"Into the sea the force of heaven thrusts them,
The sea rejects them back upon the land;
To the sun's rays th' unresting earth remits them;
The sun anon whirls them to heaven again."

So one after another usurer or trader gets hold of the poor wretch,
hailing either from Corinth, or Patrae, or Athens, till he gets set on to
by them all, and torn to bits, and cut into mince-meat as it were for
his interest. For as a person who is fallen into the mire must either
get up out of it or remain in it, and if he turns about in it, and
wallows in it, and bedabbles his body all over in it, he contracts only
the greater defilement, so by borrowing from one person to pay another
and changing their money-lenders they contract and incur fresh interest,
and get into greater liabilities, and closely resemble sufferers from
cholera, whose case does not admit of cure because they evacuate
everything they are ordered to take, and so ever add to the disease. So
these will not get cleansed from the disease of debt, but at regular
times in the year pay their interest with pain and agony, and then
immediately another creditor presents his little account, so again their
heads swim and ache, when they ought to have got rid of their debts
altogether, and regained their freedom.

Sec. VIII. I now turn my attention to those who are rich and luxurious, and
use language like the following, "Am I then to go without slaves and
hearth and home?" As if any dropsical person, whose body was greatly
swollen and who was very weak, should say to his doctor, "Am I then to
become lean and empty?" And why not, to get well? And do you too go
without a slave, not to be a slave yourself; and without chattels, not
to be another man's chattel. Listen to a story about two vultures; one
was vomiting and saying it would bring its inside up, and the other who
was by said, "What harm if you do? For it won't be your inside you bring
up, but that dead body we devoured lately." And so any debtor does not
sell his own estate, or his own house, but his creditor's, for he has
made him by law master of them. Nay, but by Zeus, says one, my father
left me this field. Yes, and your father also left you liberty and a
status in the community, which you ought to value more than you do. And
your father begot you with hand and foot, but should either of them
mortify, you pay the surgeon to cut it off. Thus Calypso clad and
"dressed" Odysseus "in raiment smelling sweet,"[