Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/357

 ARISTEIDES. 389 raphy of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, 1 however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristeides was inferior to Therais- tokles in resource, quickness, flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties ; but incomparably superior to him, as well as to other rivals and contemporaries, in integrity, public as well as private ; inaccessible to pecuniary temptations, as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the high- est measure of personal confidence. He is described as the pe- culiar friend of Kleisthenes, the first founder of the democracy, 9 as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in political life, with no solicitude for party ties, and with little care either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies, as unflinching in the exposure of corrupt practices, by whomsoever committed or up- held, as earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his equity in private arbitrations, and even his candor in political dispute, and as manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without flaw and be- yond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timokreon, 3 and by the allies of Athens, upon whom he first assessed the tribute. Few of the leading men in any part of Greece were without some taint on their reputation, deserved or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary probity ; but whoever be- came notoriously recognized as possessing this vital quality, ac- quired by means of it a firmer hold on the public esteem thao even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendent qualities possessed by Perikles ; 4 and Nikias, equal to him in this respect, though immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian people continued so long to repose in him. The abilities of Aris- teides, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so 1 Ilerodot. viii, 79; Plato, Gorgias, c. 172. upiarov uvdpa iv 'A&fjvpai teal oiKaiorarov. 2 Plutarch (Aristeides, c. 1-4 ; Themistokles, c. 3 ; An Seni sit gercncto rsspublica, c. 12, p. 790; Praecepta Reip. Gerend. c. ii, p. 805). 3 Timokreon ap. Plutarch. Themistokles, c. 21. Thucyd. ii, 65.