“The wretch denies himself and fears to use it,” Horace says. He has a sickly, dry, pale constitution and cannot sleep for cares and worldly business—his riches, says Solomon, will not let him sleep—and the unnecessary business he heaps upon himself. Or, if he does sleep, it is a very restless, broken, unpleasant sleep, with his moneybags in his arms:

With sacks heaped all around, He falls asleep gaping over them.

And though he is at a banquet or some merry feast, he sighs with grief of heart, as Cyprian says, and cannot sleep even on a bed of down. His sickly body finds no rest: troubled amid abundance and sorrowful amid plenty, unhappy in the present and more unhappy in the life to come, as Basil says.

He is an unending drudge, restless in his thoughts and never satisfied: a slave, a wretch, a worm of the dust. “He is always diligently watching for something to sacrifice to his idol,” Cyprian, preface to the sermons: always seeking a sacrifice to offer his golden god. “By fair means or foul,” he cares not how; his trouble is endless. “Riches grow, yet something is always missing from the diminished estate”: his wealth increases, and the more he has, the more he lacks, like Pharaoh’s lean cattle, which devoured the fat ones and were not satisfied.

Augustine therefore defines covetousness as “a dishonourable and insatiable desire for things of any kind,” a dishonourable and insatiable desire for gain. In one of his letters he compares it to hell, which devours everything and yet never has enough: a bottomless pit, an endless misery, “that reef of avarice upon which cadaverous old men so often run aground.” And what eats away at them most is their continual suspicion, fear and distrust. The covetous man thinks his own wife and children are so many thieves, intent on cheating him, and that his servants are all dishonest.

He cries at once to gods and men to witness That his property is lost and he is ruined, If anything escapes from beneath his roof.

If his doors creak, he cries out straight away: His goods are gone, and he is ruined.

“Timid Plutus,” an old proverb: as fearful as Plutus. So Aristophanes and Lucian portray him, always fearful, pale, anxious, suspicious and trusting nobody. They fear storms for the sake of their grain; they fear their friends, lest they ask something of them, beg or borrow. They fear their enemies, lest they harm them; thieves, lest they rob them. They fear war and fear peace, fear the rich and fear the poor: they fear everyone.

Last of all, they fear want: that they will die beggars. This makes them keep saving, afraid to use what they have. What if a year of high prices comes, or a shortage, or some loss? Were they not reluctant to spend money on a rope, they would hang themselves at once. Sometimes they die to save expenses, killing themselves if their grain or cattle come to harm, though they have plenty left, as Aulus Gellius observes. Valerius mentions a man who, during a famine, sold a mouse for two hundred pence and himself starved. Such are their cares, griefs and perpetual fears.

Theophrastus elegantly describes these symptoms in his character of a covetous man. Lying in bed, he asks his wife whether she has shut the trunks and chests securely, sealed the small case, and bolted the hall door. Though she says all is well, he gets out of bed in his shirt, barefoot and barelegged, to see whether it is so. With a shuttered lantern he searches every corner, scarcely sleeping a wink all night.

In that delightful and witty dialogue called The Cock, Lucian introduces Micyllus the cobbler disputing with his cock, who was once Pythagoras. After much argument on both sides, to demonstrate the happiness of a modest condition and the discontents of a rich man, the Pythagorean cock finally illustrates his claims with examples. At midnight he takes Micyllus to the moneylender Gniphon’s house and then to Eucrates. They find both awake, adding up their accounts and counting their money, lean, dry, pale and anxious, always suspecting that someone will make a hole in the wall and break in; or, if a rat or mouse so much as stirs, starting suddenly and running to the door to see whether everything is secure.

In his Pot of Gold, Plautus has old Euclio order his wife Staphyla to shut the doors securely and put out the fire, lest anyone use it as an excuse to visit his house. When he washed his hands, he was reluctant to throw away the dirty water, and complained that he was ruined because smoke escaped from his roof. On leaving home, he saw a crow scratching on the dung heap and hurried back, taking it as “a bad omen,” an ill sign that his money had been dug up.

There are many such examples. Anyone who observes their actions will find that these and many similar incidents are not invented for amusement but actually happen, borne out in practice by such covetous, miserable wretches, and that it is

Plain madness To live a pauper’s life so that you may die rich.

Sheer madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.