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Why shouldst thou go and make thy court to a
banker or a merchant? Borrow from thine own table.
Thou hast tankards, dishes, and basins of silver. Make
use of them for thy necessity, and when they are gone to sup
ply thy wants, the pleasant town of Aulis or isle of Tenedos
will again refurnish thy board with fair vessels of earth, far
more cleanly and neat than those of silver. For they are
not scented with the strong and unpleasant smell of usury,
which, like rust, daily more and more sullies and tarnishes
the lustre of thy sumptuous magnificence. They will not be
every day putting thee in mind of the Kalends and
new moons, which, being of themselves the most holy
and sacred days of the months, are by reason of usuries
rendered the most odious and accursed. For as to those
who choose rather to carry their goods to the brokers and
there lay them in pawn for money taken upon usury than
to sell them outright, I do not believe that Jupiter Ctesius
himself can preserve them from beggary. They are
ashamed forsooth to receive the full price and value of
their goods; but they are not ashamed to pay use for
the money they have borrowed on them. And yet the
great and wise Pericles caused that costly ornament of
fine gold, weighing about forty talents, with which Minerva's statue was adorned, to be made in such a manner
that he could take it off and on at his pleasure; to the
end (said he) that when we shall stand in need of money
to support the charges of war, we may take it and make
[p. 414]
use of it, putting afterwards in its place another of no less
value. Thus we ought in our affairs, as in a besieged
town, never to admit or receive the hostile garrison of a
usurer, nor to endure before our eyes the delivering up
of our goods into perpetual servitude; but rather to cut
off from our table what is neither necessary nor profitable,
and in like manner from our beds, our couches, and our
ordinary expenses, and so to keep ourselves free and at liberty, in hopes to restore again what we shall have retrenched, if Fortune shall hereafter smile upon us.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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