You see how even in pinching poverty the heart finds the means for generosity. These, it seems to me, were the words of Aeschines: “You, O Fortune, have accomplished nothing by wishing to make me poor; I shall nonetheless find for this great man a gift that is worthy of him, and, since I cannot give to him from your store, I shall give from my own.” Nor is there any reason for you to suppose that he counted himself cheap: the value he set upon himself was himself. And so clever a young man was he that he discovered a way of giving to himself — Socrates! It is not the size of our respective benefits, but the character of the one from whom they come that should be our concern.
13A man is shrewd if he does not make himself difficult of access to those who come with immoderate desires, and encourages their wild expectations by his words although in reality he intends to give them no help; but his reputation suffers if he is sharp of tongue, stern in countenance, and arouses their jealousy by flaunting his own good fortune. For they court, and yet loathe, the prosperous man, and they hate him for doing the same things that they would do if they could.
They make a laughing-stock of other men’s wives, not even secretly, but openly, and then surrender their own wives to others. If a man forbids his wife to appear in public in a sedan-chair and to ride exposed on every side to the view of observers who everywhere approach her, he is boorish and unmannerly and guilty of bad form, and the married women count his demands detestable. If a man makes himself conspicuous by not having a mistress, and does not supply an allowance to another man’s wife, the married women say that he is a poor sort and is addicted to low pleasures and affairs with maidservants. The result of this is that adultery has become the most seemly sort of betrothal, and the bachelor is in accord with the widower, since the only man who takes a wife is one who takes away a wife. Now men vie in squandering what they have stolen and then in regaining by fierce and sharp greed what they have squandered; they have no scruples; they esteem lightly the poverty of others and fear poverty for themselves more than any other evil; they upset peace with their injustices, and hard press the weaker with violence and fear. That the provinces are plundered, that the judgment-seat is for sale, and, when two bids have been made, is knocked down to one of the bidders is of course not surprising, since it is the law of nations that you can sell what you have bought!