Dio Chrysostom, On Servants 2

"You now provide food for one person," Diogenes continued, "but then it was for two; and now, if any illness attacks you, you will have only yourself to treat, but then you had to take care of him, too, when he was ill. 

"Now, when you are in the house all by yourself, you do not worry for fear that you may steal something yourself, nor, when you retire, lest your slave be awake and doing some mischief. 

"All these things you should surely think about. And further, if you have a wife, she would then not have considered it her duty to look after you when she saw a domestic kept in the family, and she would have been likely to annoy you, sometimes by quarreling with him, at other times by being hard to suit herself; but now she will be less discontented herself and will take better care of you. 

"Then too, wherever there is a servant, the children as they come on are at once spoiled and become lazier and more overbearing as long as there is someone to dance attendance upon them, and as they have somebody whom they look down upon. On the other hand, wherever the children are by themselves, they are much more manly and vigorous and learn to care for their parents from the very start." 

"But, Diogenes, I am a poor man, and if it should not be to my advantage to keep the servant, I shall dispose of him." 

"In that case," Dioegenes rejoined, "are you not ashamed, in the first place, to deceive the purchaser by selling him a bad slave? For either you will conceal the truth or be unable to sell him. 

"Further, if a man sells a cloak or a utensil that is not what it purports to be, or an animal that is diseased and useless, he must take it back; so, by selling you will be none the better off. And even if you shall be able to deceive somebody and he shall not be aware of the slave's depravity, are you not afraid of the money? 

"For perhaps you will buy another still worse slave if you chance upon a seller who is too shrewd for you. Or perhaps you will use the money received for something that will harm you. For by no means in every case does money help those who have gotten it; but men have suffered many more injuries and many more evils from money than from poverty, particularly when they lacked sense. 

"Are you going to try to secure first, not that other thing, which will enable you to derive profit from everything and to order all your affairs well, but in preference to wisdom are you going to seek riches or lands or teams of horses or ships or houses? 

"You will become their slave and will suffer through them and perform a great deal of useless labor, and will spend all your life worrying over them without getting any benefit whatsoever from them. 

"Consider the beasts yonder and the birds, how much freer from trouble they live than men, and how much more happily also, how much healthier and stronger they are, and how each of them lives the longest life possible, although they have neither hands nor human intelligence. 

"And yet, to counter-balance these and their other limitations, they have one very great blessing—they own no property." 

"Well, Diogenes, I believe I shall let my servant go, that is, unless he happens to come my way." 

"Well, I declare," exclaimed Diogenes, "that would  be like your saying that you would not look for a horse that bites or kicks, but that if you came across him, you would go up to him for the fun of being bitten or kicked!"