The riches which were thought to make a man all-sufficient for himself, do really put him in need of other people's help.Then how can need be separated from wealth? Do the rich never feel hunger nor thirst? Do the limbs of moneyed men never feel the cold of winter? You will say, " Yes, but the rich have the wherewithal to satisfy hunger and thirst, and drive away cold." But though riches may thus console wants, they cannot entirely take them away.For, though these ever crying wants, these continual requests, are satisfied, yet there must exist that which is to be satisfied.I need not say that nature is satisfied with little, greed is never satisfied.
Wherefore, I ask you, if wealth cannot remove want, and even creates its own wants, what reason is there that you should think it affords satisfaction to a man?
' Though the rich man with greed heap up from ever-flowing streams the wealth that cannot satisfy, though he deck himself with pearls from the Red Sea's shore, and plough Page 65his fertile field with oxen by the score, yet gnawing care will never in his lifetime leave him, and at his death his wealth will not go with him, but leave him faithlessly.'
'But,' I urged,' places of honour make the man, to whom they fall, honoured and venerated.'
'Ah! ' she answered,' have those offices their force in truth that they may instil virtues into the minds of those that hold them, and drive out vices therefrom? And yet we are too well accustomed to see them making wickedness conspicuous rather than avoiding it.Wherefore we are displeased to see such places often falling to the most wicked of men, so that Catullus called Nonius "a diseased growth," 1 though he sat in the highest chair of office.Do you see how great a disgrace high honours can add to evil men? Their unworthiness is less conspicuous if they are not made famous by honours.Could you yourself have been induced by any dangers to think of being a colleague with Decoratus, 2 when you saw that he had the mind of an unscrupulous buffoon, and a base informer? We cannot consider men worthy of veneration on account of their high places, when we hold them to be unworthy of those 65:1 -- Probably Boethius makes a mistake in his interpretation of Catullus (Carm.52), as Nonius's surname was very likely ' Struma ' (which also means a wen); in which case Catullus cannot at most have intended more to be understood than a play upon the man's true name.
65:2 -- Decoratus was a minion of Theodoric.Page 66high places.But if you see a man endowed with wisdom, you cannot but consider him worthy of veneration, or at least of the wisdom with which he is endowed.For such a man has the worth peculiar to virtue, which it transmits directly to those in whom it is found.But since honours from the vulgar crowd cannot create merit, it is plain that they have not the peculiar beauty of this worth.And here is a particular point to be noticed:
if men are the more worthless as they are despised by more people, high position makes them all the worse because it cannot make venerable those whom it shews to so many people to be contemptible.And this brings its penalty with it: wicked people bring a like quality into their positions, and stain them with their infection.
'Now I would have you consider the matter thus, that you may recognise that true veneration cannot be won through these shadowy honours.If a man who had filled the office of consul many times in Rome, came by chance into a country of barbarians, would his high position make him venerated by the barbarians? Yet if this were a natural quality in such dignities, they would never lose their effective function in any land, just as fire is never aught but hot in all countries.But since they do not receive this quality of veneration from any force peculiar to themselves, but only from a connexion in the untrustworthy opinions of men, they become as nothing as soon as they are among those who do not consider these dignities as such.Page 67'But that is only in the case of foreign peoples.Among the very peoples where they had their beginnings, do these dignities last for ever? Consider how great was the power in Rome of old of the office of Pr?fect: now it is an empty name and a heavy burden upon the income of any man of Senator's rank.'The pr?fect then, who was commissioner of the corn-market, was held to be a great man.Now there is no office more despised.For, as I said before, that which has no intrinsic beauty, sometimes receives a certain glory, sometimes loses it, according to the opinion of those who are concerned with it.If then high offices cannot make men venerated, if furthermore they grow vile by the infection of bad men, if changes of time can end their glory, and, lastly, if they are held cheaply in the estimation of whole peoples, I ask you, so far from affording true beauty to men, what beauty have they in themselves which men can desire?
'Though Nero decked himself proudly with purple of Tyre and snow-white gems, none the less that man of rage and luxury lived ever hated of all.Yet would that evil man at times give his dishonoured offices to men who were revered.Who then could count men blessed, who to such a villain owed their high estate?
'Can kingdoms and intimacies with kings make people powerful?
