Book 2

1.1 Let us examine, Liberalis, best of men, what still remains from the earlier part, namely, how a benefit is to be given; and of this I think I shall point out the most direct road: let us give as we should wish to receive. 1.2 Above all, let it be given willingly, quickly, without any hesitation. That benefit wins no thanks which has long stuck between the giver's hands, which a man has seemed loath to let go of and to give as though he were robbing himself. Even if some delay intervenes, let us avoid by all means seeming to have deliberated; for he who hesitates comes next to refusing, and earns no gratitude at all. Since in a benefit the most pleasing thing is the giver's good will, the man who by his very hanging back has borne witness that he gave unwillingly has not given, but has yielded grudgingly to one who pressed him; and yet there are many whom weakness of countenance makes liberal. 1.3 The most welcome benefits are those that are ready, easy, and come to meet us, where there has been no delay save in the modesty of the receiver. Best of all is to anticipate each man's wish; next best, to follow it. The former is better, to forestall before we are asked, since, when an honest man's lips falter at the asking and the blush comes over his face, he who spares him this torment multiplies his gift. 1.4 He has not received free of charge who received only after he had asked, since indeed, as our forefathers, men of the gravest weight, judged, nothing costs so dear as what is bought by entreaty. Men would make their vows more sparingly if they had to make them openly; so true is it that even to the gods, to whom we offer the most honorable supplication, we prefer to pray in silence and within ourselves. 2.1 It is a galling word, a heavy one, to be spoken with downcast face: "I beg." One must spare a friend this, and anyone whom you mean to make a friend by deserving well of him; let him hasten as he may, the man who gave only to the one who asked has given his benefit too late. We must therefore divine each man's wish, and, when we have grasped it, set him free from the most grievous necessity of asking; that benefit, you may be sure, will live and be welcome in his mind which came to meet him. 2.2 If we have not succeeded in forestalling him, let us cut short the asker's many words; that we may seem, not to have been asked, but to have been informed, let us promise at once, and prove by our very haste, even before we are interrupted, that we mean to act. Just as in the sick the timeliness of food is wholesome, and water given at the right moment has held the place of a remedy, so, however slight and common a benefit may be, if it was ready at hand, if it lost not one of the nearest hours, it adds much to itself and surpasses in welcome a costly gift that is slow and long pondered. He who acts with such readiness, there is no doubt, acts willingly; and so he acts gladly and wears upon his face the look of his own heart. 3.1 The huge benefits of some men have been spoiled by their silence or their slowness of speech, which counterfeited weight and gravity, since they promised with the face of men refusing. How much better to add good words to good deeds, and to commend what you bestow by kindly and humane utterance! 3.2 That the other may chide himself for having been too slow in asking, you may add a friendly complaint: "I am angry with you, because, when you wanted something, you did not wish me to know it long ago, because you asked so carefully, because you brought anyone else into it. But for my part I congratulate myself that it pleased you to put my heart to the test; hereafter, whatever you want, you shall claim by your own right; this once your awkwardness is forgiven." 3.3 Thus you will bring it about that he values your good will above that thing, whatever it was, which he had come to ask for. Then the giver's virtue is at its height, then his kindness, when he who has departed will say to himself: "I have made a great profit today; I would rather have found him such a man than that this thing, of which I spoke, had come to me multiplied by some other road; to this spirit of his I shall never be able to return an equal gratitude." 4.1 But there are very many who, by harshness of words and a haughty brow, bring their benefits into hatred, using such language and such arrogance that one repents of having obtained the favor. Then, after the thing is promised, other delays follow; and nothing is more bitter than when one has to ask even for what one has already obtained. 4.2 Benefits should be paid on the spot; yet from certain men they are harder to receive than to obtain. One man has to be asked to give the reminder, another to bring the matter to a close; thus a single gift is worn out through the hands of many, so that the least gratitude remains for him who promised it, since whoever has to be asked after him detracts from its author. 4.3 You will therefore take care, if you wish what you bestow to be reckoned with gratitude, that your benefits reach those to whom they were promised untouched, intact, without any, as they say, deduction. Let no one intercept them, let no one detain them; no one can make a favor of his own out of what you are about to give without diminishing yours. 5.1 Nothing is so bitter as long suspense; some men bear with a more even mind to have their hope cut off than dragged out. But many have this fault, that out of a perverse ambition they put off their promises, lest the throng of suitors should grow smaller, like the ministers of royal power, who delight in the long spectacle of their own pride, and judge that they can do less unless they have shown each man, long and often, what they can do. They do nothing at once, nothing at one stroke; their injuries are headlong, their benefits slow. 5.2 Hold it therefore for most true, what that comic poet said: "What? do you not understand that you take away just so much gratitude as you add of delay?" Hence those cries which honest grief wrings out: "Do it, if you are going to do anything," and: "Nothing is worth so much; I had rather you refused me at once." When the mind, worn to weariness, begins to hate the benefit while it waits for it, can it for that be grateful? 5.3 Just as the most cruel cruelty is that which drags out the punishment, and it is a kind of mercy to kill quickly, since the last torment carries with it its own end, while the time that precedes it is the largest part of the coming penalty, so the gratitude for a gift is the greater the less long it hung in suspense. For even of good things the expectation is full of anxiety; and since very many benefits bring a remedy for some distress, the man who either allows another to be tortured longer when he could free him at once, or to rejoice later, does violence to his own benefit. 