The Only Rich Man

But in fact my mind has wandered off, without my meaning it, from the order I set myself. I must go back to it now, and take up the fault of keeping large numbers of household slaves. To avoid working with their own hands and waiting on themselves, people fall back on slaves. They buy a great crowd of fancy cooks, and men to lay out the table, and others to carve the meat expertly into portions. The staff is divided into department after department. Some labor for their masters’ gluttony — carvers, seasoners, the men who mix and make the sweets and the honey-cakes and the custards. Others are busy with the too-many clothes. Others guard the gold like griffins. Others keep the silver, polish the cups, and get ready whatever the festive table needs. Others rub down the horses. A crowd of cup-bearers wear themselves out in service, and herds of beautiful boys are kept like cattle, and their beauty is milked out of them. Male and female attendants are employed on the ladies’ grooming — some for the mirrors, some for the hairstyles, others for the combs. [a]

Many of them are eunuchs, and these pimps serve without arousing suspicion those who want to be free to enjoy their pleasures, since it is believed that the men cannot indulge in lust. But the true eunuch is not the man who is unable to indulge in pleasure. He is the man who is unwilling.

When the people did wrong by asking for a king, the Word bore witness against them through the prophet Samuel. He did not promise them a lord who would love them. He threatened to give them a self-willed, pleasure-loving tyrant, a man who would rule by the law of war and want no peaceful government. The Word says of him: “He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.” And there are plenty of Celts who carry women’s litters high on their shoulders. But workers in wool, and spinners, and weavers, and women’s work, and the running of a house — these are nowhere to be found.

The men who impose on these women spend the whole day with them, telling them silly love stories and wearing out body and soul with their false acts and their false words. “You shall not be with the many for evil,” it says, “nor give yourself over to a crowd” — for wisdom shows itself among a few, and disorder in a crowd. And it is not for decency’s sake, out of a wish not to be seen, that these women buy bearers. If that were the feeling behind it, putting themselves under a cover would deserve praise. It is out of luxury that they are carried on their slaves’ shoulders, and because they want to be looked at.

So they open the curtain and look sharply round at everyone who turns an eye toward them, and show what they are; and often, leaning out from inside, they disgrace even that shallow show of decency by a restlessness that puts them in danger. “Do not look around in the streets of the city,” it says, “and do not wander in its lonely places.” For that is truly a lonely place — however big the crowd of loose people in it — where no wise man is present.

And these women are carried around to the temples, sacrificing and taking omens day after day, spending their time with fortune-tellers and begging priests and disreputable old women. They keep up the old wives’ whispering over their cups and learn charms and spells from soothsayers, to the ruin of their marriages. Some men they have; others they pray for; and still others are promised to them by the diviners. They do not know that they are cheating themselves, handing themselves over as a vessel of pleasure to men who want to be free to be filthy; and, trading their purity for the foulest outrage, they think the most shameful ruin is a great stroke of business.

There are plenty of agents for this whorish license, working their way in from one quarter and another. For loose people rush into uncleanness as readily as pigs rush to whichever part of the ship’s hold is lowest. That is why Scripture presses the warning so hard: “Do not bring everyone into your house, for the traps of the crafty are many.” And in another place: “Let righteous men be your guests, and let your boasting stay in the fear of the Lord.” Have done with sexual immorality. The apostle says: “Know this well: no one who is sexually immoral, no one greedy — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”

But these women take pleasure in intercourse with womanish men. Crowds of kinaidoi pour in — unbridled of tongue, filthy in body, filthy in speech, men enough for lewd service, ministers of adultery, giggling and whispering, shamelessly making sounds through their noses that stand for lewdness and sexual immorality in order to stir up lust, trying to please with obscene words and postures, provoking the laughter that goes before sexual immorality. And sometimes, when something has inflamed them, these sexually immoral men — or the men who trail after the rabble of kinaidoi to their destruction — make a noise in the nose like a frog, as though anger had taken up residence in their nostrils.

The more refined sort keep Indian birds and Median peacocks, and take peak-headed creatures to table with them, playing with satyrs and delighting in freaks. They laugh when they hear a Thersites; and these women buy their Thersiteses at high prices and pride themselves not on their husbands but on these wretches, who are a burden on the earth. Meanwhile they overlook the modest widow, who is worth far more than a Maltese lapdog, and look sideways at an upright old man, who to my mind is lovelier than a freak bought with money. They keep parrots and curlews and will not take in the orphan child; they expose the children born in their own house and pick up the nestlings of birds; they prefer creatures without reason to creatures with it. They ought to be taking on the support of old people known for their self-restraint, who to my mind are fairer than apes and can say something better than nightingales; and they ought to have this set before them: “As you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” But instead they prefer ignorance to wisdom. They turn their wealth into stone — that is, into pearls and Indian emeralds. They pour it away and throw it away on dyes that fade and on bought slaves, like fattened birds scratching through the muck of life. “Poverty,” it says, “humbles a man.” The poverty meant is stinginess, by which the rich are poor in giving, as though they had nothing.

