“What therefore do you persuade me to?  That I should lead the life of Naevius, or in such a manner as a Nomentanus?”

You are going [now] to make things tally, that are contradictory in their natures.  When I bid you not be a miser, I do not order you to become a debauchee or a prodigal.  There is some difference between the case of Tanais and his son-in-law Visellius, there is a mean in things; finally, there are certain boundaries, on either side of which moral rectitude can not exist.  I return now whence I digressed.  Does no one, after the miser’s example, like his own station, but rather praise those who have different pursuits; and pines, because his neighbor’s she-goat bears a more distended udder:  nor considers himself in relation to the greater multitude of poor; but labors to surpass, first one and then another?  Thus the richer man is always an obstacle to one that is hastening [to be rich]:  as when the courser whirls along the chariot dismissed from the place of starting; the charioteer presses upon those horses which outstrip his own, despising him that is left behind coming on among the last.  Hence it is, that we rarely find a man who can say he has lived happy, and content with his past life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.  Enough for the present:  nor will I add one word more, lest you should suspect that I have plundered the escrutoire of the blear-eyed Crispinus.

* * * * *

SATIRE II.

Bad men, when they avoid certain vices, fall into their opposite extremes.

The tribes of female flute-players, quacks, vagrants, mimics, blackguards; all this set is sorrowful and dejected on account of the death of the singer Tigellius; for he was liberal [toward them].  On the other hand, this man, dreading to be called a spendthrift, will not give a poor friend wherewithal to keep off cold and pinching hunger.  If you ask him why he wickedly consumes the noble estate of his grandfather and father in tasteless gluttony, buying with borrowed money all sorts of dainties; he answers, because he is unwilling to be reckoned sordid, or of a mean spirit:  he is praised by some, condemned by others.  Fufidius, wealthy in lands, wealthy in money put out at interest, is afraid of having the character of a rake and spendthrift.  This fellow deducts 5 per cent.  Interest from the principal [at the time of lending]; and, the more desperate in his circumstances any one is, the more severely be pinches him:  he hunts out the names of young fellows that have just put on the toga virilis under rigid fathers.  Who does not cry out, O sovereign Jupiter! when he has heard [of such knavery]?  But [you will say, perhaps,] this man expends upon himself in proportion to his gain.  You can hardly believe how little a friend he is to himself:  insomuch that the father, whom Terence’s comedy introduces as living miserable after he had caused