1.2.1.
The guild of girl flute-players, the quacks who sell drugs,
The beggars, the jesters, the actresses, all of that tribe
Are sad: they grieve that the singer Tigellius has died:
He was so generous they say. But this fellow over here,
Afraid of being a spendthrift, grudges his poor friend
Whatever might stave off the pangs of hunger and cold.
And if you ask that man there why, in his greedy ingratitude,
He’s squandering his father’s and grandfather’s noble estate
Buying up gourmet foodstuffs with money he’s borrowed,
It’s so as not to be thought a mean-spirited miser.
By some men that’s praised and by others condemned.
While Fufidius, rich in land and the money he’s lent,
Afraid of earning the name of a wastrel and spendthrift,
Charges sixty per cent per annum, docked in advance,
And presses you harder the nearer you are to ruin.
He gathers in debts from young men with harsh fathers
Kids who’ve just taken to wearing the toga: ‘Great Jove’
All cry on hearing it, ‘but surely he spends on himself
In line with his earnings? Well, you’d scarcely believe
How bad a friend he is to himself. That father who exiled
His son, whom Terence’s play depicts as living so
Wretchedly, never tortured himself more than he does.