II.  Furthermore, Aristeides, both at Marathon and at Plataea, acted as general with nine colleagues, while Cato was elected one of the two consuls and afterwards one of the two censors, though there were many other candidates for both offices.  Aristeides never conspicuously distinguished himself, as the credit of the victory at Marathon belongs to Miltiades, and that of Salamis to Themistokles, while Herodotus tells us that Pausanias obtained the most glorious success of all at Plataea, and even the second place is disputed with Aristeides by Sophanes, Ameinias, Kallimachus, and Kynaegyrus, all of whom won great glory in those battles.  On the other hand, Cato not only when consul gained the greatest credit, both by his wise conduct, and his personal prowess in the Spanish war, but, when at Thermopylae he was acting as tribune under another person’s command as consul, contributed mainly to winning the victory by his flank movement, by which he established himself in the rear of Antiochus while that prince was intent upon the enemy in his front.  This victory, which was so manifestly due to Cato, had the important result of driving the Asiatic troops out of Greece back to their own country, and so of preparing the way for Scipio’s subsequent invasion of Asia.

Neither of them were ever defeated in battle, but in political matters Aristeides was overcome by his rival Themistokles, who drove him into exile by ostracism, while Cato held his own against all the greatest and most influential men in Rome to the end of his life without once being overthrown by them.  He was often impeached, and always acquitted, while he frequently succeeded in his impeachments of others, using, both as a bulwark to defend himself and as a weapon to attack others, his power of speaking in public, which indeed is a quality more to be relied upon than good fortune to protect a man from suffering wrong.  Antipater, in the account which he wrote of the philosopher Aristotle after his death, observes that besides his other qualities and accomplishments this man had the power of persuasion.

III.  It is generally admitted that political virtue is the highest to which a man can aspire, and of this, most think domestic virtue to be a very important part; for as a city is merely a collection of houses, the public virtue of the state must be increased if it contain many well-regulated households.  Lykurgus, when he banished silver and gold from Sparta, and gave his countrymen useless iron money, did not wish to discourage good household management among them, but he removed the dangerous seductions of wealth out of their reach, in order that they all might enjoy a sufficiency of what was useful and necessary.  He saw, what no other legislator appears to have seen, that the real danger to a commonwealth arises from the poor and desperate rather than from the excessively rich.