Trinummus: The Three Pieces of Money (98-150)

If you have anything to say, I am waiting for it.

Then, first of all, you are badly spoken of in general conversation by the public.

Your fellow-citizens are calling you greedy of grovelling gain[*]; and then, again, there are others who nickname you a vulture[*], and say that you care but little whether you devour enemies or fellow-citizens. Since I have heard these things said against you, I have, to my misery, been sadly agitated.

It is, and it is not, in my power, Megaronides:

as to their saying this, that is not in my power; as to their saying this deservedly, that is in my power.

Was this Charmides a friend of yours?

He both is and he was. That you may believe it to be so, I will tell you a circumstance as a proof. For after this son of his had squandered away his fortune, and he saw himself being reduced to poverty,

and that his daughter was grown up a young woman, and that she who was both her mother and his own wife was dead; as he himself was about to go hence to Seleueia[*] he committed to my charge the maiden his daughter, and all his property, and that profligate son.

These, I think, he would not have entrusted to me if he had been unfriendly to me.

What say you as to the young man, who you see to be thus profligate, and who has been entrusted to your care and confidence? Why do you not reform him? Why do you not train him to frugal habits? It would have been somewhat more just for you to give attention to that matter,

if you could have somehow made him a better man, and not for you yourself to be a party to the same disreputable conduct, and share your dishonour with his disgrace?

What have I done?

That which a bad man would do.

That is no name of mine.

Have you not bought this house from that young man? (A pause.) Why are you silent?

This, where you yourself are now living.

I did buy it, and I gave the money for it,—forty minae[*], to the young man himself, into his own hand.

You gave the money, do you say?

’Twas done; and I am not sorry ’twas done.

I’ faith—a young man committed to untrusty keeping. Have you not by these means given him a sword with which to slay himself?

For, prithee, what else is it, your giving ready money to a young man who loves women, and weak in intellect, with which to complete his edifice of folly which he had already commenced?

Ought I not to have paid him the money?

You ought not to have paid him; nor ought you either to have bought anything of or sold anything to him;

nor should you have provided him with the means of becoming worse. Have you not taken in the person who was entrusted to you? Have you not driven out of his house the man who entrusted him to you? By my faith, a pretty trust, and a faithful guardianship! Leave him to take care of himself; he would manage his own affairs much better.

You overpower me, Megaronides, with your accusations, in a manner so strange, that what was privately entrusted to my secrecy, fidelity, and constancy, for me to tell it to no one, nor make it public, the same I am now compelled to entrust to you.

Whatever you shall entrust to me, you shall take up the same where you have laid it down.

Look round you, then, that no overlooker may be near us (MEGARONIDES looks on every side); and look around every now and then, I beg of you.

I am listening if you have aught to say.

If you will be silent, I will speak. At the time when Charmides set out hence for foreign parts,

he showed me a treasure in this house, here in a certain closet— (He starts as if he hears a noise.) But do look around.