And he that is once involved in debt remains in it all his time, like a horse bitted and bridled that takes one rider after another, and there is no escape to green pastures and meadows, but they wander about like those demons who were driven out of heaven by the gods who are thus described by Empedocles:—
So one after another usurer or trader gets hold of the poor wretch, hailing either from Corinth, or Patræ, or Athens, till he gets set on to by them all, and torn to bits, and cut into mince-meat as it were for his interest.
For as a person who is fallen into the mire must either get up out of it or remain in it, and if he turns about in it, and wallows in it, and bedabbles his body all over in it, he contracts only the greater defilement, so by borrowing from one person to pay another and changing their money-lenders they contract and incur fresh interest, and get into greater liabilities, and closely resemble sufferers from cholera, whose case does not admit of cure because they evacuate everything they are ordered to take, and so ever add to the disease.
So these will not get cleansed from the disease of debt, but at regular times in the year pay their interest with pain and agony, and then immediately another creditor presents his little account, so again their heads swim and ache, when they ought to have got rid of their debts altogether, and regained their freedom.
§ viii. I now turn my attention to those who are rich and luxurious, and use language like the following, "Am I then to go without slaves and hearth and home?" As if any dropsical person, whose body was greatly swollen and who was very weak, should say to his doctor, "Am I then to become lean and empty?" And why not, to get well? And do you too go without a slave, not to be a slave yourself; and without chattels, not to be another man's chattel.