And what sort of baths do they have? Structures put together with great skill — compact, portable, see-through, draped with fine linen. Gold-plated chairs, and silver ones too, and ten thousand vessels of gold and silver, some for drinking, some for eating, some for bathing, are carried about with them. On top of that there are even braziers of hot coals; they have come to such a pitch of self-indulgence that they dine and get drunk while they are bathing. [o]

The silver they make a show with they set out on display in the bath-house, parading perhaps their wealth, out of sheer pride, but above all their whimsical ignorance — the ignorance by which they brand as soft the men whom women have beaten. At the least they prove that they cannot so much as gather or work up a sweat without a mountain of equipment, while poor women, who have nothing to display, enjoy their baths just as much. The filth of wealth, then, comes with plenty of blame to cover it. With this, as with bait, they hook the wretches who gape at the glitter of gold. By dazzling people who love a show, they cunningly angle for the admiration of their lovers, who insult them a little later when they are naked. They will hardly undress in front of their own husbands, putting on a plausible pretense of modesty; but anyone else who cares to may see these women, kept shut up at home, naked in the baths. There they are not ashamed to strip in front of spectators, as if they were putting their bodies up for sale. But Hesiod advises:

The baths are opened to men and women alike, and there they strip for loose indulgence — since from looking men come to loving — as if their modesty had been washed off in the water. Those who have not become altogether shameless shut out strangers, but bathe with their own slaves; they strip naked in front of their slaves and are rubbed down by them, giving the cringing servant liberty to lust by letting him handle them without fear. For the men who are brought in before their naked mistresses in the bath make a study of stripping themselves, to work up the nerve for lust, throwing off fear because the custom is a wicked one.

The old athletes were ashamed to put a man on show naked, and kept their modesty by going through the contest in a loincloth. But these women take off their modesty along with their tunic. They mean to look beautiful, and against their own intention they are simply shown up as wicked. For the wantonness of lust shines out through the body itself, the way the water shows under the skin in people with dropsy. In both cases the disease is known by the look of them. Men, therefore, who ought to be giving women a noble example of the truth, should be ashamed to strip in front of them, and should be on their guard against these dangerous sights; “for the man who has looked with a searching eye,” it says, “has already sinned.” At home, then, they should keep their modesty before parents and household slaves; on the roads, before the people they meet; in the baths, before women; alone, before themselves; and everywhere before the Word, who is everywhere, and “without him nothing was made.” Only so will a man stay on his feet without falling — if he takes God as always present with him.

Wealth, then, is to be used with good sense and shared with love, not meanly and not for show; and the love of what is beautiful is not to be turned into love of self and self-display. Otherwise someone may say of us: “His horse, or his land, or his slave, or his gold is worth fifteen talents — but the man himself is dear at three coppers.” Take the ornaments away from the women, then, and the slaves away from their masters, and you will find the masters no different from bought slaves in their step, or their look, or their voice — so like their slaves are they. The one difference is that they are feebler than their slaves, and were raised more sickly. [v]

So this best of maxims ought to be said over and over: that the good man, being self-restrained and just, stores up his wealth in heaven. The man who has sold his goods and given them to the poor finds the treasure that cannot perish, “where there is no moth and no thief.” Truly blessed is he, “even if he is insignificant and weak and obscure”; and he is truly rich with the greatest riches of all. “But though a man be richer than Cinyras and Midas,” and is wicked — as arrogant as the man luxuriously dressed in purple and fine linen who looked down on Lazarus — “he is wretched and lives in trouble,” and he will not live. Wealth seems to me to be like a snake: it will twist round your hand and bite, unless you know how to take hold of it safely by the tip of the tail. Riches wriggle in a practiced grip and in a clumsy one alike, and they are clever at clinging and biting — unless a man despises them and handles them skillfully, so as to charm the creature dead by the spell of the Word and come away unhurt.

But, as one would expect, the only man who turns out truly rich is the man who owns what is worth most, even if he is not recognized as rich. It is not jewels, or silver, or clothing, or a beautiful body that is of high value, but virtue — which is the Word, given by the Instructor to be put into practice. This is the Word who renounces luxury, who calls in doing your own work as a servant, and who praises plain living, the child of self-restraint. He says: “Take instruction and not silver, and knowledge rather than tested gold; for wisdom is better than precious stones, and nothing of value is worth as much as she is.” And again: “Get me rather than gold and precious stones and silver, for what I yield is better than choice silver.”

