Virtue comes after money.
Horace wasn’t kidding when he exhorted his fellow citizens to pursue money first and virtue second. O cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus post nummos. And he wasn’t comparing apples and oranges. By money he meant the arts of money making. By virtue he meant the moral virtues such as justice and kindness and generosity. The former skills, he was saying, come first and take pride of place over the latter.
Notice that Horace isn’t saying that virtue, or least the reputation for it, is worthless. On the contrary, he implies that it does have value. But its value is inferior to the skills that acquire wealth and what wealth can buy.
How would we go about examining such a claim as this? And what exactly is Horace saying? That one group of skills is more important than another? More important for what? But we have one easy answer to that question. More important for acquiring the kind of life we desire and aspire to.
Many of you will probably think at this point, why does this even need to be argued? If we aspire to wealth, then the arts of money making are central and crucial. But I don’t think that assumption was behind Horace’s recommendation. That money making is more important only if you wealth above other things. No, I think we should intrepret Horace as commending the arts of pursuing money as the foundation for virtually any kind of life.
So how do evaluate the claim that one set of skills, aimed at money making, is more important than another set of skills, aimed at acting justly and kindly and generously? Well, perhaps we could look at what each set of kills is likely to achieve by itself when practiced well. If we become good money makers, here’s what we can acquire in our life and accomplish. If we become good at the moral virtues, here’s what we can do and accomplish. Horace is saying the gains from the first will be much more important and substantial than anything we get from the second.
That’s still not very clear, but perhaps it give us a way to start. We can looking at what we gain by being good money makers, then what we gain by being good at the moral virtues, and finally compare them. As a first approximation we take Horace’s view to be that we gain much more and more important things with the money making arts.
I hear someone objecting. “So is Horace claiming that money making should be the most important thing in our lives, because I don’t accept that.” And neither do I. And neither, I think, does Horace the poet. Poet, remember, not money lender. Certainly Horace never says that money is THE thing. We look in vain for the line omnia vincit pecunia in his letters and odes. We may pursue money to support our art or our family responsibilities or our recreations or whatever we place at the center of our life. Horace never implies that money is the most important thing or something to be pursued for its own sake. He says only that money making is more important in our lives than virtue.
“But suppose someone is very bad at money making. Does Horace imply that he’s doomed to a bad life?” He does not say that either. Notice he doesn’t say that one set of skills is essential to a good life and the other isn’t. He says only one set of skills is more important, which is not the same thing. We should look at a life that does not know how to make money and see what happens to it. Is it a livable life and life we’d care to live?
“But what about a life that lacks the moral virtues?” Yes, let’s look at that life too. What does it actually lack?
I think we have our work cut out for us, trying to see what place money and virtue should play in our lives, and whether we can agree that one of them is more important than the other.
Horace wasn’t kidding when he exhorted his fellow citizens to pursue money first and virtue second. O cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus post nummos. And he wasn’t comparing apples and oranges. By money he meant the arts of money making. By virtue he meant the moral virtues such as justice and kindness and generosity. The former skills, he was saying, come first and take pride of place over the latter.
Notice that Horace isn’t saying that virtue, or least the reputation for it, is worthless. On the contrary, he implies that it does have value. But its value is inferior to the skills that acquire wealth and what wealth can buy.
How would we go about examining such a claim as this? And what exactly is Horace saying? That one group of skills is more important than another? More important for what? But we have one easy answer to that question. More important for acquiring the kind of life we desire and aspire to.
Many of you will probably think at this point, why does this even need to be argued? If we aspire to wealth, then the arts of money making are central and crucial. But I don’t think that assumption was behind Horace’s recommendation. That money making is more important only if you wealth above other things. No, I think we should intrepret Horace as commending the arts of pursuing money as the foundation for virtually any kind of life.
So how do evaluate the claim that one set of skills, aimed at money making, is more important than another set of skills, aimed at acting justly and kindly and generously? Well, perhaps we could look at what each set of kills is likely to achieve by itself when practiced well. If we become good money makers, here’s what we can acquire in our life and accomplish. If we become good at the moral virtues, here’s what we can do and accomplish. Horace is saying the gains from the first will be much more important and substantial than anything we get from the second.