5.4 All kindness hastens, and it is the mark of one who acts willingly to act quickly; he who has helped slowly, dragging it out from day to day, did not act from the heart. So he has lost the two greatest things, both the time and the proof of a friendly will; to be slow to wish is the part of one unwilling. 6.1 In every transaction, Liberalis, the manner in which a thing is said or done is no small part. Quickness adds much, delay takes away much. Just as in weapons the force of the iron is the same, but it makes an infinite difference whether they are hurled with the arm drawn back or slip from a slack hand, and the same sword both grazes and runs through, it matters with what pressure of the wrist it came, so it is the same thing that is given, but it matters how it is given. 6.2 How sweet, how precious it is, if he who gave did not suffer thanks to be rendered to him, if in the very act of giving he forgot that he had given! For to upbraid a man at the very moment you are doing him a service is madness, and to insert an insult into a kindness. And so benefits should not be made bitter, nor should anything painful be mingled with them. Even if there is something on which you wish to admonish him, choose another time. 7.1 Fabius Verrucosus used to call a benefit roughly and harshly given by a hard man "a gritty loaf," which a hungry man finds it needful to take, but bitter. 7.2 Tiberius Caesar, being asked by Marius Nepos, a man of praetorian rank, to relieve his debt, ordered him to furnish the names of his creditors; this is not to give, but to summon the creditors together. When the names had been furnished, he wrote to Nepos that he had ordered the money to be paid, adding an insulting reproof. He brought it about that Nepos neither had debt nor a benefit; he freed him from his creditors, but did not bind him to himself. Tiberius had some aim in this; 7.3 he did not wish, I suppose, that there should be many to come crowding with the same request. This may perhaps have been an effective method for repressing by shame the wicked cravings of men; but in giving a benefit a wholly different road must be followed. Everything that you give should be so adorned as to be the more welcome. But this is not to give a benefit, it is to catch a man in the act. 8.1 And, to say in passing what I think on this point too: not even for a prince is it altogether seemly to give for the sake of disgracing. "And yet," one says, "Tiberius could not even in this way escape what he was avoiding; for afterward several were found to make the same request, all of whom he ordered to give in the senate the reasons of their debt, and so gave them fixed sums." That is not liberality, it is censorship. 8.2 It is aid, it is a princely subsidy; it is not a benefit, the memory of which I cannot recall without a blush. I have been sent before a judge; to obtain my request, I had to plead my cause. 9.1 And so all the masters of wisdom prescribe that some benefits be given openly, some in secret. Openly, those which it is glorious to obtain, such as military decorations, public offices, and whatever else is made fairer by being known; 9.2 again, those which do not advance a man nor make him more honored, but succor weakness, want, or disgrace, are to be given in silence, so that they may be known to those alone whom they help. 10.1 Sometimes even the very man who is helped must be deceived, so that he may have the benefit without knowing from whom he received it. Arcesilaus, they say, judged that he should secretly help a friend who was poor and concealed his poverty, who, being ill, did not even confess this, that he lacked the means for necessary uses; without the man's knowledge he slipped a little bag of money beneath his pillow, so that one whose modesty was useless to himself might find rather than receive what he needed. 10.2 "What then? Will he not know from whom he received it?" In the first place, let him not know, if this very thing is a part of the benefit; in the second place, I shall do many other things, shall bestow many gifts, by which he may understand the author of this one too; finally, he will not know that he has received, but I shall know that I have given. "That is too little," you say. Too little, if you are thinking of lending at interest; but if of giving, you will give in the way that will most profit the receiver. You will be content to have yourself as witness; otherwise it is not the doing of good that delights you, but being seen to have done good. 10.3 "I want him by all means to know." You are looking for a debtor. "I want him by all means to know." What? if it is more useful for him not to know, if it is more honorable, more gracious, will you not turn the other way? "I want him to know." Will you then not save a man in the dark? 10.4 I do not deny that, as often as the matter allows, we should have regard to the joy that comes from the receiver's good will; but if he both needs help and is ashamed of it, if what we bestow gives offense unless it is hidden, I do not enter my benefit in the public record. Why not? I shall not be the one to declare to him that I have given, since among the first and most necessary precepts is this: never to reproach, nay, never even to remind. For this is the law of a benefit between two: the one ought at once to forget that he has given, the other never that he has received. 11.1 The frequent recalling of our services tears at the mind and oppresses it. One is moved to cry out as that man cried out who, saved in the proscription of the triumvirs by a certain friend of Caesar's, could not endure his arrogance: "Give me back to Caesar!" How long will you say: "I saved you, I snatched you from death"? That, if I remember it of my own free will, is life; if at your bidding, it is death. I owe you nothing, if you saved me only to have someone to display. How long do you parade me about? How long will you not let me forget my fortune? Once I would have been led in a triumph! We must not speak of what we have bestowed; 11.2 he who reminds asks for a return. We must not press the point, nor renew the memory, except by giving something else to recall the former gift. We ought not even to tell others of it; let him who gave the benefit be silent, let him who received it tell. For else it will be said, as was said to that man who everywhere boasted of his benefit: "You will not deny," said he, "that you have received it back"; and when the other answered, "When?" "Often indeed," said he, "and in many places, that is, as often and wherever you have told the story." 