Comparison of Aristides and Marcus Cato

The military campaigns of Cato made no great addition to the Roman empire, which was great already; but those of Aristides include the fairest, most brilliant, and most important actions of the Greeks, namely, Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. And certainly Antiochus is not worthy to be compared with Xerxes, nor the demolition of the walls of the Spanish cities with the destruction of so many myriads of Barbarians both by land and sea.

On these occasions Aristides was inferior to no one in actual service, but he left the glory and the laurels, as he did wealth and substance, to those who wanted them more, because he was superior to all these things also. For my own part, I do not blame Cato for his constant boasting, and for rating himself above everybody else, although he does say, in one of his speeches, that self-praise and self-depreciation are alike absurd. But I regard the man who is often lauding himself as less complete in excellence than one who does not even want others to do so.

Freedom from ambition is no slight requisite for the gentleness which should mark a statesman; and, on the contrary, ambition is harsh, and the greatest fomenter of envy. From this spirit Aristides was wholly free, whereas Cato was very full of it. For example, Aristides co-operated with Themistocles in his greatest achievements, and as one might say, stood guard over him while he was in command, and thereby saved Athens;

while Cato, by his opposition to Scipio, almost vitiated and ruined that wonderful campaign of his against the Carthaginians, in which he overthrew the invincible Hannibal,[*](At Zama, 202 B.C.) and finally, by perpetually inventing all sorts of suspicions and calumnies against him, drove him out of Rome, and brought down on his brother’s head a most shameful condemnation for embezzlement.

Once more, that temperance which Cato always decked out with the fairest praises, Aristides maintained and practised in unsullied purity whereas Cato, by marrying unworthily and unseasonably, fell under no slight or insignificant censure in this regard. It was surely quite indecent that a man of his years should bring home as stepmother to his grown-up son and that son’s bride, a girl whose father was his assistant and served the public for hire. Whether he did this merely for his own pleasure, or in anger, to punish his son fox objecting to his mistress, both what he did and what led him to do it were disgraceful.

And the sarcastic reason for it which he gave his son was not a true one. For had he wished to beget more sons as good, he should have planned at the outset to marry a woman of family, instead of contenting himself, as long as he could do so secretly, with the society of a low concubine, and when he was discovered, making a man his father-in-law whom he could most easily persuade, rather than one whose alliance would bring him most honour.