Aristides

“ After the fight, Themistocles, to sound Aristides, told him they had performed a good piece of service, but there was a better yet to be done, the keeping Asia in Europe, by sailing forthwith to the Hellespont, and cutting in sunder the bridge. But Aristides, with an exclamation, bid him think no more of it, but deliberate and find out means for removing the Mede, as quickly as possible, out of Greece; lest being enclosed, through want of means to escape, necessity should compel him to force his way with so great an army. ”

“ Aristides, therefore, had at first the fortune to be beloved for this surname, but at length envied. Especially when Themistocles spread a rumor amongst the people, that, by determining and judging all matters privately, he had destroyed the courts of judicature, and was secretly making way for a monarchy in his own person, without the assistance of guards. Moreover, the spirit of the people, now grown high, and confident with their late victory, naturally entertained feelings of dislike to all of more than common fame and reputation. ”

“ Having briefly spoken of the divine nature in the terms of Greek philosophy, Aristides proceeds to ask which of all the races of men have at all partaken of the truth about God. Here we have the first attempt at a systematic comparison of ancient religions. For the purpose of his inquiry he adopts an obvious threefold division into idolaters, Jews and Christians. Idolaters, or, as he more gently terms them in addressing the emperor, “those who worship what among you are said to be gods,” he subdivides into the three great world-civilizations—Chaldeans, Greeks and Egyptians. ”

“ On leaving the city Aristides prayed that the people should never have any occasion to regret their action.
This occasion quickly came. In less than three years he was recalled to aid his country in the Persian invasion. Landing at Salamis, he served Athens in the manner we have already told. The command of the army which Aristides surrendered to Miltiades at the battle of Marathon fell to himself in the battle of Platæa, for on that great day he led the Athenians and played an important part in the victory that followed. ”

“ Aristides has no trace of ill-feeling to the Jews; no reference to the Logos doctrine, nor to the distinctive ideas of the Apostle Paul; he has no gnosticism or heresy to denounce, and he makes no appeal to miracle and prophecy. Christianity, in his view, is worthy of a philosophic emperor because it is eminently reasonable, and gives an impulse and power to live a good life. On the whole, Aristides represents that type of Christian practice which is found in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles; and to this he adds a simple Christian philosophy which may be compared with that of St. ”

“ Aristides, less brilliant than his rival, was famous for the stainless integrity and uprightness of his public life, and his name has passed into history as the symbol of unswerving truth and justice. He also contributed largely to the successful leadership of the Hellenic forces against their Asiatic invaders. References: Plutarch’s “Lives,” Grote’s “History of Greece,” Curtius’s “History of Greece.”]
Neither Themistocles nor Aristides could boast of a lineage of gods and heroes like the Æacid Miltiades; [3] both were of middling station and circumstances. ”

“ Aristides was appointed to confer with him. The design was to set fire to the combined fleet of the Greeks, then lying in a neighboring port, by which means the Athenians would acquire the sovereignty of the seas. Aristides returned to the people, and told them that nothing could be more advantageous—yet nothing more unjust. The project was of course abandoned.
The character of Aristides is one of the finest that is handed down by antiquity. To him belongs the rarest of all praises, that of observing justice, not only between man and man, but between nation and nation. ”

“ Aristides seems never to have been truly happy unless he was talking about his ailments, and he loyally followed any suggestion for treatment if only he could persuade himself that it came from the beloved Asklepios. The god would send him a vision, that ordered him to bathe three times in icy water when fevered, and afterwards to run a mile in the teeth of a north-east wind—and the north-easters in the Troad can be bitter indeed; very different from the urbane and gentle breath that spreads so delicious a languor over the summer of Sydney! ”

“ An Aristides is formed by the respect paid to integrity, which society tries in vain—a Demaratus, an Eurybiades, and, as we shall see, a Pausanias, by the laws which, affecting to exclude the influence of the passions, render their temptations novel, and their effects irresistible. ”

“ Having given audience to the ambassadors, they returned an answer, upon the motion of Aristides, worthy of the highest admiration; declaring, that they forgave their enemies if they thought all things purchasable by wealth, than which they knew nothing of greater value; but that they felt offended at the Lacedaemonians, for looking only to their present poverty and exigence, without any remembrance of their valor and magnanimity, offering them their victuals, to fight in the cause of Greece. ”

“ Though they see their gods eaten by others and by men, and burned, and slain, and rotting, they do not understand concerning them that they are no gods.”
Throughout the whole of the argument there is strong common-sense and a stern severity unrelieved by conscious humour. Aristides is engaged in a real contest; he strikes hard blows, and gives no quarter. He cannot see, as Justin and Clement see, a striving after truth, a feeling after God, in the older religions, or even in the philosophies of Greece. He has no patience with attempts to find a deeper meaning in the stories of the gods. ”

“ Coming together, therefore, from all parts into the city, they banished Aristides by the ostracism, giving their jealousy of his reputation the name of fear of tyranny. For ostracism was not the punishment of any criminal act, but was speciously said to be the mere depression and humiliation of excessive greatness and power; and was in fact a gentle relief and mitigation of envious feeling, which was thus allowed to vent itself in inflicting no intolerable injury, only a ten years' banishment. ”

“ Aristides’ favourite place of residence was Smyrna. In 178, when it was destroyed by an earthquake, he wrote an account of the disaster to Aurelius, which deeply affected the emperor and induced him to rebuild the city. The grateful inhabitants set up a statue in honour of Aristides, and styled him the “builder” of Smyrna. He refused all honours from them except that of priest of Asclepius, which office he held till his death, about 189. The extant works of Aristides consist of two small rhetorical treatises and fifty-five declamations, some not really speeches at all. ”

