De vitando aere alieno

This brief essay consists of repeated warnings, enlivened by numerous examples and anecdotes, against running into debt. There is nothing to indicate that it was delivered as a lecture, but it would probably have been interesting to an audience of Plutarch’s time, and may have been written with an audience in mind. It contains no profound or original doctrines, but is simply an agreeable presentation of somewhat commonplace thoughts - rather learned, rather literary, rather sensible, and, to the modern reader, rather amusing.

Plato in the Laws[*](Plato, Laws, 844 b.) forbids people to take any water from a neighbour’s land unless they have dug on their own land down to a layer of potter’s clay, as it is called, and found that the place will not produce a flow of water; for the potter’s clay, being by nature oily and solid, holds back the water that reaches it and does not let it through; but, he says, those shall have a share of others’ water who cannot get any of their own, for the law gives relief to those in want. Ought there not, then, to be a law about money also, that people shall not borrow from others or resort to other people’s springs who have not first examined their resources at home and brought together, as from little trickles, what is useful and necessary to themselves? But now, because of their luxury and effeminacy or their extravagance, they make no use of what is their own, though they possess it, but take from others at a high rate of interest, though they have no need of doing so. There is strong evidence of this: loans are not made to people in need, but to those who wish to acquire some superfluity for themselves. And a man produces a witness and a surety to aver that,

Why do you pay court to the banker or broker? Borrow of your own table[*](The Greek word means bank, as well as table.); you have drinking-cups, silver dishes, bonbonnières. Pawn these for your needs. Beautiful Aulis or Tenedos will adorn your table in their stead with pottery that is cleaner than the silver ware; it does not have the heavy, disagreeable smell of interest defiling every day like rust the surface of your extravagance, nor will it keep reminding you of the first of the month and the new moon,[*](That interest was due on the first of the month is amply attested. Cf. Aristophanes, Clouds, 17, 1134, Horace, Satires, i. 3. 87 (tristes kalendae), for the detestation of the day.) which, though really the holiest day of the month, the money-lenders have made accursed and detested. For as to those who, instead of selling their belongings, give them as security, not even the God of Property could save them. They are ashamed to accept a price, but not ashamed to pay interest on what is their own. And yet the great Pericles made the ornaments of the Goddess, which weighed forty talents of refined gold,[*](Thucydides, ii. 13.) so that they could be taken off, in order, he said, that we may use it for the expenses of the war, and then pay back an equal amount. And so let us likewise, when we are, as it were, besieged by our needs, refuse to admit the garrison of a money-lender, our enemy, or to allow our property to be sold into slavery. No, let us preserve our liberty by taking off what is useless from our table, our bed, our vehicles, and our daily expenses, intending to pay it back if we are fortunate.

Now the Roman women gave their ornaments as an offering to Pythian Apollo and from them made the

Do not abide the attack of the horsemen,[*](Herodotus, vii. 141. The quotation is from the oracle in hexameters delivered to the Athenians by the priestess at Delphi when the Persians invaded Attica in 480 b.c. before the battle of Salamis.)

For what good did Solon do the Athenians when he put an end to giving one’s person as security for debt? For debtors are slaves to all the men who ruin them, or rather not to them either (for what would be so terrible in that?), but to outrageous, barbarous, and savage slaves, like those who Plato says[*](Plato, Republic, 615 e.) stand in Hades as fiery avengers and executioners over those who have been impious in life. For these money-lenders make the market-place a place of the damned for the wretched debtors; like vultures they devour and flay them, entering into their entrails,[*](Homer, Od. xi. 578.) or in other instances they stand over them and inflict on them the tortures of Tantalus by preventing them from tasting their own produce which they reap and harvest. And as Dareius sent Datis and Artaphernes against Athens with chains and fetters in their hands for their captives, in similar fashion these men, bringing against Greece jars full of signatures and notes as fetters, march against and through the cities, not, like Triptolemus, sowing beneficent grain, but planting roots of debts, roots productive of much toil and much interest and hard to escape from, which, as they sprout and shoot up round about, press down and strangle the

There is a saying among the Messenians,

Pylos there is before Pylos, and Pylos, a third, there is also,[*](Strabo, viii. 7, p. 339; Aristophanes, Knights, 1059.)

Int’rest there is before int’rest, and int’rest a third there is also.

And do not think that I say this because I have declared war against the money-lenders;

Ne’er have they harried my cattle, nor ever made off with my horses[*](Homer, Il. i. 154.);

I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.[*](Paroemiographi Graeci, ii. 592.)

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

Lo, even Miccylus I beheld,[*](Crates, Frag. 6, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ed. 4, ii. p. 366. The last three words occur also in Homer, Od. xii. 257.)

1. Carding the wool, and his wife too carding the wool along with him,
2. Striving in terrible conflict to ’scape from the onslaught of famine.

1. Into the waves of the sea they are driv’n by the might of the ether;
2. Then on the floor of the earth the sea vomits them; earth then ejects them
3. Into the untiring sun’s rays; and he hurls them to eddying ether.[*](Mullach, Frag. Phil. Graec. i. p. 2, vss. 32 ff.; quoted also in Moralia, 361 c.)

From now on my words are addressed to those who are more well-to-do and accustomed to a softer way of living, those who say Am I, then, to be without slaves, without hearth and home?, as if a sick man who is swollen up with dropsy should say to his physician Am I, then, to be made thin and empty? Why not, to make you get well? And so you should do without slaves, that you may not be a slave yourself, and without property, that you may not be the property of another. Hear the tale of the vultures: One of them had an attack of vomiting and said he was spewing out bowels, but the other, who was there, said What harm is there in that? For you are not spewing out your own bowels, but those of the corpse we tore to pieces a little while ago. So any man in debt sells, not his own plot of land, nor his own house, but those of his creditor whom by law he has made their owner. Not so, by Zeus, he says; why, my father left me this field. Yes, and your father left you your liberty and your civil rights, which you ought

Long-shore he swam looking landward,[*](Homer, Od. v. 439.)

1. Thus having spoken he gathered the clouds and stirred up the great waters;
2. East wind and South wind and West with furious blasts raged together,[*](Homer, Od. v. 291, 292.)