His proposal was greeted with cries of outrage. Aristeides, his blend of conservatism and demagoguery as inimitable as ever, rose in immediate opposition. It was the custom, he pointed out smoothly, for bonanzas from the mines to be divided equally among the Athenian people: an appeal to the voters’ self-interest that managed to be both blatant and hedged about edifyingly by tradition.