“ Throughout the whole career of the brilliant Themistocles he had a persistent opponent, Aristides, a man, like him, born of undistinguished parents, but who by moral strength and innate power of intellect won the esteem and admiration of his fellow-citizens. He became the leader of the aristocratic section of the people, as Themistocles did of the democratic, and for years the city was divided between their adherents. ”

“ I have observed this calmness of expression in the faces of many of the most celebrated statues of antiquity, in the Aristides at Naples, I remember being struck with it, and noticing that he who was banished through the envy excited by his being styled the Just, was represented as unmoved as if the injustice of his countrymen no more affected the even tenour of his mind, than the passions of mortals disturb those of the mythological divinities of the ancients. ”

“ He was a kinsman of Aristides, and was the richest man in Athens. When, one day, certain enemies accused him of some offence, they tried to make out before the judges what a bad, cruel character he had. So they said:
"This Torch-bearer is a kinsman of the good man Aristides. He is very rich, and Aristides is very poor. Look at Aristides; how poor are his clothes; he is not warmly clad in cold weather like his kinsman; his wife and children have but a poor dwelling. And here is this hard-hearted Torch-bearer; he has plenty of money, and he will not help his friend." ”

“ However, Themistocles making many dangerous alterations, and withstanding and interrupting him in the whole series of his actions, Aristides also was necessitated to set himself against all Themistocles did, partly in self-defense, and partly to impede his power from still increasing by the favor of the multitude; esteeming it better to let slip some public conveniences, rather than that he by prevailing should become powerful in all things. ”

“ When Aristides, called the Just, the great rival of Themistocles, came to the Greeks with the news that their retreat by sea was cut off, then they were no longer divided, but resolved to fight it out. ”

“ As the mighty general who had already once delivered them was dead, they tried to think who could best replace him, and decided to recall Aristides the Just from his undeserved exile. Aristides generously forgave his fellow-citizens for all the harm they had done him, and he and Themistocles began to do all in their power to insure the safety of Athens. ”

“ I. Aristides the contemporary and rival of Themistocles; is banished, — II. After his recall, commands against Mardonius; increases the popularity of the Athenians, — III. Has the care of the treasury, dies poor. I. Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, a native of Athens, was almost of the same age with Themistocles, and contended with him, in consequence, for pre-eminence, as they were determined rivals one to the other ”

“ Some say Aristides died in Pontus, during a voyage upon the affairs of the public. Others that he died of old age at Athens, being in great honor and veneration amongst his fellow-citizens. But Craterus, the Macedonian, relates his death as follows. After the banishment of Themistocles, he says, the people growing insolent, there sprung up a number of false and frivolous accusers, impeaching the best and most influential men and exposing them to the envy of the multitude, whom their good fortune and power had filled with self-conceit. ”

“ Not but that the incompatibility of their lives and manners may seem to have increased the difference, for Aristides was of a mild nature, and of a nobler sort of character, and, in public matters, acting always with a view, not to glory or popularity, but to the best interests of the state consistently with safety and honesty, he was often forced to oppose Themistocles, and interfere against the increase of his influence, seeing him stirring up the people to all kinds of enterprises, and introducing various innovations. ”

“ Its merits are its recognition of the helplessness of the old heathenism to satisfy human aspiration after the divine, and the impressive simplicity with which it presents the unfailing argument of the lives of Christians.
The student may consult The Apology of Aristides, Syriac text and translation (J. R. Harris) , with an appendix containing the Greek text, Texts and Studies, i. 1 (1891) , and a critical discussion by R. Seeberg in Zahn’s Forschungen, v. 2 (1893) ”

“ More swift than Mars, and more than Vulcan slow?
Yet Vulcan conquers, and the God of arms
Must pay the penalty for lawless charms. [1]
But no one ever calls the life of Aristides a life of pleasure (ἡδὺς) , but that is an epithet they apply to Smindyrides the Sybarite, and to Sardanapalus, though as far as glory went, as Theophrastus says in his book on Pleasure, it was a far more splendid one; but Aristides never devoted himself to luxury as those other men did. Nor would any one call the life of Agesilaus the king of the Lacedæmonians ἡδὺς ”

“ Aristides, making this proposal and bringing back the ambassadors into the assembly, charged them to tell the Lacedaemonians that all the treasure on the earth or under it, was of less value with the people of Athens, than the liberty of Greece. And, showing the sun to those who came from Mardonius, "as long as that retains the same course, so long," said he, "shall the citizens of Athens wage war with the Persians for the country which has been wasted, and the temples that have been profaned and burnt by them." ”

“ For the sea behind, and all around us, is covered with their fleet; so that we are under a necessity of approving ourselves men of courage, and fighting, whether we will or no; for there is no room left us for flight." To which Themistocles answered, "I would not willingly, Aristides, be overcome by you on this occasion ”

“ Aristides had a close friendship with Clisthenes, who established popular government in Athens after the expulsion of the tyrants; yet he had at the same time a270 great veneration for Lycurgus of Sparta, whom he regarded as supreme among law-givers; and this led him to be a supporter of aristocracy, in which he was always opposed by Themistocles, the democrat. The latter was insinuating, daring, artful, and impetuous, but Aristides was solid and steady, inflexibly just, and incapable of flattery or deceit. ”

“ Aristides—middle years of second century—thus dwells upon the tender solicitude of the Christian folk for their dead: “When one of their poor passes away from the world, one of them (the brethren) looks after him, and sees to his burial according to his means.”—Apol. ”