The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.