I would willingly put this question to Cato:  “If we ought to enjoy our wealth, why do you make a virtue of simplicity of living when you are a rich man?  If, on the other hand, it is a noble thing, as no doubt it is, to eat common bread, to drink the same wine as our servants and farm labourers do, and not to want fine clothes or comfortable houses, then Aristeides and Epameinondus, Manius Curius and Caius Fabricius were to be applauded for their neglect of the wealth, whose use they rejected.”  Surely it was not necessary for a man who thought turnips made a delicious meal, and who used to boil them himself while his wife baked the bread, to write so much about how to save a penny, and how a man might most quickly make a fortune.  The great advantage of simplicity and contentment is, that it prevents our wishing for superfluities, or even thinking about them.  Aristeides, when cited as a witness during the trial of Kallias, is said to have observed that those who were poor against their will, ought to be ashamed of it, but that those who, like himself, were poor from their own choice, gloried in their poverty.  It would be absurd to suppose that the poverty of Aristeides was not voluntary, when, without doing any criminal act, he might by stripping the body of one dead Persian, or by plundering one tent, have made himself a rich man.  But enough of this.

V. As to their campaigns, those of Cato added but little to the already vast empire of Rome, while Aristeides was present at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea, the most glorious of all Grecian victories.  We cannot compare Antiochus with Xerxes, nor the destruction of the walls of the Spanish cities by Cato, with the tremendous slaughter of the barbarians by the Greeks, both on sea and land.  Aristeides was present at every action of importance, although he gave up his share of glory and rewards, even as he did with gold and silver, to those who needed them more than himself.  I cannot blame Cato for always glorifying himself and claiming the first place for himself, although he says in one of his books that it is absurd for a man either to praise or to blame himself; still I think that he who does not even wish for the praises of others, is a more perfect character than he who is always exalting himself.  An indifference to popular applause does much to soften the bitterness of political controversy, while on the other hand a love of distinction often leads men to be ill-natured and spiteful to others, a fault which Aristeides entirely avoided, and to which Cato was peculiarly liable.  Aristeides saved Athens by supporting the authority of Themistokles on several critical occasions, and even acting as his subordinate; while Cato by his opposition, nearly ruined Scipio’s famous expedition to Carthage, in which he defeated the hitherto invincible Hannibal.  Nor did he cease his intrigues against Scipio until by calumnious and false accusations he drove him out of Rome, and stigmatized his brother with the disgraceful charge of embezzling the public money.