The Instructor 2.12.121

It remains for us to answer the objection brought forward: “For whom, then, are the more costly things, if all choose the cheaper?” For human beings, I would say, if we use them without attachment and without discrimination. But if it is impossible for all to be self-controlled, still for the need of necessities we should pursue what is easily obtained, saying a long farewell to these superfluities. In general, ornaments, like dolls' finery, are to be thrown away entirely, and adornment itself refused. For women should be adorned within and show the inner woman beautiful; for only in the soul are beauty and ugliness seen. That is why only the virtuous man is truly beautiful and good, and only the beautiful is held to be good. Virtue alone appears even through a beautiful body and blooms on the flesh, showing the loveliness of self-control worthy of love, when character shines on the form like light. For the beauty of each plant and animal lies in its own virtue; and the virtue of a human being is justice, self-control, courage, and godliness. The beautiful human being, then, is the just, the self-controlled, in a word the good, not the rich. Now even soldiers want to be adorned with gold, not having read that verse of the poet: “who went to war wearing gold, like a foolish girl.”