Eudemian Ethics

The Magnificent Man also (except in a case when we are using the term metaphorically) is not concerned with any and every action and purposive choice, but with expenditure. Without expenditure there is no magnificence, for it is what is appropriate in ornament, and ornament does not result from any chance expenditure, but consists in going beyond the merely necessary.

Therefore the magnificent man is the man who purposively chooses the appropriate greatness in great expenditure, and who even on the occasion of a pleasure of this nature aims at this sort of moderation.

There is no name denoting the man who likes spending to excess and inappropriately; however the persons whom some people call tasteless and swaggering have a certain affinity to him. For instance if a rich man spending money on the wedding of a favorite thinks it fitting for him to have the sort of arrangements that would be fitting when entertaining abstainers, he is shabby, while one who entertains guests of that sort after the manner of a wedding feast, if he does not do it for the sake of reputation or to gain an office, resembles the swaggerer; but he that entertains suitably and as reason directs is magnificent, for the fitting is the suitable, as nothing is fitting that is unsuitable.

But it must be fitting in each particular, that is, in suitability to the agent and to the recipient and to the occasion—for example, what is fitting at the wedding of a servant is not what is fitting at that of a favorite; and it is fitting for the agent himself, if it is of an amount or quality suitable to him—for example people thought that the mission that Themistocles conducted to Olympia was not fitting for him, because of his former low station, but would have been for Cimon.

But he who is casual in regard to the question of suitability is not in any of these classes.

Similarly in regard to liberality: a man may be neither liberal nor illiberal.