Plutarch here starts a question which suggests itself to all men who have had any experience.  It is a common remark that a man who has been raised from a low degree to a high station, or has become rich from being poor, is no longer the same man.  Nobody expects those whom he has known in the same station as himself to behave themselves in the same way when they are exalted above it.  Nobody expects a man who has got power to be the same man that he was in an humble station.  Any man who has lived a reasonable time in the world and had extensive conversation with it knows this to be true.  But is the man changed, or are his latent qualities only made apparent by his changed circumstances?  The truth seems to be that latent qualities are developed by opportunity.  All men have the latent capacities of pride, arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty.  Cruelty perhaps requires the most opportunities for its development; and these opportunities are power, fear, and opposition to his will.  It has been well observed, that all men are capable of crime, but different circumstances are necessary to develop this capacity in different men.  All have their price; and some may be bought cheap.  He who is above the temptation of money may yield to other temptations.  The possession of power is the greatest temptation of all, as it offers the greatest opportunities for the development of any latent disposition; and every man has a point or two in which he is open to the insidious attacks of opportunity.  In matters political, the main thing is to know, from the indications that a man gives when he has not power, what he will be when he has power:  in the ordinary intercourse of life, the main thing is to judge of the character of those with whom we deal by compulsion or choice, to know how far we can trust what they say, how far their future conduct may be predicted from present indications.  But to show what these indications are, belongs, as Plutarch says, to another inquiry than the present.  The general rule of old was Distrust, which the crafty Sicilian, as Cicero (Ad Attic. i. 19) calls Epicharmus, was always whispering in his ear.  Epicharmus has well expressed his maxim in a single line: 

    [Greek:  Naphe kai memnas’ apistein:  arthra tauta ton phrenon.]

    Wakeful be thou and distrustful:  sinews these are to the mind.

This is the rule for the timid, and for them a safe one.  But he who is always suspicious must not expect to be trusted himself; and when the bold command, he must be content to obey.]

[Footnote 283:  This is not a Roman name.  The nearest name to it is Aufidius.  But it is conjectured that one Fufidius is meant here (see the note of Sintenis), and also in the Life of Sertorius (c. 26, 27).  This is probably the Fufidius (Florus, iii. 21, where the name is written incorrectly Furfidius in some editions) who said, that “Some should be left alive that there might be persons to domineer over.”]