So set a limit to greed, and as you gain more
Fear poverty less, achieving what you desired,
Make an end of your labour, lest you do as did
One Ummidius. It’s not a long tale: he was rich,
So much so he was forced to weigh his coins: so stingy
He dressed no better than a slave: and right to the end
He was fearful lest starvation overcome him.
Instead a freedwoman cut him in two with an axe,
She an indomitable scion of Tyndareus’ race!
‘Do you want me to live, then,’ you say, ‘like Naevius
Or Nomentanus?’ Now you’re setting up a war
Of opposites. When I order you not to be avaricious
I’m not telling you to become an idle spendthrift.
Between Visellius’ father-in-law and Tanais
There’s a mean. Measure in everything: in short, there are
Certain boundaries, on neither side of which lies Right.
I return to the point I first made, that no one’s content
In himself, because of greed, but envies all others
Who follow different paths, pines that his neighbour’s goat
Has fuller udders, and instead of comparing himself
With the poorer majority, tries to outdo this man and that.
But however he hurries there’s always one richer in front,
As when the galloping hooves whisk the chariots away
From the gate, the charioteer chasing the vanishing teams,
Indifferent to the stragglers he’s leaving behind.
So we can rarely find a man who claims to have lived
A happy life, who when his time is done is content
To go, like a guest at the banquet who is well sated.
That will do. Lest you think I’ve pillaged the shelves
Of bleary-eyed Crispinus, I’ll add not a single word.