Chapter XVI of the treatise on “Rhetoric.”

ANY one, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for (its possessors) are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence everything seems to be purchasable by it. And they are affectedly delicate and purse-proud; they are thus delicate on account of their luxurious lives, and the display they make of their prosperity. They are purse-proud, and violate the rules of good breeding, from the circumstance that every one is wont to dwell upon that which is beloved and admired by him, and because they think that others are emulous of that, of which they are themselves. But at the same time they are thus affected reasonably enough; for many are they who need the aid of men of property. Whence, too, that remark of Simonides addressed to the wife of Hiero respecting the wealthy and the wise; for when she asked him whether it were better to have been born wealthy or wise, he replied, wealthy; for, he said, he used to see the wise hanging on at the doors of the wealthy. And (it is a characteristic of the rich) that they esteem themselves worthy of being in office, for they consider themselves possessed of that on account of which they are entitled to be in office. And, in a word, the disposition of the rich is that of a fool amid prosperity.

  However, the dispositions of those who are but lately rich, and of those who have been so from of old, are different; inasmuch as those who have recently become rich have all these faults in a greater and a worse degree; for the having recently become rich is as it were an inexpertness in wealth. And they are guilty of offenses, not of a malicious nature, but such as are either offenses of contumely or intemperance.