Aristides

Some Barbarian, it seems, rushed up to this man, supposing him to be a king from his long hair and the headband that he wore, made obeisance to him, and taking him by the hand in suppliant fashion, showed him a great mass of gold buried up in a sort of pit. Callias, most savage and lawless of men, took up the gold; but the man, to prevent his betraying the matter to others, he slew. From this circumstance, they say, his descendants are called by the comic poets Laccopluti, or Pit-wealthies, in sly allusion to the place where Callias found his gold.

Aristides at once received the office of Archon Eponymous. And yet Demetrius of Phalerum says that it was a little while before his death, and after the battle of Plataea, that the man held this office.[*]( 479-478 B.C.) But in the official records, after Xanthippides, in whose year of office Mardonius was defeated at Plataea, you cannot find, long as the list is, so much as the name Aristides; whereas immediately after Phaenippus, in whose year of office the victory at Marathon was won, an Aristides is recorded as archon.[*]( 490-489 B.C.)

Of all his virtues, it was his justice that most impressed the multitude, because of its most continual and most general exercise. Wherefore, though poor and a man of the people, he acquired that most kingly and godlike surname of The Just.

This no kings or tyrants ever coveted, nay, they rejoiced to be surnamed Besiegers, or Thunderbolts, or Conquerors, and some Eagles, or Hawks,[*]( Demetrius Poliorcetes; Ptolemy Ceraunos; Seleucus Nicator; Pyrrhus Aetos; Antiochus Hierax.) cultivating the reputation which is based on violence and power, as it seems, rather than on virtue. And yet divinity, to which such men are eager to adapt and conform themselves, is believed to have three elements of superiority,—incorruption, power, and virtue; and the most reverend, the divinest of these, is virtue.

For vacuum and the ultimate elements partake of incorruption; and great power is exhibited by earthquakes and thunderbolts, and rushing tornadoes, and invading floods; but in fundamental justice nothing participates except through the exercise of intelligent reasoning powers. Therefore, considering the three feelings which are generally entertained towards divinity,—envy, fear, and honorable regard, men seem to envy and felicitate the deities for their incorruption and perpetuity; to dread and fear them for their sovereignty and power; but to love and honor and revere them for their justice.