11.3 What need is there to speak out, to seize another's office? There is one who can do this more becomingly, by whose telling this too will be praised, that you do not tell it yourself. You judge me ungrateful, if no one is to know of it while you are silent! And so far is this from being permissible that, even if someone shall tell of it in our presence, we must answer: "He is indeed most worthy of greater benefits, but I know that I wish to render him all services rather than that I have so far rendered them"; and even this not in a servile fashion, nor with that figure of speech by which some men reject what they really wish to draw more toward themselves. 11.4 Then all humanity must be added. The farmer will lose what he has scattered if he abandons his labor at the seed; with much care crops are brought to the harvest; nothing comes to fruit which an even cultivation does not attend from first to last. The condition of benefits is the same. 11.5 Can there be any benefits greater than those which parents bestow on their children? Yet these are made void, if they are abandoned in infancy, unless a long devotion nourishes its gift. The condition of all other benefits is the same: unless you assist them, you will lose them; it is too little to have given, they must be cherished. If you wish to have those whom you lay under obligation grateful, you ought not only to give benefits, but to love. Above all, as I have said, let us defer to men's ears; admonition breeds weariness, reproach breeds hatred. 11.6 Nothing is so much to be avoided in giving a benefit as pride. What need of an arrogant face, what need of swelling words? The thing itself exalts you. Empty boasting must be stripped away; the deeds will speak for us while we are silent. Not only thankless, but hateful, is a benefit haughtily given. 12.1 Gaius Caesar gave Pompeius Pennus his life, if he gives who does not take it away; then, when the man had been acquitted and was rendering thanks, he held out his left foot to be kissed. Those who excuse it and deny that it was done out of insolence say that he wished to show off his gilded, nay golden, slipper, studded with pearls. Just so: what is there insulting in it, if a man of consular rank kissed gold and pearls, since there was otherwise no part of Caligula's body that he could have kissed more cleanly? 12.2 This man, born for this, to change the manners of a free state into Persian servitude, judged it too little if a senator, an old man, who had held the highest offices, had lain prostrate as a suppliant in the sight of the chief men in the very fashion in which conquered enemies have lain before their enemies; he found something below the knees by which to thrust down liberty! Is this not to trample on the commonwealth, and with the left foot at that, even though someone may think this beside the point? It was too little, then, to have been foully and madly insolent, this man who, in his slippers, sat in judgment on the life of a consular, unless the emperor had thrust his shoe-tassels into a senator's face! 13.1 O pride, the most foolish evil of great fortune! How it is a pleasure to receive nothing from you! How you turn every benefit into an injury! How everything misbecomes you! The higher you have raised yourself, the lower you are, and you show that it has not been granted you to recognize those goods with which you so puff yourself up; whatever you give, you spoil. 13.2 And so one is moved to ask why pride flings itself back so haughtily, why it distorts the look and bearing of its face, so that it would rather wear a mask than a face? Welcome are the things that are bestowed with a human countenance, at least with a gentle and calm one, which my superior gave me without exulting over me, but was as kindly as he could be and came down to my level and stripped his gift of all show, and so watched for a fitting moment that he came to my aid in opportunity rather than in dire need. 13.3 In one way only shall we persuade such men not to spoil their benefits by their insolence: if we show that benefits do not seem greater for being given with more uproar; that the men themselves cannot for that reason seem greater to anyone; that the grandeur of pride is empty, and such as brings into hatred even things that should be loved. 14.1 There are some things, harmful to those who obtain them, which it is a benefit not to give but to refuse; we shall therefore weigh the advantage rather than the wish of those who ask. For often we crave what is harmful, and we cannot discern how ruinous these things are, because passion interrupts the judgment; but when the craving has subsided, when that impulse of the burning mind, which routs counsel, has fallen, we detest the authors of harmful gifts as our undoers. 14.2 As we refuse cold water to the sick, and a sword to those who mourn and are angry with themselves, and to the mad whatever their frenzy seeks for use against themselves, so in general we shall persist in not giving what will be harmful, even to those who beg earnestly and humbly, sometimes even pitiably. It becomes us to look not only to the beginnings of our benefits but also to their ends, and to give what it will be a delight not only to receive but also to have received. There are many who say: 14.3 "I know this will not profit him, but what am I to do? He asks, I cannot resist his entreaties; let him see to it: he will complain of himself, not of me." It is false: nay, of you, and rightly too; when he has returned to a sound mind, when that fever which inflamed his spirit has abated, why should he not hate the man by whom he was helped to his own loss and peril? 14.4 To be moved by entreaties to the ruin of those who ask is a savage kindness. Just as it is a most noble work to save men even against their will and wish, so to lavish destructive things on those who beg for them is a hatred dressed up as charm and affability. Let us give a benefit which will please more and more in the using, which will never turn to evil. I shall not give money which I know is to be counted out to an adulteress, nor shall I be found a partner in a base deed or design; if I can, I shall call a man back, if not, I shall not abet his crime. 14.5 Whether anger drives him whither he ought not to go, or the heat of ambition leads him away from safety, I will not suffer him to take from me the strength for any evil, nor will I let him be able one day to say: "That man killed me by loving me." Often there is no difference between the gifts of friends and the prayers of enemies; whatever the latter wish to befall a man, to that the untimely indulgence of the former drives and equips him. And what is baser than what most frequently happens, that there is no difference between hatred and a benefit? 15.1 Let us never bestow what will redound to our own shame. Since the height of friendship is to make a friend our equal, we must take thought for both at once. I shall give to the needy, but so that I myself do not come to need; I shall succor the man about to perish, but so that I myself do not perish, unless I am to be the price of a great man or a great cause. 