Aristides

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

And yet, although he at last established his city in its sway over so many men, he himself abode by his poverty, and continued to be no less content with the reputation he got from being a poor man, than with that based on his trophies of victory. This is clear from the following story. Callias the Torch-bearer was a kinsman of his. This man was prosecuted by his enemies on a capital charge, and after they had brought only moderate accusations against him within the scope of their indictment, they went outside of it and appealed to the judges as follows:

You know Aristides the son of Lysimachus, they said, how he is admired in Hellas; what do you suppose his domestic circumstances are when you see him entering the public assembly in such a scanty cloak as that? Is it not likely that a man who shivers in public goes hungry at home, and is straitened for the other necessaries of life? Callias, however, who is the richest man of Athens (and his cousin at that), allows him to suffer want with his wife and children, though he has often had service of the man, and many times reaped advantage from his influence with you.