Aristides

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.

And yet, although men are thus disposed, it is immortality, of which our nature is not capable, and power, the chief disposal of which is in the hands of fortune, that they eagerly desire; while as for virtue, the only divine excellence within our reach, they put it at the bottom of the list, unwisely too, since a life passed in power and great fortune and authority needs justice to make it divine; by injustice it is made bestial.

Now, to resume, it befell Aristides to be loved at first because of this surname, but afterwards to be jealously hated, especially when Themistocles set the story going among the multitude that Aristides had done away with the public courts of justice by his determining and judging everything in private, and that, without any one perceiving it, he had established for himself a monarchy, saving only the armed body-guard. And besides, the people too must by this time have become greatly elated over their victory; they thought nothing too good for themselves, and were therefore vexed with those who towered above the multitude in name and reputation.

So they assembled in the city from all the country round, and ostracized Aristides, giving to their envious dislike of his reputation the name of fear of tyranny. Now the sentence of ostracism was not a chastisement of base practices, nay, it was speciously called a humbling and docking of oppressive prestige and power; but it was really a merciful exorcism of the spirit of jealous hate, which thus vented its malignant desire to injure, not in some irreparable evil, but in a mere change of residence for ten years.

And when ignoble men of the baser sort came to be subjected to this penalty, it ceased to be inflicted at all, and Hyperbolus was the last to be thus ostracized.[*]( About 417 B.C. Cf. Plut. Nic. 11, Plut. Alc. 13.) It is said that Hyperbolus was ostracized for the following reason. Alcibiades and Nicias had the greatest power in the state, and were at odds. Accordingly, when the people were about to exercise the ostracism, and were clearly going to vote against one or the other of these two men, they came to terms with one another, united their opposing factions, and effected the ostracism of Hyperbolus.