JUVENAL, SATIRE XIV
but summer lightning." Poor wretch! on this very night perchance he will be cast out amid broken timbers and engulfed by the waves, clutching his purse with his left hand or his teeth. The man for whose desires yesterday not all the gold which Tagus and the ruddy Pactolus[1] rolls along would have sufficed, must now content himself with a rag to cover his cold and nakedness, and a poor morsel of food, while he begs for pennies as a shipwrecked mariner, and supports himself by a painted storm!
303Wealth gotten with such woes is preserved by fears and troubles that are greater still; it is misery to have the guardianship of a great fortune. The millionaire Licinus orders a troop of slaves to be on the watch all night with fire buckets in their places, being anxious for his amber, his statues and Phrygian marbles, his ivory and plaques of tortoise-shell. The nude Cynic[2] fears no fire for his tub; if broken, he will make himself a new house to-morrow, or repair it with clamps of lead. When Alexander beheld in that tub its mighty occupant, he felt how much happier was the man who had no desires than he who claimed for himself the entire world, with perils before him as great as his achievements. Had we but wisdom, thou wouldst have no Divinity, O Fortune; it is we that make thee into a Goddess![c 1]
316Yet if any should ask of me what measure of fortune is enough, I will tell him; as much as thirst, cold and hunger demand; as much as sufficed you, Epicurus, in your little garden; as much as in earlier days was to be found in the house of Socrates. Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another. Do the limits within which I confine you seem too severe? Then throw in something from our own manners;
- ↑ The sentence nullum—deam, is repeated from x. 365, quite irrelevantly.
