[Footnote 99:  This is the Greek word ([Greek:  akoniton]):  the same name is now given to Monkshood or Wolfsbane, a genus of Ranunculaceae.  Aconite is now used as a medicine; “The best forms are either an alcoholic extract of the leaves, or an alcoholic tincture of the root made by displacement.”  It is a poisonous plant, and death has followed from the careless use of it ("Aconite,” Penny Cyclopaedia and Supplement to the P.  Cyc.).

With this farce, as Plutarch remarks, the history of Crassus terminates.  If Plutarch designed to make Crassus contemptible, he has certainly succeeded.  And there is nothing in other authorities to induce us to think that he has done Crassus injustice.  With some good qualities and his moderate abilities, he might have been a respectable man in a private station.  But insatiable avarice, and that curse of many men, ambition without the ability that can ensure success and command respect, made Crassus a fool in his old age, and brought him to an ignominious end.]

COMPARISON OF NIKIAS AND CRASSUS.

I. In the first place, the wealth of Nikias was much more honestly and creditably obtained than that of Crassus.  Generally speaking, one cannot approve of men who make their money from mines, which are as a rule worked by criminals, or savages, labouring in chains in unhealthy subterranean dungeons; but yet this method of amassing a fortune seems much the more honourable, when compared with Crassus’s purchase of confiscated lands and his habit of bidding for houses that were on fire.  Crassus too used to practise these openly, like a trade:  while he was also accused of taking bribes for his speeches in the Senate, of defrauding the allies of Rome, of currying favour with great ladies and assisting them to shield offenders from justice.  Nothing of this sort was ever laid to the charge of Nikias, who, however, was ridiculed for giving money to common informers because he feared their tongues.  Yet this action of his, though it would have been a disgrace to Perikles, or Aristeides, was a necessity for Nikias, who was naturally of a timid disposition.  Thus Lykurgus the orator excused himself when accused of having bought off some informers who threatened him.  “I am glad,” said he, “that after so long a public life as mine I should have been at last convicted of giving bribes rather than of receiving them.”

The expenditure of Nikias was all calculated to increase his popularity in the state, being devoted to offerings to the gods, gymnastic contests and public dramatic performances.  But all the money he spent that way, and all that he possessed was but a small part of what Crassus bestowed upon a public feast at Rome for some tens of thousands of guests, whom he even maintained at his own cost for some time after.  So true it is that wickedness and vice argue a want of due balance and proportion in a man’s mind, which leads him to acquire wealth dishonestly, and then to squander it uselessly.