Of Aristides, unfortunately, we possess no description from the hand of Thucydides; yet his character is so simple and consistent that we may safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristides was inferior to Themistocles 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 temptation as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the highest measure of personal confidence. He is described as the peculiar friend of Clisthenes, the first founder of the democracy; 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 upheld; 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 public dispute; and as manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without a flaw and beyond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timocreon, 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 became notoriously recognized as possessing this vital quality, acquired by means of it a firmer hold on the public esteem than even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendant qualities possessed by Pericles; and Nicias, 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 Aristides, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so remarkable a man as Thucydides, were put in the shade by this incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along with the general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers, whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it proclaimed with offensive ostentation.