Aristides

However, after listening to the embassy, on motion of Aristides, they answered with an admirable answer, declaring that they could be tolerant with their foes for supposing that everything was to be bought for wealth and money, since their foes could conceive of nothing higher than these things; but they were indignant at the Lacedaemonians for having an eye only to the penury and indigence that now reigned at Athens, and for being so unmindful of the valor and ambition of the Athenians as to exhort them to contend for Hellas merely to win their rations.

When Aristides had made this motion and had introduced the waiting embassies into the Assembly, he bade the Lacedaemonians tell their people that there was not bulk of gold above or below ground so large that the Athenians would take it in payment for the freedom of the Hellenes; and to the messengers of Mardonius he said, pointing to the sun: As long as yonder sun journeys his appointed journey, so long will the Athenians wage war against the Persians in behalf of the land which has been ravaged by them and of the temples which they have defiled and consumed with fire.