354 ARISTIDES AND MARCUS CATO.

ing a high hand, and, in a manner, insulting over those that courted preferment. It was not as great a matter to have Themistocles for an adversary, a person of mean extraction and small fortune, (for he was not worth, it is said, more than four or five talents when he first applied himself to public affairs,) as to contest with a Scipio Africanus, a Servius Galba, and a Quintiue Flamininus, hav- ing no other aid but a tongue free to assert right. Besides, Aristides at Marathon, and again at Platsea, was but one commander out of ten ; whereas Cato was chosen consul with a single colleague, having many com- petitors, and with a single colleague, also, was preferred before seven most noble and eminent pretenders to be censor. But Aristides was never principal in any action ; for Miltiades carried the day at Marathon, at Salamis Themistocles, and at Platasa, Herodotus tells us, Pausanias got the glory of that noble victory : and men like So- phanes, and Aminias, Callimachus, and CyntegjTus, be- haved themselves so well in all those engagements, as to contest it with Aristides even for the second place. But Cato not only in his consulship was esteemed the chief in courage and conduct in the Spanish war, but even whilst he was only serving as tribune at Thermopylae, under another's com- mand, he gained the glory of the victory, for having, as it were, opened a wide gate for the Romans to rush in upon Antiochus, and for having brought the war on his back, whilst he only minded what was before his face. For that victory, which was beyond dispute all Cato's own work, cleared Asia out of Gx'eece, and by that means made way afterwards for Scipio into Asia. Both of them, indeed, were always victorious in war ; but at home Aristides stumbled, being banished and oppressed by the faction of Themistocles; yet Cato, notwithstanding he had almost all the chief and most powerful of Rome for his adversaries, and wrestled with them even to his old age, kept still his