15.2 I shall give no benefit which it would be shameful for me to ask. I shall neither magnify a small gift, nor suffer great gifts to be received as if they were small; for as the man who charges to account what he gave destroys all gratitude, so the man who points out how much he gives commends his gift, he does not reproach with it. 15.3 Each man must have regard to his own means and powers, lest we bestow either more than we can or less. We must weigh the person to whom we give; for some things are too small to come fittingly from great men, some are too great for the receiver. Compare therefore the standing of each, and weigh between them the very thing you mean to give: whether it is too heavy or too slight for the giver, whether again the man who is to receive it will either disdain it or be unable to hold it. 16.1 Alexander was giving someone a city, that madman who could conceive nothing in his mind but the vast. When the man to whom it was being given, having taken his own measure, shrank from the ill will such a gift would bring, saying that it did not suit his fortune: "I do not ask," said Alexander, "what it becomes you to receive, but what it becomes me to give." The saying seems spirited and kingly, though it is most foolish. For nothing of itself becomes any man; it matters who gives, to whom, when, why, where, and the rest, without which the rationale of the act will not hold together. 16.2 Most swollen of creatures! If it does not become him to receive this, neither does it become you to give it; account is taken of persons and ranks, and since virtue everywhere is measure, that which exceeds errs as much as that which falls short. Granted, indeed, that this is allowed you, and that fortune has raised you so high that your largesses are cities (and how much greater of soul it had been not to take them than to scatter them!): there is nonetheless someone too small for a state to be stored away in his bosom! 17.1 A Cynic asked a talent of Antigonus; he replied that this was more than a Cynic ought to ask. Repulsed, the man asked a denarius; he replied that this was less than it became a king to give. "Most shameful is a quibble of this sort; he found a way to give neither. In the denarius he regarded the king, in the talent the Cynic, though he could have given the denarius as to a Cynic and the talent as a king. Granted that there is something too great for a Cynic to receive, nothing is so small that a king's kindness cannot honorably bestow it." 17.2 If you ask me, I approve; for it is an intolerable thing to demand money and to despise it. You have declared war on money; this you have professed, this is the part you have put on: it must be played. It is most unjust that you should acquire money under the glory of want. Each man, therefore, must look to his own person no less than to that of the man whom he is thinking of helping. 17.3 I should like to use the comparison of our own Chrysippus drawn from the game of ball, which without doubt falls either through the fault of the thrower or of the catcher; it keeps its course then, when it is fitly thrown and caught by both, passing back and forth between the hands of the two. But a good player must throw it one way to a tall partner, another to a short one. The same is the rule of a benefit. Unless it is fitted to both persons, the giver's and the receiver's, it will neither leave the one nor reach the other as it ought. 17.4 If our business is with a trained and skilled partner, we shall throw the ball more boldly; for however it comes, a ready and nimble hand will send it back; if with a beginner and an unskilled man, we shall not throw so stiffly nor with such force, but more gently, and, aiming at his very hand, shall come slack to meet it. The same must be done with benefits; let us teach some men, and judge it enough if they try, if they venture, if they are willing. 17.5 But for the most part we make men ungrateful, and encourage them to be so, as though our benefits were only then great if no gratitude could be returned for them; just as malicious players make it their object to disgrace their partner, with loss, of course, to the game itself, which cannot be prolonged unless there is mutual goodwill. 17.6 Many are of so perverse a nature that they would rather lose what they have bestowed than seem to have received it back, proud men and ledger-keepers. How much better and how much more humane to act so that these too may keep their parts, and to favor a return of gratitude to oneself, to interpret all things kindly, to listen to the man who renders thanks no otherwise than if he made a repayment, to show oneself ready for this, that one wishes even the man one has bound to be set free! 17.7 A moneylender is ill spoken of if he exacts harshly, and equally if in receiving payment he is slow and difficult and seeks pretexts for delay. A benefit is as much to be received again as not to be exacted. He is best who gave readily, never exacted, rejoiced to have it returned, in good faith forgot what he had bestowed, and received it back in the spirit of one accepting a fresh gift. 18.1 Some men not only give benefits proudly, but also receive them so, which must not be done. For let us now pass to the other part, intending to treat how men ought to bear themselves in receiving benefits. Every duty that consists of two parts demands just as much from each. When you have looked into what a father ought to be, you will know that there remains no less work there to discern what kind of man a son ought to be; there are certain parts belonging to a husband, but no smaller ones belonging to a wife. 18.2 These render in turn as much as they exact, and require a like rule, which, as Hecaton says, is difficult; for everything honorable is on a steep ascent, even what is near to the honorable; for it must not only be done, but done with reason. With this for our guide we must go through the whole of life, ordering the least and the greatest things by its counsel; we must give as it advises. And this will first judge that we should not receive from all men. From whom, then, shall we receive? To answer you briefly: from those to whom we would have given. 