Titus Maccius Plautus and the EU Troika

The Roman comic playwright Titus Maccius Plautus takes up an old adage of Greek origin when he writes in his Bacchides: "Quem di diligent, adolescens moritur", which translated into English sounds: "Whom the gods love die young". This is of course a paradox: the empirical proof that gods do not make a favour to those they love by making them die young is the fact that large shares of national income are devoted to maintaining or regaining health, in view of a long life. But, taking the same paradoxical line as Plautus, I am tempted to say: "Happy the countries that had the troika!"