That’s still not very clear, but perhaps it give us a way to start. We can looking at what we gain by being good money makers, then what we gain by being good at the moral virtues, and finally compare them. As a first approximation we take Horace’s view to be that we gain much more and more important things with the money making arts.
I hear someone objecting. “So is Horace claiming that money making should be the most important thing in our lives, because I don’t accept that.” And neither do I. And neither, I think, does Horace the poet. Poet, remember, not money lender. Certainly Horace never says that money is THE thing. We look in vain for the line omnia vincit pecunia in his letters and odes. We may pursue money to support our art or our family responsibilities or our recreations or whatever we place at the center of our life. Horace never implies that money is the most important thing or something to be pursued for its own sake. He says only that money making is more important in our lives than virtue.
“But suppose someone is very bad at money making. Does Horace imply that he’s doomed to a bad life?” He does not say that either. Notice he doesn’t say that one set of skills is essential to a good life and the other isn’t. He says only one set of skills is more important, which is not the same thing. We should look at a life that does not know how to make money and see what happens to it. Is it a livable life and life we’d care to live?
“But what about a life that lacks the moral virtues?” Yes, let’s look at that life too. What does it actually lack?
I think we have our work cut out for us, trying to see what place money and virtue should play in our lives, and whether we can agree that one of them is more important than the other.
posted by Macuquinas d' Oro at 11:00 AM
1 Comments:
Dear oudeis oudamou,
I accidentally happened upon your sight and must say that as someone writing on the Epistles of Horace I was intrigued by your interpretation of the phrase "virtus post nummos" in 1.1.54 and I wanted to ask if you took the larger context of the poem into account when thinking through your interpretation.
The lines surrounding this passage (52-55) go thus (please excuse my not separating the lines):
vilius argentum est auro, virtutibus aurum. 'O cives, cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus post nummos.' haec Ianus summus ab imo prodocet, haec recinunt iuvenes dictata senesque.
"silver is worth less than gold; gold is worth less than virtue (another way of translating would be gold is dearer than silver and virtue dearer than gold). 'O citizens, citizens, money must be sought first, virtue after money.' This is what [the temple of] Janus teaches from top to bottom; young and old men alike sing back these things after they have been dictated."
The lesson "virtus post nummos" clearly contrasts with what Horace says in two lines above, i.e. that virtue is dearer than gold. Furthermore, the phrase "virtus post nummos" is not put into his own mouth, but in the mouth of Janus, whose temple was the hang-out of the money-lenders.
Horace brings up this idea again later in the poem, and to my mind clearly shows his disapproval of the money-making mentality. 62-69:
At pueri ludentes: 'Rex eris' aiunt,'si recte facies': hic murus aeneus esto nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa. Roscia, dic sodes, melior lex an puerorum est nenia, quae regnum recte facientibus offert,et maribus Curiis et decantata Camillis?
Isne tibi melius suadet, qui 'rem facias, rem, si possis, recte, si non, quocumque modo rem,'ut propius spectes lacrimosa poemata Pupi, an qui Fortunae te responsare superbae liberum et erectum praesens hortatur et aptat?
("But boys at play say 'you will be king if you act rightly.' Let this be our defense, hard as bronze: not to have wrongdoing on our conscience nor to have any fault to be worried about. Tell me, comrade, which is better: the Roscian law (whereby the wealthy achieved privledges) or the chant of the children, which offers a kingdom to one who acts rightly, and which was changed by the manly Curii and Camilli? Does he better persuade you who makes money, money, rightly if possible, but if not, money in whatever way, all so that he can watch the tearful poems of Pupius, or the one who advises and prepares you to respond, as a free and upstanding man, to respond to haughty Fortune."
Furthermore, the dangers of money and wealth, particularly the pursuit of it, is a theme running throughout Horace's poetry. While he doesn't recommend dire poverty, he recommends contentment on a little: vivitur parvo bene "one lives well on a little," Odes 2.16.
By the way I just found this site http://www.giga-usa.com/gigaweb1/quotes2/qutopmoneyx003.htm that offers quotes by Horace, all taken out of context, spoken by or attributed to someone else in his poetry, that seem to advocate the accumulation of massive wealth--oh if only they read the whole poem!
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