“What good is it to heap up a mound of gold and silver and furtively stash it away in a hole? ‘Because, if you lessen it, it will be reduced to a worthless penny.’ But barring that, what beauty does a heaped up mound have? Suppose that your granary held a hundred thousand bushels: your stomach won’t hold any more than mine! If you were carrying around a backpack of bread upon overburdened shoulders, you couldn’t take more than the man who carries nothing. Tell me: what does it matter to someone who lives within the bounds of nature whether he farms a hundred acres or a thousand? ‘But it’s a fine thing to pluck something out of a huge heap!’ While you would only leave us to take a drink from the smallest remaining fraction, why would you praise your granaries above our little baskets? It is as if, needing no more than a little urn or cup worth of water, you said, ‘I would rather drink from a river than this piddly little fountain!'”
quid iuvat inmensum te argenti pondus et auri
furtim defossa timidum deponere terra?
‘quod, si conminuas, vilem redigatur ad assem.’
at ni id fit, quid habet pulcri constructus acervus?
milia frumenti tua triverit area centum: 45
non tuus hoc capiet venter plus ac meus: ut, si
reticulum panis venalis inter onusto
forte vehas umero, nihilo plus accipias quam
qui nil portarit. vel dic quid referat intra
naturae finis viventi, iugera centum an 50
mille aret? ‘at suave est ex magno tollere acervo.’
dum ex parvo nobis tantundem haurire relinquas,
cur tua plus laudes cumeris granaria nostris?
ut tibi si sit opus liquidi non amplius urna
vel cyatho et dicas ‘magno de flumine mallem 55
quam ex hoc fonticulo tantundem sumere.’
Note: Compare this to Tibullus 1.1.1:
Divitias alius fulvo sibi congerat auro
et teneat culti iugera multa soli….
“Let another man heap up mounds of tawny gold and possess countless acres of rich soil…”
Pretty sure my children think it is more pleasurable to draw from a larger heap. But most pleasurable is taking from someone else’s….