5
It seems to me that I should do well to examine in advance the motives for which some men go into this sort of life and show that they are not at all urgent or necessary. In that way their defence and the primary object of their voluntary slavery would be done away with in advance. Most of them plead their poverty and their lack of necessities, and think that in this way they have set up an adequate screen for their desertion to this life. They consider that it quite suffices them if they say that they act pardonably in seeking to escape poverty, the bitterest thing in life. Then Theognis comes to hand, and time and again we hear: “All men held in subjection to Poverty,” ἄνδρ᾽ ἀγαθὸν πενίη πάντων δάμνησι μάλιστα, καὶ γήρως πολιοῦ, Κύρνε, καὶ ἠπιάλου, ἣν δὴ χρὴ φεύγοντα καὶ ἐς βαθυκήτεα πόντον ῥιπτεῖν καὶ πετρέων, Κύρνε, κατ᾽ ἠλιβάτων. καὶ γὰρ ἀνὴρ πενίῃ δεδμημένος οὔτε τι εἰπεῖν οὐθ᾽ ἕρξαι δύναται, γλῶσσα δέ οἱ δέδεται. Theognis 173 ff. and all the other alarming statements about poverty that the most spiritless of the poets have put forth.
