Friday, January the 7th, 2005
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I cannot resist quoting again from Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy (see 3rd January). At a time when the press is full of stories of people living on credit and building up massive debt, Burton reminds us how they used to deal with these things:
At Padua in Italy they have a stone called the stone of turpitude, near the senate-house, where spendthrifts, and such as disclaim non-payment of debts, do sit with their hinder parts bare, that by that note of disgrace others may be terrified from all such vain expense, or borrowing more than they can tell how to pay. The civilians of old set guardians over such brain-sick prodigals, as they did over madmen, to moderate their expenses, that they should not so loosely consume their fortunes, to the utter undoing of their families.