18.3 Let us see whether one ought to be sought with even greater discrimination to whom we are to owe than to whom we are to give. For though no disadvantages should follow (and very many do follow), it is yet a grievous torment to owe to one whom you would not; contrariwise, it is most delightful to have received a benefit from one whom you can love even after an injury, where the very cause has made the friendship, otherwise pleasant, also just. But this is most wretched to a modest and honest man, if he must love one whom he takes no pleasure in. 18.4 I must so often warn you that I am not speaking of the wise, to whom whatever is fitting is also pleasant, who have their minds in their own power and lay down for themselves what law they will, and keep the law they have laid down, but of imperfect men who wish to follow the honorable road, whose passions often obey only stubbornly. And so I must choose from whom I am to receive a benefit; 18.5 and indeed a creditor in benefits is to be sought with more care than a creditor in money. For to the latter I must pay back as much as I received, and, if I have paid, I am discharged and free; but to the former I must pay back even more, and even when the favor has been returned we still cleave together; for when I have repaid I must begin again, and the friendship abides; and as I would not admit an unworthy man into friendship, so neither into that most sacred bond of benefits from which friendship springs. 18.6 "It is not always permitted me," he says, "to say, 'I am unwilling'; sometimes a benefit must be received even against one's will. A cruel and irascible tyrant gives, who will count it an injury that you scorn his gift: shall I not receive it? Put in the same case a brigand, a pirate, a king with the spirit of a brigand and a pirate. What shall I do? Is he too unworthy for me to owe him a debt?" 18.7 When I say that you must choose to whom you are to owe, I make exception of superior force and fear, under which all choice perishes. If it is free to you, if it is in your own power to will or not, you will weigh the matter with yourself; if necessity takes away the choice, you will know that you are not receiving, but obeying. No man is laid under obligation by receiving what he was not allowed to refuse; if you wish to know whether I am willing, make it possible for me to be unwilling. "He gave you your life, nonetheless!" 18.8 It matters not what is given, unless it is given by one who is willing, to one who is willing; if you have saved me, you are not therefore my savior. Poison has sometimes served as a remedy; it is not for that reason counted among wholesome things. Some things profit, yet lay no one under obligation. A man who had come to kill a certain tyrant lanced his tumor with his sword; the tyrant did not for that thank him, that by harming he had cured a thing which the hands of physicians had shrunk from. 19.1 You see that there is no great weight in the deed itself, since he does not seem to have given a benefit who helped with an evil intent; for the benefit was chance, the man's was the wrong. We have watched in the amphitheater a lion who, recognizing one of the beast-fighters who had once been his keeper, protected him from the onslaught of the beasts. Is the help of a wild beast, then, a benefit? By no means, since it neither wished to do it nor did it with the intent of doing it. 19.2 Where I have placed the wild beast, place a tyrant; both the one and the other gave life, yet neither the one nor the other gave a benefit. Since it is no benefit to be compelled to receive, it is no benefit to owe to one whom you would not. You must first give me control of myself, then your benefit. 20.1 It is wont to be debated concerning Marcus Brutus, whether he ought to have accepted his life from the deified Julius, when he judged that Julius ought to be slain. 20.2 On what principle he acted in slaying him we shall treat elsewhere; for to me, though he was a great man in other respects, in this matter he seems to have erred grievously and not to have acted by the Stoic teaching. Either he dreaded the name of king, although the best condition of a state is under a just king; or he hoped that liberty would exist there where the reward of both ruling and serving was so great; or he supposed that the state could be recalled to its earlier form, its old morals being lost, and that there would be equality of civil right and that the laws would stand in their place, in a city where he had seen so many thousands of men fighting, not over whether they should be slaves, but over which master they should serve! And how great a forgetfulness of the nature of things or of his own city possessed him, who believed that, when one man was slain, there would not be another to want the same thing, although a Tarquin had been found after so many kings had been cut off by sword and lightning! 20.3 But he ought to have accepted his life, yet not for that reason to have held Caesar in a parent's place, because it was through a wrong that Caesar had come into the right of giving a benefit; for he who has not killed has not saved, nor did he give a benefit, but a reprieve. 21.1 This can come more into some debate: what a captive should do, to whom a man of prostituted body and infamous mouth promises the price of his ransom. Shall I suffer myself to be saved by one so foul? Then, having been saved, what gratitude shall I render him? Shall I live with one so obscene? Shall I not live with my ransomer? I shall tell you what I judge best. 21.2 Even from such a man I shall accept the money I am to pay down for my freedom, but I shall accept it as a loan, not as a benefit; I shall pay him back the money, and, if there is occasion to save him when in peril, I shall save him; into the friendship which joins like to like I shall not descend, nor shall I count him in the place of a savior, but of a moneylender, to whom I know I must repay what I received. 21.3 There is a man worthy enough that I should receive a benefit from him, but it will harm the giver; for this reason I shall not receive it, because he is ready to help me to his own disadvantage or even peril. He means to defend me on a charge, but by that advocacy he will make a king his enemy; I am his enemy, if, when he is willing to risk himself for me, I do not do the easier thing, namely, to face the risk without him. 21.4 Hecaton sets down a silly and frivolous example, that of Arcesilaus, who, he says, did not accept money brought to him by a son of a family, lest the young man should offend his miserly father. What did he do worthy of praise, in that he did not receive stolen goods, in that he preferred not to accept rather than to repay? For what self-restraint is there in not receiving another man's property? 21.5 If we need an example of greatness of soul, let us use that of Julius Graecinus, an excellent man, whom Gaius Caesar killed for this one thing, that he was a better man than it is expedient for anyone to be under a tyrant. When he was receiving from his friends contributions toward the expense of the games, he did not accept a great sum of money sent by Fabius Persicus, and when those who weigh, not the senders, but the things sent, chided him for having refused it: "Shall I," said he, "accept a benefit from a man from whom I would not accept a pledge of the cup?" 21.6 When Rebilus, a man of consular rank and of the same ill repute, had sent him a larger sum and pressed him to order it accepted: "I beg you," he said, "pardon me; I did not accept from Persicus either." Is this to accept gifts, or to enroll a senate? 