ARISTIDES AND MARCUS CATO. 355

footing. Engaging also in many public suits, sometimea plaintiflF, sometimes defendant, he cast the most, and came off clear with all ; thanks to his eloquence, that bulwark and powerful instrument to which more truly, than to chance or his fortune, he owed it, that he sustained him- self unhurt to the last. Antipater justly gives it as a high commendation to Aristotle the philosopher, writing of him after his death, that among his other virtues, he was endowed with a faculty of persuading people which way he pleased. Questionless, there is no perfecter endowment in man than political virtue, and of this Economics * is commonly esteemed not the least part ; for a city, which is a collec- tion of private households, grows into a stable common- wealth by the private means of prosperous citizens that compose it. Lycurgus by prohibiting gold and silver in Sparta, and making iron, spoiled by the fire, the only cur- rency, did not by these measures discharge them from minding their household affairs, but cutting off luxury, the corruption and tumor of riches, he provided there should be an abundant supply of all necessary and useful things for all persons, as much as any other lawmaker ever did ; being more apprehensive of a poor, needy, and indigent member of a community, than of the rich and haughty. And in this management, of domestic concerns, Cato was as great as in the government of public affairs ; for he increased his estate, and became a master to others in economy and husbandry ; upon which subjects he col- lected in his writings many useful obsei'vations. On the . * Economics, in the proper maintenance is the more obvious Greek sense, being for the house- and prominent part of household hold or family, or cecos, what poll- management. Economics, in course tics are for the state, or polis. The of time, became restricted to this former word has originally no more sense, and thence again was ex- to do with money-matters than the tended to money-matters in general. latter ; but as earning the fiunily's