10
Well then, if I am pleased with neither line of defence, am I driven to agree or to confess that I have no honourable argument? Perhaps I have still one anchor left on board, to complain of old age and disease and poverty as well, which persuades one to do or endure anything to get away from it. In such a case perhaps it is not untimely to call on Euripides’ Medea to come and say in my defence those iambic lines, parodied a little: “I know the evil that I’m going to do, But poverty is stronger than my plans.” Euripides, Medea, 1078, with “passion” for “poverty.” I do not quote the Theognis passage, but everybody knows it, where he thinks it not improper for men to throw themselves from lofty crags into the deep yawning sea with its monsters, if one can escape poverty in that way. Theognis, 173–178 (Loeb ed. J. M. Edwards, Elegy and Iambus, 1).
