Characteristics of the Wealthy
by Aristotle - The Rhetoric
The type of character produced by Wealth lies on the surface for all
to see. Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession of wealth
affects their understanding; they feel as if they had every good thing
that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of value for everything else,
and therefore they imagine there is nothing it cannot buy. They are luxurious
and ostentatious; luxurious, because of the luxury in which they live
and the prosperity which they display; ostentatious and vulgar, because, like
other people's, their minds are regularly occupied with the object of
their love and admiration, and also because they think that other people's idea
of happiness is the same as their own. It is indeed quite natural that
they should be affected thus; for if you have money, there are always plenty
of people who come begging from you. Hence the saying of Simonides about
wise men and rich men, in answer to Hiero's wife, who asked him whether it
was better to grow rich or wise. 'Why, rich,' he said; 'for I see the wise
men spending their days at the rich men's doors.'
Rich men also consider themselves worthy to hold public
office; for they consider they already have the things that
give a claim to office. In a word, the type of character produced
by wealth is that of a prosperous fool. There is indeed
one difference between the type of the newly-enriched and
those who have long been rich: the
newly-enriched have all the bad qualities mentioned in an exaggerated and
worse form -- to be newly-enriched means, so to speak, no education in riches.
The wrongs they do others are not meant to injure their victims, but
spring from insolence or self-indulgence, e.g. those that end in assault or
in adultery.
