Aristides

Aristides did, indeed, bind the Hellenes by an oath, and took oath himself for the Athenians, to mark his imprecations casting iron ingots into the sea; but afterwards, when circumstances, forsooth, compelled a more strenuous sway, he bade the Athenians lay the perjury to his own charge, and turn events to their own advantage.

And in general, as Theophrastus tells us, while the man was strictly just in his private relations to his fellow-citizens, in public matters he often acted in accordance with the policy which his country had adopted, feeling that this required much actual injustice. For instance, he says that when the question of removing the moneys of the confederacy from Delos to Athens,[*]( 454 B.C.) contrary to the compacts, was being debated, and even the Samians proposed it, Aristides declared that it was unjust, but advantageous.

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.