But if we must draw the distinction, let it be granted that the rich man is the one with many possessions, weighed down with gold like a dirty purse — but that the righteous man alone is graceful, since grace is order, keeping a due and decent measure in managing and in handing out. “For there are those who sow and reap more,” and of them it is written, “He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor; his righteousness lasts forever.” So it is not the man who has and keeps, but the man who gives away, who is rich; and it is giving away, not owning, that makes a man happy. Generosity is the fruit of the soul.

It is in the soul, then, that riches are. Let it be granted that good things are the property of good men only, and that Christians are good. Now a fool or a libertine can neither perceive what is good nor come to own it. It follows that good things are owned by Christians alone. And nothing is richer than these good things; therefore they alone are rich. For righteousness is true riches, and the Word is more valuable than any treasure — not accruing from cattle and fields, but given by God: riches that cannot be taken away. The soul alone is its treasure; it is the best possession its owner has, and it makes a man truly blessed. For the man whose part it is to desire nothing that is not in our power, to obtain what he desires, and to get by asking from God whatever he reverently longs for — does he not own much, in fact everything, having God as his everlasting treasure? “To the one who asks it will be given,” it says, “and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” If God refuses nothing, everything belongs to the godly.

Luxuries spent on pleasures turn into a dangerous shipwreck for men. This soft and low life that most people lead is a stranger to real love of what is beautiful and to refined pleasures. Man is by nature an upright and majestic creature, reaching up toward the good, as the creature of the one who alone is good. But the life given over to the belly has no dignity; it is shameful, hateful, ridiculous. And to the divine nature self-indulgence is the most foreign thing there is, for it means feeding like sparrows and rutting like pigs and goats. To count pleasure a good thing is the mark of complete ignorance of what is excellent. [ac]

The love of money knocks a man out of the right way of living and gets him to stop being ashamed of what is shameful — provided that, like an animal, he has the power to eat every sort of thing, and drink the same way, and glut his lusts however he likes. Such a man very rarely inherits the kingdom of God. What, then, are all these dainty dishes got ready for, except to fill one belly? The filthiness of gluttony is proved by the sewers that our bellies discharge the leavings of our food into. Why do they collect so many cup-bearers, when one cup would satisfy them? Why the chests of clothes? Why the gold ornaments? These things are being got ready for clothes-thieves and crooks and greedy eyes. “But do not let acts of mercy and faithfulness fail you,” says the Scripture.

Look at Elijah the Tishbite, for instance. We have in him a beautiful example of plain living, when he sat down under the broom bush and the angel brought him food: “It was a barley cake and a jar of water.” Such was the meal the Lord sent him. We, then, on our journey to the truth, must travel unencumbered. The Lord said, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” That is: do not own wealth, which is only hoarded up in a purse; do not fill your own storehouses, as if you were laying up produce in a sack, but share with those in need. Do not trouble yourselves about horses and slaves — the ones who carry the loads when the rich are traveling, and who in the figure are called sandals.

We must throw away, then, the crowd of vessels, the silver and gold drinking cups, and the mob of household slaves, since we have received from the Instructor two fine and dignified attendants instead: Doing-Your-Own-Work and Plain Living. And we must walk in a way that suits the Word. If there is a wife and there are children, the household is not a burden; it has learned to shift its place along with a sober-minded traveler. The wife who loves her husband must be outfitted for the road as her husband is. A fine provision for the journey to heaven belongs to those who carry plain living with self-restraint and dignity. And as the foot is the measure of the shoe, so the body is the measure of what each person owns. What is left over — what they call ornaments and the furniture of the rich — is a load on the body, not an ornament to it.

The man who would take heaven by force must carry with him the fine staff of doing good, and must reach true rest by sharing with people in distress. For Scripture certifies “that a man’s riches are the ransom of his soul” — that is, if he is rich he will be saved by handing it out. For as gushing wells rise back to their old level when they are pumped out, so giving away, which is the kindly spring of love, increases and is filled up again by passing its drink to the thirsty, just as milk is drawn into the breast that is sucked or milked.

For the man who has almighty God, the Word, is in want of nothing and is never in straits for what he needs. The Word is a possession that wants nothing and is the cause of all abundance. If someone says he has often seen a righteous man in need of food, that is rare, and it happens only where there is no other righteous man. All the same, let him read what follows: “For the righteous man will not live by bread alone, but by the word of the Lord” — who is the true bread, the bread of heaven. The good man, then, can never be in difficulty as long as he keeps his confession toward God intact. It belongs to him to ask and to receive from the Father of all whatever he requires, and to enjoy what is his own, if he keeps the Son. And this belongs to him too: to feel no want.

This Word, who trains us, gives us the true riches. And no one begrudges riches to those who through him have gained the state of wanting nothing. The man who has this wealth will inherit the kingdom of God.