Let this, then, be taken as our account of liberality, and of the vices that are opposed to it.

Our next task would seem to be an examination of magnificence. For this also seems to be a virtue that is concerned with wealth.

But it does not, like liberality, extend over the whole field of money transactions, but only over those that involve large expenditure; and in these it goes beyond liberality in largeness. For, as its very name ( μεγαλοπρέπεια ) suggests, it is suitable expenditure on a large scale. But the largeness is relative: the expenditure that is suitable for a man who is fitting out a warship is not the same as that which is suitable for the chief of a sacred embassy.

What is suitable, then, is relative to the person, and the occasion, and the business on hand. Yet he who spends what is fitting on trifling or moderately important occasions is not called magnificent; e.g. the man who can say, in the words of the poet⁠—