Nigrinus

To show that they are not ashamed to confess poverty, he mentioned to me a remark which he said he had heard everybody make with one accord at the Panathenaic games. One of the citizens had been arrested and brought before the director of the games because he was looking on in a coloured cloak. Those who saw it were sorry for him and tried to beg him off, and when the herald proclaimed that he had broken the law by wearing such clothing at the games, they all cried out in one voice, as if by pre-arrangement, to excuse him for being in that dress, because, they said, he had no other. Well, he praised all this, and also the freedom there and the blamelessness of their mode of living, their quiet and leisure; and these advantages they certainly have in plenty. He declared, for instance, that a life like theirs is in harmony with philosophy - and can keep the character pure ; so that a serious man who has been taught to despise wealth and elects to live for what is intrinsically good will find Athens éxactly suited to him.