So much, then, for liberality and the opposed vices.
2
It would seem proper to discuss magnificence next. For this also
seems to be a virtue concerned with wealth; but it does not like
liberality extend to all the actions that are concerned with wealth,
but only to those that involve expenditure; and in these it
surpasses liberality in scale. For, as the name itself suggests, it is
a fitting expenditure involving largeness of scale. But the scale is
relative; for the expense of equipping a trireme is not the same as
that of heading a sacred embassy. It is what is fitting, then, in
relation to the agent, and to the circumstances and the object. The
man who in small or middling things spends according to the merits
of the case is not called magnificent (e.g. the man who can say
'many a gift I gave the wanderer'), but only the man who does so in
great things. For the magnificent man is liberal, but the liberal
man is not necessarily magnificent. The deficiency of this state of
character is called niggardliness, the excess vulgarity, lack of
taste, and the like, which do not go to excess in the amount spent
on right objects, but by showy expenditure in the wrong
circumstances and the wrong manner; we shall speak of these vices
later.
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