That we Ought not to Borrow (7)

The well-known Roman Rutilius went up to Musonius and said, Musonius, Zeus the Saviour, whom you imitate and emulate, is no borrower; and Musonius answered with a smile, He is no lender, either. For Rutilius, who was himself a lender, was finding fault with Musonius for borrowing. This is an example of the vanity of the Stoics; for why should you bring in Zeus the Saviour, when you can use as examples things that are here before your eyes? Swallows do not borrow, ants do not borrow, creatures upon which nature has bestowed neither hands, reason, nor art; but men, with their superior intellect, support through their ingenuity horses, dogs, partridges, hares, and jackdaws in addition to themselves. Why, then, have you come to the poor opinion of yourself, that you are less

persuasive than a jackdaw, more dumb than a partridge, less well-born than a dog, so that you can obtain no help from any human being by waiting on him, entertaining him, guarding him, or fighting for him? Do you not see how many opportunities are offered on land and on the sea?

Lo, even Miccylus I beheld,[*]

says Crates,

Carding the wool, and his wife too carding the wool along with him,

Striving in terrible conflict to ’scape from the onslaught of famine.

King Antigonus asked Cleanthes, when he met him in Athens after not seeing him for a while, Are you still grinding corn, Cleanthes? Yes, Your Majesty, he replied; I do it in order not to be a deserter from Zeno’s instruction, nor from philosophy either. What a great spirit the man had who came from the mill and the kneading-trough, and with the hand which ground the flour and baked the bread wrote about the gods, the moon, the stars, and the sun! But to us such labours seem slavish. And therefore, in order to be free, we contract debts and pay court to men who are ruiners of homes, we act as bodyguard to them, dine them, make them presents, and pay them tribute, not because of our poverty (for no one lends to poor men), but because of our extravagance. For if we were content with the necessaries of life, the race of money-lenders would be as non-existent as that of Centaurs and Gorgons; but luxury produced money-lenders just as it did goldsmiths, silversmiths, perfumers, and dyers in gay colours; for our debts are incurred, not to pay for bread or wine, but for country-seats, slaves, mules, banquet-halls, and tables, and because we give shows to the cities with unrestrained expenditure, contending in fruitless and thankless rivalries. But the man who is once involved remains a debtor all his life, exchanging, like a horse that has once been bridled, one rider for another. And there is no escape to those former pastures and meadows, but they wander like the spirits described by Empedocles, who have been expelled by the gods and thrown out from heaven:

Into the waves of the sea they are driv’n by the might of the ether;

Then on the floor of the earth the sea vomits them; earth then ejects them

Into the untiring sun’s rays; and he hurls them to eddying ether.[*]

And so one after another takes over[*] the borrower, first a usurer or broker of Corinth, then one of Patrae, then an Athenian, until, attacked on all sides by all of them, he is dissolved and chopped up into the small change of interest payments. For just as a man who has fallen into the mire must either get up or stay where he is, but he who turns and rolls over covers his wet and drenched person with more dirt; so in their transfers and changes of loans, by assuming additional interest payments and plastering themselves with them,[*] they weigh themselves down more and more; and they are much like persons ill with cholera, who do not accept treatment, but vomit up the prescribed medicine and then continue constantly to collect more disease. Similarly these borrowers refuse to be purged, and always, at every season of the year, when painfully and with convulsions they cough up the interest while another payment immediately accrues and presses upon them, they suffer a fresh attack of nausea and headache. What they ought to do is to get rid of debts and become healthy and free again.