Imperat aut servit collecta pecunia cuique.
(Horace, Epistulae 1.10.47)

The money each one is able to lay hold of either rules or serves each.

(pron = ihm-PER-at out SER-wit cohl-LEK-tah peh-KOO-nee-ah KWEE-kway)

Comment: So, money problems are not new. I either become a slave to whatever
money I have, or my money becomes a slave to me, serving my life.

What intersts me here is that money, even two thousand or so years ago, was a
symbol of power, and that this very intelligent Roman, Horace, conceives of
that power in terms of slavery.

His father had been a slave. He later gained his freedom and apparently some
modicum of wealth, able enough to own a farm. The farm was confiscated during
the civil wars and given, likely, to soldiers returning from battle as "pay"
for their service. The farm, the love of the countryside remained an endearing
image in Horace's love poetry. One might say that the countryside remained the
image of some very tender place in Horace's heart.

And that tender place was connected to how power had been used over it, and in
his family that power had its roots in how slaves, or former slaves, were
treated. Never quite safe.

My daughter and I had a conversastion recently about "affirmative action" which
came up in one of her classes. Affirmative action is about power and how it is
used in the workplace. One might say that affirmative action exists because of
a realization in our culture of what power and its abuse through slavery and
subsequent racism have done to the lives of so many Americans. The tender
places in human lives are very deep, and yet, one does not have to go far to
find them.

Money, power, how they are used: is it over others that we use them, or with
others?