[874] The reading is very doubtful. I have followed Wyttenbach in reading τριβομένην τριβὴν ἀτελῆ.
[875] Such as that of the Danaides. So Wyttenbach.
[876] Adopting the arrangement of Wyttenbach.
[877] Compare Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 5-10.
[878] See Pausanias, vii. 17, for a sneaking kindness for Nero.
[879] See Athenæus, 687 B.
[880] Reading διὰ with Reiske.
AGAINST BORROWING MONEY.
§ i. Plato in his Laws[881] does not permit neighbours to use one another's water, unless they have first dug for themselves as far as the clay, and reached ground that is unsuitable for a well. For clay, having a rich and compact nature, absorbs the water it receives, and does not let it pass through. But he allows people that cannot make a well of their own to use their neighbour's water, for the law ought to relieve necessity. Ought there not also to be a law about money, that people should not borrow of others, nor go to other people's sources of income, until they have first examined their own resources at home, and collected, as by drops, what is necessary for their use? But nowadays from luxury and effeminacy and lavish expenditure people do not use their own resources, though they have them, but borrow from others at great interest without necessity. And what proves this very clearly is the fact that people do not lend money to the needy, but only to those who, wanting an immediate supply, bring a witness and adequate security for their credit, so that they can be in no actual necessity of borrowing.[882]
§ ii. Why pay court to the banker or trader? Borrow from your own table. You have cups, silver dishes, pots and pans. Use them in your need. Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will furnish you with earthenware instead, purer than silver, for they will not smell strongly and unpleasantly of interest, a kind of rust that daily soils your sumptuousness, nor will they remind you of the calends and the new moon, which, though the most holy of days, the money-lenders make ill-omened and hateful. For those who instead of selling them put their goods out at pawn cannot be saved even by Zeus the Protector of Property: they are ashamed to sell, they are not ashamed to pay interest on their goods when out at pawn. And yet the famous Pericles made the ornament of Athene, which weighed forty talents of fine gold, removable at will, for "so," he said, "we can use the gold in war, and at some other time restore as costly a one." So should we too in our necessities, as in a siege, not receive a garrison imposed on us by a hostile money-lender, nor allow our goods to go into slavery; but stripping our table, our bed, our carriages, and our diet, of superfluities, we should keep ourselves free, intending to restore all those things again, if we have good luck.