear, but follows and reveres them because he judges that course to be most salutary; who says nothing, does nothing, in short thinks nothing except gladly and freely; whose every plan and every undertaking proceeds from himself and is referred back to himself, and for whom there is nothing that has more weight than his own will and judgment? To him, indeed, even Fortune herself, who is said to have the greatest power, gives way, if, as the wise poet said, she is shaped for each man by his own character. To the wise man alone, then, does this fall: that he does nothing against his will, nothing in grief, nothing under compulsion.
And although this must be discussed at greater length to show that it is so, yet this much is both brief and to be granted: that no one is free unless he is so disposed. All the wicked, therefore, are slaves — and this is no more startling and astonishing in fact than in the saying of it. For they do not say that such men are slaves in the sense in which chattels are, which have been made the property of their owners by formal sale or by some right of civil law; but if slavery is, as it is, the obedience of a soul broken and abject and bereft of its own choice, who would deny that all the inconstant, all the covetous, all the wicked in short, are slaves?
Is that man free to me, over whom a woman holds command? who lays down the law to him, dictates, orders, forbids whatever she pleases? who can refuse her nothing when she commands, dares to decline nothing? She demands — he must give; she calls — he must come; she casts him out — he must go; she threatens — he must be terrified. Such a man I think ought to be called not merely a slave, but the most worthless of slaves, even if he was born into the most distinguished household. And in equal folly are those whom statues, paintings, chased silver, Corinthian works, and magnificent buildings delight beyond all measure. "But we are," he says, "the leading men of the state." Why, you are not even the leading men among your own fellow-slaves.
But just as in a great household there are certain slaves more elegant — as they think themselves — yet slaves all the same, such as the hall-stewards, while those who handle these things, who polish, anoint, sweep, and sprinkle, hold no very honourable rank of servitude — so in the state, those who have surrendered themselves to the desires for such things hold almost the lowest rank of slavery itself. "I have waged great wars," he says, "I have held great commands and provinces." Then bear a soul worthy of praise: a painting of Aëtion holds you stupefied, or some statue of Polyclitus; I leave aside where you got it and how you hold it; when I see you gazing, marvelling, raising shouts, I judge you to be the slave of every kind of frivolity.
"Are not those things, then, charming?" They are; for we too have cultivated eyes. But, I beg you, let them be held to be graceful in such a way as to be the playthings of children, not the chains of men. For what do you think? If Lucius Mummius were to see one of these men handling some little Corinthian pot with the keenest delight — he who had despised the whole of Corinth — would he judge him an excellent citizen or a diligent hall-steward? Let Manius Curius come to life again, or some one of those men in whose villa and home there was nothing splendid, nothing ornate except themselves, and let him see a man who has enjoyed the highest favours of the people fishing little bearded mullets out of his pond and fingering them and boasting of his store of lampreys — would he not judge this man so very a slave that he would not think him worthy of any larger task even in the household?
Or is the slavery of those men in doubt who, in their greed for gain, refuse no condition of the harshest servitude? What injustice does the hope of an inheritance not undertake in its serving? Whose nod does it not watch — the nod of some rich and childless old man? It speaks to please him, does whatever it is bidden, dances attendance, sits beside him, brings him gifts. Which of these is the act of a free man?
Which, indeed, is not the act of a slave who is no idler? And then that desire — which seems somewhat more liberal — for honour, for power, for provinces: how harsh a mistress it is, how imperious, how violent! It compelled men who thought themselves of the highest rank to be the slaves of Cethegus, a man by no means of the best repute — to send him gifts, to come to his house by night, to entreat, in short to supplicate. What is slavery, if this can be reckoned freedom? Again, when the mastery of desire has passed away and another master has arisen out of the consciousness of one's offences — fear — how wretched, how harsh is that slavery! One must be the slave of rather talkative young men; all who seem to know anything are feared like masters; and the judge — how great a mastery he holds, with what dread he afflicts the guilty! And is not all fear slavery?
What weight, then, has that copious rather than wise utterance of the most eloquent of men, Lucius Crassus: "Rescue us from slavery"? What is this slavery, in a man so illustrious and so noble? All the timidity of a soul that is weak and lowly and broken is slavery. "Do not suffer us to be the slaves of anyone." Does he wish to be claimed into freedom? By no means; for what does he add? "Except of all of you collectively." He wishes to change his master, not to be free. "Of you, whose slaves we both can and ought to be." But we, indeed, if we are of a lofty and exalted soul and built up by the virtues, neither ought nor can be slaves: do you say that you can, since indeed you can; but do not say that you ought, since no one owes anything except what it is shameful not to render. But enough of this. Let that man see how he can be a commander, when reason and truth itself convict him of being not even free.
PARADOX VI — That only the wise man is rich.
What is this insolent ostentation in recounting your money? Are you the only rich man? Immortal gods! Am I not to rejoice that I have heard something and learned something? Are you the only rich man? What if you are not even rich? What if you are even poor? For whom do we understand to be rich, or to what kind of man do we apply this word? In my view, to the man who has so great a possession that he is easily content for living in a liberal manner, who seeks nothing, craves nothing, wishes for nothing more.
