The Anatomy of Melancholy

Every excess, as Epictetus argues, produces disgust: sweetness turns sour. That is why the temperate Epicurus sometimes fasted voluntarily. But the rich, always accustomed to the same dishes—filthily prepared by slovenly cooks who never wash their foul hands after their dirty acts—grow sick of them, whether fish, meat, elaborate mixed dishes, or anything else. Nectar itself becomes loathsome to them; they tire of all their splendid palaces, which become so many prisons.

A poor man drinks from a wooden bowl and eats his food with wooden spoons, from wooden platters, earthenware vessels, and other humble utensils. The rich man uses gold, silver, and precious stones. But with what result? “Poison is drunk from gold”: fear of poison in the one case, safety in the other.

A poor man can write, speak his mind, and conduct his business himself. “The rich man sends a parasite,” says Philostratus: he employs a hanger-on and, like a city’s mayor, speaks through the town clerk or the Recorder when he cannot express himself.

Nonius the senator has a purple coat as stiff with jewels as his mind is full of vices, rings on his fingers worth twenty thousand sesterces, and, like Perox the Persian king, a pearl in his ear worth a hundred pounds’ weight of gold.

Cleopatra has whole boars and sheep brought to her table at once and drinks dissolved jewels worth forty thousand sesterces. But to what purpose?

When thirst burns your throat, do you ask For golden cups?

Does a thirsty man long to drink from gold? Does a woollen suit not become him as well and keep him as warm as all their silks, satins, damasks, taffetas, and cloth of gold or silver? Is homespun cloth not as good a protection against the cold as a coat of Tartar lamb’s wool dyed deep scarlet, or a gown made from giants’ beards?

Nero, says Suetonius, never wore a garment twice, while you scarcely have one to put on. What is the difference? One is sick, the other healthy. Such is the whole course of their lives; and death itself, the conclusion and outcome of it all, makes the greatest difference.

One, like a hen, feeds on the dunghill all his days, but is finally served at his lord’s table. The other, like a falcon, is fed partridges and pigeons and carried on his master’s fist, but when he dies he is thrown on the muckheap and left there.

The rich man lives merrily here on earth like Dives, “drunk with riches”—make the most of it—and “boasts of the abundance of his wealth,” Psalm 49:6, 11. He thinks his house, called by his own name, will last for ever; but “he perishes like a beast,” verse 20; “his way reveals his folly,” verse 13. “Ill-gotten goods come to an ill end”; “like sheep they lie in the grave,” verse 14. “In a moment they descend to hell”: “They spend their days in wealth and suddenly go down to hell,” Job 21:13.