Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1905-10-25
A SPLENDID SERVlTUDE.

| modern note than that of Seneca, "a
great fortune is a splendid servitude?"
1t seems simply translation into the
Latin philosophers sonorous phrase of
the commonplaces of our own familiar
philosophy, as when Andrew Carnegie
speaks of Slaves of the habit of hoard
ing" and adds: "At first they own the
money they have made and saved.
| Later in life the money owns them"
To such apparent identity of view in
a Seneca and Carnegie there attaches
the peculiar interest many moderns
feel in the life of the Roman Empire,
because in its malerialism and its i'm
perialism it is supposed to parallel our
own civilization, the student of man.
ners constantly barking back to it for
a curious resemblance and the moralist
for an awful warming" Thus, with
| the modern more or less on the watch
to see Roman history of the first CEN
fury repeat itself in the twentieth, any
fresh contribution to our knowledge
concerning it attracts almost popular
audience-as in the case of DR.. Dill's
recently published study of Roman
Society from Nero to Marcus Aure-
lius"
The picture DR.. Dill draws for us OF
the Roman millionaire of the first cen
fury seems, cursorily to be a case of
history repeated The lavishness of
his entertainments, of which the ex-
travagance has been so often detailed
(perhaps $4,000 for Egyptian lilies
for single feast is novel item); his
frequent appearance in the role of self
made man" who had come up from
the people"-the freedmen his &C
knowledged obligation to spend lber-
ally on municipal objects, as baths
and temples, and also hospitals, schools
and good roads; his contributions,
more or less compulsory, to the collie
gia or trades-unions of the time; his
genuine and general pity for the prole-
tariat-his spirit of charity, in modern
phrase-despite the hideous cruelty of
the gladiatorial shows and slave pun
ishments; his liability to the inheri-
| lance tax and to other special taxes
that in the end developed into a sys-
tenn of practical confiscation-in these
and many other respects the Roman
millionaire is pictured as subject to
familiar modern conditions, actual or
possible But turning to the other side
of the picture, the transition in status
is SJiTIlluSly abrupt. Inc price tQdC
Seneca paid for his wealth was not
figuratively, but literally, "a splendid
servitude." The tutor of Nero, owing
his fortune of some twelve millions to
the Emperor's favor, Seneca wrote his
confession in "the thick, sitting air
of the Terror" tossing on his couch
of purple under richly paneled ceilings
of gold, starting at every sound in the
wainscot as he awaits the messenger
of death"-the summons to suicide by
the Emperor's command. The thought
in Seneca's mind could not have been
at farther possible remove from any
modern association with the servitude
of wealth. Yet the Roman sage, no
less than the plain, businessman mil
lionaire today $50 far as he is possess
ed by the spirit of unlimited acquisi-
tom, deliberately sought the servi-
tude, but to recognize 1t too late. This
inexplicable willingness to pay the cost
any cost-in the first century or in
the twentieth, passes the understand
ing not alone of the man outside, the
preacher, or censor, or publicist, but,
in his saner moments, of the man OF
affairs as well. 1t is in his behalf that
publication devoted to solid business
interests, the Bankers Magazine. en-
tered recent protest against the servi-
tude of wealth, the continuance of "the