It is your own soul that ought to judge you rich, not the talk of men, nor your possessions. It thinks that it lacks nothing, cares for nothing more, is sated or even content with its money: I grant it — he is rich. But if, through greed of money, you think no gain shameful — though to that order of men none can even be honourable — if every day you defraud, deceive, demand, bargain, carry off, snatch away; if you despoil allies, plunder the treasury, if you do not even wait for the wills of your friends but yourself forge them — are these the signs of a man with abundance, or of one in want?
It is a man's soul, not his money-chest, that is wont to be called rich. Though that chest be full, so long as I see you empty, I shall not think you rich; for men measure the standard of riches by how much is enough for each. Does a man have a daughter? He has need of money; two? of more; more daughters? of yet more; if, as they say of Danaus, there are fifty daughters, then so many dowries call for a great sum of money: for the standard of riches is fitted, as I said before, to how much each man needs. He, then, who has not many daughters but innumerable desires, which in a short time can drain away the greatest resources — how shall I call this man rich, when he himself feels that he is in want?
Many have heard you say that no one is rich unless he can maintain an army out of his own revenues, which the Roman people, with all its vast tributes, has long now scarcely been able to do: therefore, on this principle, you will never be rich until so much is yielded to you from your possessions that with it you can keep up six legions and great auxiliaries of horse and foot. You confess, then, that you are not rich, since so much is wanting to you to fill up what you long for. And so you have never concealed that poverty of yours — or rather that need and beggary.
For just as we understand that those who seek wealth honourably, by carrying on trade, by hiring out work, by taking public contracts, have need of acquiring it, so let a man consider one who sees in your house the herds of accusers and informers banded together alike; who sees guilty and wealthy defendants, with you as their agent, contriving the corruption of the court; who sees your bargainings for fees in your advocacies, the † interceptions of money in the coalitions of candidates, the dispatchings of freedmen to fleece and plunder the provinces; who recalls the expulsions of neighbours, the brigandage in the fields, the partnerships with slaves, freedmen, and clients, the vacant estates, the proscriptions of the wealthy, the disasters of the towns, that harvest of Sulla's time, the forged wills, the men so many done away with, in short all things put up for sale — edict, decree, his own and another's vote, forum, house, voice, silence: who would not think that such a man confesses that he has need of acquiring? And of a man who has need of acquiring, who would ever truly say that he is rich?
For the fruit of riches lies in abundance, and abundance is declared by a sufficiency and a plenty of things: and since you will never attain this, you will never be rich at all. But since you despise my money — and rightly, for it is, by popular reckoning, moderate, by yours, nothing, by my own, modest — I shall be silent about myself and speak of the matter itself.
If we are to assess and value property, which, pray, shall we value the more highly — the money of Pyrrhus, which he was offering to Fabricius, or the self-restraint of Fabricius, who refused that money? The gold of the Samnites, or the answer of Manius Curius? The inheritance of Lucius Paulus, or the generosity of Africanus, who yielded his own share of that inheritance to his brother Quintus Maximus? These things, surely, which belong to the highest virtues, are to be valued more highly than those which belong to money. Who, then — if indeed each man is to be held the richest in proportion as he possesses what is of the greatest worth — would doubt that riches lie in virtue? Since no possession, no abundance of gold and silver, is to be valued more highly than virtue.
O immortal gods! Men do not understand how great a revenue thrift is. For I come now to the extravagant, and leave that money-grubber aside. He takes from his estates six hundred thousand sesterces, I a hundred thousand from mine; yet for him, who makes the ceilings of his villas gilded and his floors of marble, and who craves statues, paintings, furniture, and clothing without end, that revenue is scanty not only for his expenditure but even for his interest payments; whereas from my slender income, when expenses are deducted, there will even be something left over from desire. Which, then, is the richer — he who lacks, or he who has a surplus? he who is in want, or he who has abundance? he whose possession, the greater it is, the more it requires for its own protection — or that which sustains itself by its own strength?
But why do I speak of myself, who, through the fault of the times and of men's characters, perhaps am myself to some degree caught up in the error of this age? Was Manius Manilius, within the memory of our fathers — not to be forever talking of the Curii and the Luscini — poor, after all? For he had a little house in the Carinae and a farm at Labicum. Are we, then, richer, who have more? Would that we were! But the standard of money is bounded not by the valuation of the census, but by one's manner of living and culture.
Not to be covetous is money; not to be a buyer is revenue; but to be content with one's own possessions is the greatest and surest of riches. For indeed, if those shrewd appraisers of things set a high value on certain meadows and plots of ground, because that kind of possession can least, as it were, be damaged, at how great a price is virtue to be valued, which can neither be snatched away nor stolen, which is lost neither by shipwreck nor by fire, and is changed neither by the disturbance of storms nor of times!
Those who are endowed with this are the only rich men. For they alone possess things both fruitful and everlasting, and they alone — which is the peculiar mark of riches — are content with their own, think that what they have is enough, crave nothing, lack nothing, feel that nothing is wanting to them, miss nothing; whereas the wicked and the greedy, since they hold possessions uncertain and set at the mercy of chance, and always crave more, and since not one of them has yet been found for whom what he had was enough, must be reckoned not merely as not wealthy and rich, but even as needy and poor.