22.1 When we have judged that a thing should be accepted, let us accept it cheerfully, professing our joy, and let it be plain to the giver, so that he may reap his reward at once; for it is a just cause of gladness to see a friend glad, a juster to have made him so. Let us show, with outpoured feeling, how welcome it has come to us, bearing witness to it not only in his hearing but everywhere. He who receives a benefit gratefully pays the first installment of it. 23.1 There are some who are unwilling to receive except in secret; they shun a witness and a confidant of the benefit; you may know that such men have an evil intent. As the giver should publish his gift only so far as it will delight the one to whom it is given, so to the receiver an assembly should be summoned; what you are ashamed to owe, do not receive. Some give thanks furtively, in a corner and in the ear; 23.2 that is not modesty, but a kind of disavowal; he is ungrateful who renders thanks with the witnesses removed. Some are unwilling that an account should be opened in their name, that brokers be brought in or witnesses summoned to seal, or that they give a written bond. The same thing is done by those who take pains that a benefit conferred on them be as unknown as possible. 23.3 They are afraid to make it public, that they may be said to have attained their ends by their own virtue rather than by another's aid; they are seldom seen rendering service to those to whom they owe their life or their dignity, and, while they fear the reputation of clients, they incur the heavier reputation of the ungrateful. 24.1 Others speak most evilly of those who have deserved best of them. It is safer to give offense to certain men than to oblige them; for they seek, through hatred, a proof that they owe nothing. And yet nothing is more to be insisted on than that the memory of services should cling to us, and this must be refreshed from time to time, because no one can return gratitude save he who remembers, and he who remembers returns it. 24.2 We must receive a benefit neither daintily nor in a cringing and humble fashion; for if a man is careless in receiving, when every benefit is fresh and open before him, what will he do when its first pleasure has cooled? Another receives it disdainfully, like one who says: 24.3 "I have no need of it, to be sure, but since you wish it so strongly, I shall give you power over me"; another receives it indifferently, so as to leave the giver in doubt whether he even noticed it; another barely parts his lips, and was more ungrateful than if he had held his peace. 24.4 One must speak more warmly, in proportion to the greatness of the thing, and add these words: "You have laid more men under obligation than you think" (for everyone rejoices that his benefit reaches further); "you do not know what you have bestowed on me, but you ought to know how much greater it is than you suppose" (he is at once grateful who loads himself with the debt); "I shall never be able to return you gratitude; this at least I shall not cease to confess everywhere, that I cannot return it." 25.1 By nothing did Furnius oblige Caesar Augustus more, and render him more ready to grant other requests, than that, when he had obtained pardon for his father, who had followed the party of Antony, he said: "This one injury, Caesar, I have at your hands: you have brought it about that I both live and die ungrateful." What is so much the mark of a grateful soul as in no way to satisfy itself, as not even to come near the hope of ever equaling the benefit? 25.2 By these and like utterances let us strive that our good will be not hidden, but laid open and shine forth. Though words be wanting, if we are affected as we ought to be, our consciousness of it will stand out upon our face. 25.3 He who means to be grateful, let him think at once, while he is receiving, of repaying. Chrysippus, indeed, says that, like one set in a footrace and shut in the starting-stalls, he ought to await his time, at which, as at a given signal, he may dart forth; and indeed he needs great effort, great speed, to overtake the one ahead. 26.1 We must now see what most makes men ungrateful. It is either an excessive self-regard and that fault implanted in mortality of admiring oneself and one's own, or greed, or envy. 26.2 Let us begin with the first. Everyone is a kindly judge of himself. Hence it comes that he thinks he has deserved everything, and takes it as a payment due, and does not think himself valued at his proper price. "This he gave me, but how late, but after how many toils! How much more I might have attained, if I had chosen to court this man or that, or myself! I had not hoped for this; I have been flung into the crowd. Did he judge me worthy of so little? It had been more honorable to be passed over." 27.1 Gnaeus Lentulus the augur, the greatest example of riches before his freedmen made him poor, this man who saw his four hundred million sesterces (I have spoken exactly; for he did no more than see them), was barren of wit, as petty in mind as he was great in fortune. Though he was most avaricious, he let go of coins more readily than of words: so great was his poverty of speech. 27.2 Though he owed all his advancement to the deified Augustus, to whom he had brought a poverty laboring under the burden of nobility, now the chief man of the state in both money and influence, he used from time to time to complain of Augustus, saying that he had been drawn away from his studies; that not so much had been heaped upon him as he had lost by abandoning eloquence. And yet among other things the deified Augustus had bestowed this too on him, that he had freed him from ridicule and fruitless toil! 27.3 Greed suffers no man to be grateful; for what is given is never enough for a wicked hope, and we crave the more the more has come to us, and avarice is far more inflamed when it is lodged amid a heap of great riches, just as the force of a flame is infinitely keener the greater the conflagration from which it has flashed forth. 27.4 Likewise ambition suffers no man to rest content in that measure of honors which once was his shameless prayer. No one renders thanks for a tribuneship, but complains that he has not been carried all the way to the praetorship; nor is this welcome, if the consulship is lacking; not even this satisfies, if it is but one. Desire reaches out beyond itself, and does not understand its own good fortune, because it looks back, not at whence it has come, but at whither it tends. 