Lucian of Samosata (c. 120-180+), in his satirical work Timon the Misanthrope, envisioned Wealth as a personified god. Wealth, as the account told, was a blind god who mysteriously would acquire a lame leg when he set out to meet with a human, but he contrastingly could use wings to soar away when he decided to leave—it was an imaginative way for Lucian to insinuate that wealth is often slow to gain but fast to lose. This blind and limping god, according to Lucian’s amusing account, had long since become fed up with the treatment that he received at the hands of humans. On the one hand, Wealth was too often left to languish for long and tortuous periods of time in dark and lonely vaults by his possessors. Yet, on the other hand, more saintly individuals who gained Wealth’s company sometimes insultingly treated poor Wealth as worthless, passing him from one caller to the next without his consent, or throwing him away, entirely. Although the latter type of treatment did hurt Wealth’s feelings, the former fate—locked away in a vault—seemed to be the most frequent hospitality that Wealth experienced when he happened to enter a human’s possession. This trend, however, had an adverse influence on Wealth’s appearance. In Lucian’s satire, the arch-god, Zeus, commented that Wealth was always, “complaining that the rich kept you locked up so closely with bolts and keys and seals that you couldn’t even peep out and see daylight. At any rate that was your complaint to me, that you were stifled in total darkness. That’s why you appeared so pale and careworn, your fingers distorted with constant counting on them, and you threatened to run away if you got the chance” (Lucian, Timon the Misanthrope, section 13). After reminiscing about the horror stories, Wealth eventually fantasized about his ideal possessor. As narrated by Lucian, Wealth preferred a person who had “moderation in this matter, and who neither abstain from spending altogether nor squander all they have” (Timon the Misanthrope, section 16). Well, you heard the god; keep your wealth happy.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (cropped Vanitas Allegory painting, by Willem de Poorter (c. 1608-1649), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the National Museum in Sweden).
Sources:
- Lucian, Selected Dialogues, translated by C. D. N. Costa. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World Classics), 2005, 2006, 2009.
