The aristocracy, unsurprisingly, reacted with disgust and mounting alarm. They bristled at the prospect of a businessman having the same spending power as a Eupatrid, and responded with increasingly frantic insults. “Kakoi,” they called the nouveaux riches: the “low-born,” the “unpleasant,” the “cheats.” The Kakoi themselves, however, as they could afford to do, merely shrugged their shoulders and continued to rake in the cash. After all, as a Spartan had once pointed out, back in the days of his own city’s social upheavals, “A man is nothing but the sum of what he owns.” Fitting slogan for a
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