28.1 More violent and more troublesome than all these is the evil of envy, which disquiets us while it compares: "This he bestowed on me, but on that man more, but on that man sooner"; and then it pleads no one's cause, but is partial to itself against all. How much simpler, how much wiser to magnify the benefit received, to know that no one is valued by another so highly as by himself! 28.2 "I ought to have received more, but it was not easy for him to give more; his liberality had to be divided among many; this is a beginning, let us take it in good part, and by gratefully receiving call forth his spirit; he did little, but he will do it oftener; he preferred that man to me, but me to many; that man is not my equal in virtues or in services, but he had his own charm; by complaining I shall not make myself worthy of greater gifts, but unworthy of those given. More has been given to those most base men; what of it? How rarely does fortune use judgment! Daily we complain that the wicked are prosperous; 28.3 often the hail that has passed over the little fields of every worst man has smitten the crop of the best men; each man bears his own lot, as in other matters so in friendships." 28.4 No benefit is so full that malice cannot carp at it, none so meager that a good interpreter cannot enlarge it. Causes for complaint will never be lacking, if you look at benefits from their worse side. 29.1 See how unjust are the appraisers of the divine gifts, and these the very men who profess wisdom. They complain that we do not equal elephants in size of body, deer in swiftness, birds in lightness, bulls in onset; that the hide of beasts is solid, that of fallow deer more comely, that of bears thicker, that of beavers softer; that dogs surpass us in keenness of scent, eagles in sharpness of sight, ravens in length of years, many creatures in ease of swimming. 29.2 And although nature does not allow certain things even to meet in the same subject, such as swiftness of body and strength, they call it an injury that man is not compounded of diverse and discordant goods, and they call the gods careless of us, because good health, unconquerable even by our vices, was not given us, because foreknowledge of the future was not. They scarcely refrain from carrying themselves to such a pitch of impudence as to hate Nature, because we are below the gods, because we do not stand on a level with them. 29.3 How much better to return to the contemplation of so many and so great benefits, and to give thanks that they have willed us to draw the second lot in this most beautiful dwelling place, that they have set us over the things of earth! Does anyone compare with us those animals whose mastery lies in our hands? Whatever has been denied us could not have been given. 29.4 Therefore, whoever you are, unjust appraiser of the human lot, consider how much our parent has bestowed on us, how much stronger animals we have sent beneath the yoke, how much swifter ones we overtake, how nothing mortal is placed beyond the reach of our blow. 29.5 So many virtues we have received, so many arts, the mind, in fine, to which nothing is not penetrable in the same instant in which it directs itself, swifter than the stars, whose future courses, after many ages, it outruns; then such abundance of crops, such abundance of wealth, such a heaping of things upon things. You may go round all creation and, because you will find nothing whole that you would rather be, may pick out single things from all that you would wish given to you; when Nature's indulgence is rightly weighed, you must confess that you have been her darling. So it is: 29.6 the immortal gods held us, and hold us, most dear, and, since the greatest honor that could be bestowed has been bestowed, they have placed us next to themselves. We have received great things; we could not contain greater. 30.1 These things, my Liberalis, I believed necessary, both because something had to be said about the greatest benefits when we were speaking of the smallest, and because from this source the audacity of this detestable vice flows out into all the rest. For to whom will the man respond gratefully, what gift will he judge either great or to be repaid, who spurns the highest benefits? To whom will he owe his safety, to whom his breath, who denies that he has received from the gods the life which he daily begs of them? 30.2 Whoever, therefore, teaches men to be grateful pleads the cause both of men and of the gods, to whom, though they lack nothing and are set beyond all want, we can nonetheless return gratitude. There is no reason why anyone should seek an excuse for an ungrateful mind from his weakness and poverty, and say: "For what am I to do, and how? When shall I return gratitude to the lords and masters of all things?" It is easy to return it: if you are avaricious, without expense; if you are slothful, without labor. At the very moment in which you are laid under obligation, if you will, you have made yourself even with anyone, since he who gladly receives a benefit has repaid it. 31.1 This among the paradoxes of the Stoic school is, in my opinion, by no means strange or incredible, that he who gladly receives a benefit has repaid it. For since we refer all things to the mind, each man has done as much as he wished; and since piety, faith, justice, every virtue in fine, is complete within itself, even though it was not permitted him to stretch forth his hand, a man can be grateful too by his will alone. 31.2 As often as anyone attains what he set out for, he takes the fruit of his work. He who gives a benefit, what does he set out for? To profit the one to whom he gives, and to be a pleasure to him. If he has accomplished what he wished, and his spirit has reached me and affected me with mutual joy, he has won what he sought. For he did not wish that something be given back to him in return; or else it was no benefit, but a piece of trade. 31.3 He has sailed well who has held the harbor he set out for; the cast of a sure hand has performed its office, if it has struck what it aimed at; he who gives a benefit wishes it to be received gratefully; he has what he wished, if it has been well received. But he hoped for some advantage. Then it was no benefit, of which it is the very mark to think nothing of return. 31.4 What I was receiving I received in the same spirit in which it was given: I have repaid it. Otherwise the best of things is on the worst of terms: to be grateful, I am sent to fortune! If, against her will, I cannot make a return, the spirit suffices for the spirit. 31.5 "What then? Shall I not also do whatever I can to repay, and watch for the occasion of times and circumstances, and desire to fill the lap of the man from whom I have received something?" But the benefit is in an evil case, unless it is permitted to be grateful even with empty hands! 