Capaneus was not, as it seems, such as the honest Chrysippus describes, in his treatise On those things which are not eligible for their own sakes. For he speaks in this manner: —“Some men apply themselves with such eagerness to the pursuit of money, that it is even related, that a man once, when near his end, swallowed a number of pieces of gold, and so died. Another person sewed a quantity of money into a tunic, and put it on, and then ordered his servants to bury him in that dress, neither burning his body, nor stripping it and laying it out.” For these men and all like them may almost be said, as they die, to cry out—
Oh gold, the choicest of all gifts to men!Such great thirst for money was there among the men of that time, concerning which Anacharsis, when some one asked him what the Greeks used money for? said, To count with. But Diogenes, in his treatise on Polity, proposed to establish a law that bits of bone should be taken as coins; and well too has Euripides said—
For no fond mother does such raptures know,
Nor children in the house, nor any father,
Such as do flow from you, and are enjoy'd
By those who own you. If like yours the face
Of Venus, when she rose up from the sea,
No wonder that she has ten thousand lovers.
Speak not of wealth; that god I worship not,And Chrysippus, in his elementary work, which is entitled, A Treatise on Good and Evil Things, says that "a certain young man from Ionia came to sojourn at Athens, clothed in a purple robe having golden fringes; and when some one [p. 257] asked of him what countryman he was, he replied that he was rich. And, perhaps, it may be the very same person whom Alexis mentions in his Thebans, where he says—
Who comes with ease into a bad man's power.
A. But from what country does this person come?
B. From Richland; and by general consent
The natives of that land are counted noble;
Nor can one find a noble beggar anywhere.
