Letters 87.6

You say: ‘His estates are wide, but his debts are large.’ ‘He has a fine house, but he has built it on borrowed capital.’ ‘No man will display a more brilliant retinue on short notice, but he cannot meet his debts.’ ‘If he pays off his creditors, he will have nothing left.’” So you will feel bound to do in all other cases as well,—to find out by elimination the amount of every man’s actual possessions.

Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 87.6, translated by Richard Mott Gummere