Do bodies projected from the petaurum,[1029] or they that come down the tight-rope, furnish better entertainment than you, who take up your constant abode in your Corycian[1030] bark, ever to be tossed up and down by Corus and by Auster? the desperate merchant of vile and stinking wares! You, who delight in importing the rich[1031] raisin from the shores of ancient Crete, and wine-flasks[1032]—Jove's own fellow-countrymen! Yet he that plants his foot with hazardous tread by that perilous barter earns his bread, and makes the rope ward off both cold and hunger. You run your desperate risk, for a thousand talents and a hundred villas. Behold the harbor! the sea swarming with tall ships! more than one half the world is now at sea. Wherever the hope of gain invites, a fleet will come; nor only bound over the Carpathian and Gætulian seas, but leaving Calpe[1033] far behind, hear Phœbus hissing in the Herculean main. A noble recompense indeed for all this toil! that you return home thence with well-stretched purse; and exulting in your swelled money-bags,[1034] brag of having seen Ocean's monsters,[1035] and young mermen!
A different madness distracts different minds. One, while in his sister's arms, is terrified at the features and torches of the Eumenides.[1036] Another, when he lashes the bull[1037], believes it is Agamemnon or Ulysses roars. What though he spare his tunic or his cloak, that man requires a keeper,[1038] who loads his ship with a cargo up to the very bulwarks, and has but a plank[1039] between himself and the wave. While the motive cause to all this hardship and this fearful risk, is silver cut up into petty legends and minute portraits. Clouds and lightning oppose his voyage. "All hands unmoor!" exclaims the owner of the corn and pepper he has bought up. "This lowering sky, that bank of sable clouds portends no ill! It is but summer lightning!"
Unhappy wretch! perchance that selfsame night he will be borne down, overwhelmed with shivering timbers and the surge, and clutch his purse with his left hand and his teeth. And he, to whose covetous desires[1040] but lately not all the gold sufficed which Tagus[1041] or Pactolus[1042] rolls down in its ruddy sand, must now be content with a few rags to cover his nakedness, and a scanty morsel, while as a "poor shipwrecked mariner" he begs for pence, and maintains himself by his painting of the storm.[1043]
Yet, what is earned by hardships great as these, involves still greater care and fear to keep. Wretched, indeed, is the guardianship[1044] of a large fortune.
Licinus,[1045] rolling in wealth, bids his whole regiment of slaves mount guard with leathern buckets[1046] all in rows; in dread alarm for his amber, and his statues, and his Phrygian marble,[1047] and his ivory, and massive tortoise-shell.
The tub of the naked Cynic[1048] does not catch fire! If you smash it, another home will be built by to-morrow, or else the same will stand, if soldered with a little lead. Alexander felt, when he saw in that tub its great inhabitant, how much more really happy was he who coveted nothing, than he who aimed at gaining to himself the whole world; doomed to suffer perils equivalent to the exploits he achieved.
Had we but foresight, thou, Fortune, wouldst have no divinity.[1049] It is we that make thee a goddess! Yet if any one were to consult me what proportion of income is sufficient, I will tell you. Just as much as thirst and hunger[1050] and cold require; as much as satisfied you, Epicurus,[1051] in your little garden! as much as the home of Socrates contained before. Nature never gives one lesson, and philosophy another. Do I seem to bind you down to too strict examples? Then throw in something to suit our present manners. Make up the sum[1052] which Otho's law thinks worthy of the Fourteen Rows.
If this make you contract your brows, and put out your lip, then take two knights' estate, make it the three Four-hundred![1053] If I have not yet filled your lap, but still it gapes for more, then neither Crœsus' wealth nor the realms of Persia will ever satisfy you. No! nor even Narcissus'[1054] wealth! on whom Claudius Cæsar lavished all, and whose behest he obeyed, when bidden even to kill his wife.