Book 1
61
Neither your wife, nor your son, desires your recovery; all your neighbors, acquaintances, [nay the very] boys and girls hate you. Do you wonder that no one tenders you the affection which you do not merit, since you prefer your money to every thing else? If you think to retain, and preserve as friends, the relations which nature gives you, without taking any pains; wretch that you are, you lose your labor equally, as if any one should train an ass to be obedient to the rein, and run in the Campus [Martius]. Finally, let there be some end to your search; and, as your riches increase, be in less dread of poverty; and begin to cease from your toil, that being acquired which you coveted: nor do as did one Umidius (it is no tedious story), who was so rich that he measured his money, so sordid that he never clothed himself any better than a slave; and, even to his last moments, was in dread lest want of bread should oppress him: but his freed-woman, the bravest of all the daughters of Tyndarus, As if she had been another Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndarus, who cut off her husband's head with an ax. Fortissima Tyndaridarum , from the accusative of Tyndaris, viz. Tyndarida, comes the noun Tyndarida, Tyndaridae etc. cut him in two with a hatchet. "What therefore do you persuade me to? That I should lead the life of Naevius, or in such a manner as a Nomentanus?"
