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Often appears with: provision for family · providence and divine governance · poverty and wealth · poverty and virtue · phocis campaign and thebes · language, naming, and meaning · justice as a virtue · greek language in rome · censorship and the press · battle and tactics · aulus postumius albinus · aristides
Usually: censure (2) · commentary or gloss (1) · reflection (1) · injustice endured (1) · exhortation (1) · humor (1)
“I wonder,” said he, “on what grounds you make such a demand. If the Amphictyonic council had charged you to write the history, you might perhaps have been forced to allege this excuse and ask for this consideration. But to write it of your own accord, when there was no compulsion to do so, and then to demand consideration, if you should happen to write bad Greek, is quite unreasonable.” Polybius, The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 2 (of 2) · wit
“The Achaeans made a sudden attack upon them and gained a slight success, which was a few days afterwards revenged by a signal defeat.” Polybius, The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 2 (of 2) · observation
“I saw with my own eyes pictures thrown on the ground and soldiers playing dice on them; among them was a picture of Dionysus by Aristeides—in reference to which they say that the proverbial saying arose, “Nothing to the Dionysus,”—and the Hercules tortured by the shirt of Deianeira.” Polybius, The Histories of Polybius, Vol. 2 (of 2) · vivid
“What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence;” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · insight
“Riches ought to be proportioned to the use we have of them; for he that scrapes together a great deal, making use of but little, is not independent;” Plutarch, Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans · precept
Plutarch argues that a just man should not be judged by lack of wealth, contrasting Aristides’s poverty and failure to provide for his daughters with Cato’s long line of Roman glory.
was not dear, nor household cares to me, Whose increase rears the thriving family; But well-rigged ships were always my delight, And wars, and darts, and arrows of the fight: as if the same characters carelessly neglected their own estates, and lived by injustice and rapine from others. For it is not as the physicians say of oil, that outwardly applied, it is very wholesome, but taken inwardly detrimental, that thu…
Polybius describes Aulus Postumius Albinus as ostentatious and Greek-imitating, quotes Cato mocking his demand to write Greek history, and notes his avoidance of battle by claiming illness at Thebes.
[Sidenote: Character of Aulus Postumius Albinus.] +12.+ Aulus Postumius deserves some special notice from us here. He was a member of a family and gens of the first rank, but in himself was garrulous and wordy, and exceedingly ostentatious. From his boyhood he had a great leaning to Greek studies and literature: but he was so immoderate and affected in this pursuit, that owing to him the Greek style became offensive…