Comparison of Aristides and Marcus Cato

Now that I have recorded the most noteworthy things in the careers of these men also, if one compare the entire life of the one with that of the other, it will not be easy to mark the difference between them, obscured as it is by many great resemblances. And even if, in our comparison, we analyse each life, as we would a poem or a picture, we shall find that the rise to political power and repute in consequence of innate excellence and strength, rather than of inherited advantages, is common to both. But in the case of Aristides, Athens was not yet great when he rose to eminence, and the leaders and generals with whom he dealt were men of moderate and uniform fortunes. The highest assessment of property in those days was five hundred bushels of grain, the second three hundred, the third and last two hundred. Whereas Cato, coming from a little town and from ways of life deemed rustic, plunged headlong into the boundless sea of Roman politics when they were no longer conducted by such men as Curius, Fabricius, and Atilius, nor welcomed as magistrates and leaders poor men who had mounted the rostrum after working with their own hands at the plough and the mattock, but were wont to have regard rather for great families and their wealth, largesses, and solicitations, while those who sought office, such was now the power and arrogance of the people, were wantonly handled. It was not the same thing to have Themistocles for a rival, who was of no illustrious family and had only moderate possessions (he is said to have been worth three, or, at most, five talents when he entered public life), as it was to compete for pre-eminence with such men as Scipio Africanus, Servius Galba, and Quintius Flamininus, having no other advantage than a tongue which spoke boldly for the right. Besides, at Marathon, and again at Plataea, Aristides was only one of ten generals, while Cato was elected one of two consuls out of many competitors, and one of two censors over the heads of seven of the foremost and most illustrious Romans, who stood for the office with him. Furthermore, Aristides was not the foremost man in any one of his victories, but Miltiades has the chief honour of Marathon, Themistocles of Salamis, and at Plataea, Herodotus says it was Pausanias who won that fairest of all victories, while even for second honours Aristides has such rivals as Sophanes, Ameinias, Callimachus, and Cynaegeirus, who displayed the greatest valour in those actions. Cato, on the other hand, was not only chief in the plans and actions of the Spanish war during his own consulate, but also at Thermopylae, when he was but a tribune in the army and another was consul, he got the glory of the victory, opening up great mountain passes for the Romans to rush through upon Antiochus, and swinging the war round into the king’s rear, when he had eyes only for what was in front of him. That victory was manifestly the work of Cato, and it not only drove Asia out of Hellas, but made it afterwards accessible to Scipio. It is true that both were always victorious in war, but in politics Aristides got a fall, being driven into a minority and ostracised by Themistocles. Cato, on the contrary, though he had for his antagonists almost all the greatest and ablest men in Rome, and though he kept on wrestling with them up to his old age, never lost his footing. He was involved in countless civil processes, both as plaintiff and defendant; as plaintiff, he often won his case, as defendant, he never lost it, thanks to that bulwark and efficacious weapon of his life, his eloquence. To this, more justly than to fortune and the guardian genius of the man, we may ascribe the fact that he was never visited with disgrace. That was a great tribute which was paid Aristotle the philosopher by Antipater, when he wrote concerning him, after his death, that in addition to all his other gifts, the man had also the gift of persuasion. Man has no higher capacity than that for conducting cities and states, as is generally admitted. But the ability to conduct a household enters in no small degree into this higher political capacity, as most believe. For the city is but an organised sum total of households, and has public vigour only as its citizens prosper in their private lives. When Lycurgus banished both silver and gold from Sparta, and introduced there a coinage of iron that had been ruined by fire, he did not set his fellow citizens free from the duty of domestic economy. He merely removed the swollen and feverish wantonness of wealth, and so provided that all alike might have an abundance of the necessary and useful things of life. He did this because, better than any other ancient legislator, he foresaw that the helpless, homeless, and poverty-stricken citizen was a greater menace to the commonwealth than one who was rich and ostentatious. Cato, then, was no whit less efficient in the conduct of his household than in that of the city. He not only increased his own substance, but became a recognized teacher of domestic economy and agriculture for others, and compiled many useful precepts on these subjects. Aristides, on the other hand, was so poor as to bring even his righteousness into disrepute, as ruining a household, reducing a man to beggary, and profiting everybody rather than its possessor. And yet Hesiod has much to say by way of exhorting us to righteousness allied with domestic economy, and abuses idleness as a source of injustice; Homer also says well:—