32.1 "He who has received a benefit," he says, "though he received it with the kindliest spirit, has not yet completed his duty; for there remains the part of repaying; just as in the game it is something to catch the ball skillfully and carefully, but a man is not called a good player unless he has sent back, fitly and readily, the ball he caught." 32.2 This example is not apt; and why? Because in this matter the praise lies in the body's motion and in agility, not in the mind; the whole must therefore be displayed, the thing being judged by the eyes. Nor yet for that reason shall I deny him to be a good player who caught the ball as he ought, if it was through no fault of his that he did not send it back. 32.3 "But although," he says, "nothing is lacking to the player's skill, because he has done a part, but a part which he has not done he can do, the game itself is incomplete, which is completed by the alternations of throwing and throwing back." I do not wish to refute this longer; let us grant that it is so: something is lacking, not to the player, but to the game; so too in the matter we are debating, something is lacking to the thing given, for which a like thing is owed in return, not to the spirit, which has found a spirit equal to itself and, so far as in it lies, has accomplished what it wished. 33.1 He gave me a benefit; I received it no otherwise than he wished it to be received: now he has what he seeks, and the only thing he seeks; therefore I am grateful. After this there remains the use of me and some advantage from a grateful man; this is not the remaining part of an unfinished duty, but the addition to one complete. Phidias makes a statue; 33.2 one is the fruit of his art, another the fruit of his craft: it is of his art to have made what he wished, of his craft to have made it with profit; Phidias finished his work even if he did not sell it. He has a threefold fruit of his work: one of conscience; this he reaps when the work is finished; another of fame; the third of profit, which favor, or a sale, or some advantage is to bring. 33.3 So the first fruit of a benefit is that of conscience; this is reaped by the man who has carried his gift where he wished; the second and third are those of fame and of the things that can be bestowed in return. And so when a benefit has been kindly received, the giver has already recovered his gratitude, but not yet his recompense; I therefore owe what is outside the benefit, the benefit itself I have paid in full by receiving it well. 34.1 "What, then?" he says, "has the man returned gratitude who has done nothing?" In the first place, he has done something: with a good spirit he has offered a good thing, and, what belongs to friendship, on equal terms. Then, further, a benefit is discharged in one way, a loan in another; there is no reason for you to expect that I should show you the payment; the matter is transacted between minds. 34.2 What I say will not seem hard, though at first it fights against your opinion, if you will lend yourself to me and consider that there are more things than words. Vast is the store of things without a name, which we mark, not by their own proper appellations, but by foreign and borrowed ones. We speak of "foot," both our own and that of a couch, a sail, a poem; of "dog," both the hunting kind and the sea-kind and the constellation; because we are not adequate to assign to single things single names, we borrow as often as there is need. 34.3 Courage is the virtue that despises just dangers, or the knowledge of repelling, receiving, and provoking dangers; yet we call both a gladiator a brave man, and a worthless slave whom recklessness has driven into contempt of death. 34.4 Thrift is the knowledge of avoiding superfluous expense, or the art of using one's estate with moderation; yet we call a most thrifty man one who is of a petty and pinched mind, though there is an infinite difference between measure and stinginess. These are different in their nature, but the poverty of speech makes us call both the one and the other thrifty, and makes both that man be called brave who with reason despises the things of chance, and this man who without reason rushes into dangers. 34.5 So a benefit is both an action, as we have said, that does good, and the very thing that is given through that action, such as money, a house, the bordered robe; the name for both is one, but the force and the power are far other. 35.1 Attend, therefore, and you will now understand that I say nothing from which your opinion shrinks. To that benefit which the action completes, gratitude has been returned, if we receive it kindly; that other, which is contained in the thing, we have not yet repaid, but we shall wish to repay. We have satisfied the will with our will; for the thing we owe a thing. And so, although we say that the man has returned gratitude who gladly receives a benefit, we nonetheless bid him also return something similar to what he received. 35.2 Some things we say start away from common usage, then by another road return to it. We deny that the wise man receives an injury, yet he who strikes him with his fist will be condemned for injuries; we deny that anything belongs to the fool, and yet we shall condemn for theft the man who has stolen some property from a fool; we say that all men are mad, yet we do not treat all with hellebore; to these very men whom we call mad we entrust both the vote and the administration of justice. 35.3 So we say that the man who receives a benefit with a good spirit has returned gratitude, yet we nonetheless leave him in debt to return gratitude, even when he has returned it. It is an exhortation, not a denial of the benefit, that we should not be afraid of benefits, that we should not, crushed as by an unbearable load, lose heart. "Goods have been bestowed on me, and my good name defended, my disgrace removed, my breath saved, and my liberty, which is more than breath. And how shall I be able to return gratitude? When will that day come on which I may show him my heart?" 35.4 This very day is the day on which he shows it! Take the benefit, embrace it, rejoice, not because you receive, but because you will repay and will be in debt; you will not run the risk, in so great a matter, that chance may be able to make you ungrateful. I shall set no difficulties before you, lest you despair, lest you faint at the expectation of toils and long servitude; I do not put you off; let the matter be settled with present things. You will never be grateful unless you are so at once. 35.5 What, then, will you do? You need not take up arms: yet perhaps you will need to. You need not measure the seas: yet perhaps you will set sail even when the winds threaten. Do you wish to repay a benefit? Receive it kindly; you have returned gratitude, not so that you may think you have discharged the debt, but so that you may owe it more securely.