Friday, August 15, 2014
Money-Making
Horace, Epistles 1.16.67-68 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):
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A man has lost his weapons, has quitted his post with Virtue, who is ever busied and lost in making money.Roland Mayer, ed., Horace, Epistles, Book I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ad loc., p. 229:
perdidit arma, locum virtutis deseruit, qui
semper in augenda festinat et obruitur re.
68 semper: a crucial qualification, emphatically placed; increase of wealth is not absolutely bad (7.71; H. took pride in it himself at S. 2.6.6 si neque maiorem feci ratione mala rem). But a pursuit of gain so unremitting as to overwhelm (obruitur) is slavish. The warping of a sense of proportion in any pursuit is condemned (6.15-16).
