08 Dec That We Ought Not to Borrow (Plutarch) | Part A’
But we, ashamed to be independent, enslave ourselves by mortgages and notes, when we ought to limit and restrict ourselves to actual necessities and from the proceeds of the breaking up or the sale of useless superfluities to found a sanctuary of Liberty for ourselves, our children, and our wives.
The goddess Artemis at Ephesus grants to debtors when they take refuge in her sanctuary protection and safety from their debts, but the protecting and inviolable sanctuary of Frugality is everywhere wide open to sensible men, offering them a joyous and honourable expanse of plentiful leisure.
Do not abide the attack of the horsemen, nor of yoked chariots adorned with horn or silver, which rapid interest overtakes and outruns. No, make use of any chance donkey or nag and flee from your enemy and tyrant, the money-lender, who does p323 not, like the Persian, demand earth and water, but attacks your liberty and brings suit against your honour. If you will not pay him, he duns you; if you have funds, he won’t accept payment; if you sell, he beats down the price; if you will not sell, he forces you to do so.
For debtors are slaves to all the men who ruin them, or rather not to them either (for what would be so terrible in that?), but to outrageous, barbarous, and savage slaves, like those who Plato says
stand in Hades as fiery avengers and executioners over those who have been impious in life. For these money-lenders make the market-place a place of the damned for the wretched debtors; like vultures they devour and flay them, “entering into their entrails, ” or in other instances they stand over them and inflict on them the tortures of Tantalus by preventing them from tasting their own produce which they reap and harvest.
Bringing against Greece jars full of signatures and notes as fetters, march against and through the cities, not, like Triptolemus, sowing beneficent grain, but planting roots of debts, roots productive of much toil and much interest and hard to escape from, which, as they sprout and shoot up round about, press down and strangle the cities. They say that hares at one and the same time give birth to one litter, suckle another, and conceive again; but the loans of these barbarous rascals give birth to interest before conception; for while they are giving they immediately demand payment, while they lay money down they take it up, and they lend what they receive for money lent.
5. There is a saying among the Messenians!
Pylos there is before Pylos, and Pylos, a third, there is also, but as to the money-lenders we may say:
Int’rest there is before int’rest, and int’rest a third there is also.
And then they make a laughing-stock forsooth of the scientists, who say that nothing arises out of nothing; for with these men interest arises out of that which has as yet no being or existence.
And yet the Persians regard lying as the second among wrong-doings and being in debt as the first; for lying is often practiced by debtors; but money-lenders lie more than debtors and cheat in their ledgers, when they write that they give so-and‑so much to so-and‑so, though they really give less; and the cause of their lie is avarice, not necessity or want, but insatiable greed, which in the end brings neither enjoyment nor profit to them and ruin to those whom they wrong. For they do not till the fields which they take from their debtors, nor do they live in their houses after evicting them, nor do they eat at their tables or wear their clothes, but they ruin one man first, then hunt a second, using the other as bait.
And do not think that I say this because I have declared war against the money-lenders; Ne’er have they harried my cattle, nor ever made off with my horses; but that I am pointing out to those who are too ready to become borrowers how much disgrace and servility there is in the practice and that borrowing is an act of extreme folly and weakness. Have you money? Do not borrow, for you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay. Let us look at each of these two alternatives separately. Cato once said to an old man who was behaving wickedly; “Sir, when old age has so many evils of its own, why do you add to them the disgrace of wickedness?” Therefore in your own case do not heap up upon poverty, which has many attendant evils, the perplexities which arise from borrowing and owing, and do not deprive poverty of the only advantage which it possesses over wealth, namely freedom from care; since by doing so you will incur the derision of the proverb,
I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.
Moralia
That We Ought Not to Borrow
Plutarch
