Book 3

1.1 Not to return gratitude for benefits is both base and held so by all men, Aebutius Liberalis; and therefore of the ungrateful even the ungrateful complain, while meanwhile this thing cleaves to all which displeases all, and so far do men go to the opposite extreme that we hold some men our bitterest enemies, not merely after benefits but on account of benefits. 1.2 That this befalls some men through a perversity of nature I would not deny, more from the fact that the interval of time withdraws the memory; for what was fresh and vigorous in them grows obsolete after a space has intervened. Of these men I know I have had a discussion with you, when you would call them not ungrateful but forgetful, as though the very thing that makes a man ungrateful excused him, or as though a man were not ungrateful because this befalls him, when it befalls none but the ungrateful. 1.3 There are many kinds of the ungrateful, as there are of thieves, of murderers, whose guilt is one, but in whose several parts there is great variety. He is ungrateful who denies that he has received a benefit which he received; ungrateful, who dissembles; ungrateful, who does not return it; most ungrateful of all, who has forgotten it. 1.4 For the former, even if they do not pay, yet they owe, and there remains in them at least a trace of the service, shut up within an evil conscience; sometime, from some cause, they may be turned to returning gratitude, if shame reminds them, if a sudden craving for an honorable deed, such as is wont to rise for a time even in evil breasts, if an easy occasion invites them; but this man can never become grateful from whom the whole benefit has slipped away. And which do you call the worse, the man with whom the gratitude for the benefit has perished, or the man with whom even the memory has? 1.5 Eyes that dread the light are diseased; eyes that do not see are blind; and not to love one's parents is impiety, not to recognize them is madness! 2.1 Who is so ungrateful as the man who has so laid aside and cast away the thing which ought to have been set in the foremost part of his mind and ever to present itself, that he has turned it into a thing unknown? It is plain that he has not often thought of repaying, upon whom forgetfulness has stolen. 2.2 In short, for returning gratitude there is need of virtue, of time, of means, and of favoring fortune; but he who remembers is grateful enough without expense. This thing, which demands no labor, no wealth, no good fortune, the man who does not render it has no plea behind which to hide; for he never wished to be grateful who flung the benefit so far from him that he set it beyond his own sight. 2.3 Just as the things that are in use and suffer the touch of the hand daily never run the risk of mold, while those which are not brought back to the eyes, but have lain outside our dealings as superfluous, gather of themselves the dirt of age, so whatever frequent reflection keeps in exercise and renews is never withdrawn from memory, which loses nothing save that to which it has not often looked back. 3.1 Besides this cause there are others also, which sometimes tear from us even the greatest services. First of all and most powerful is this, that, ever taken up with new desires, we look, not at what we have, but at what we seek; and to those intent upon what is craved, whatever is at home is cheap. 3.2 It follows, moreover, that, when the craving for new things has made cheap what you have received, the author of it too is no longer in esteem. We loved someone and looked up to him and professed that our standing was founded by him, so long as the things we had attained pleased us; then the admiration of other things breaks in upon the mind, and our impulse is borne toward them, as it is the way of mortals to crave from great things greater. At once there falls away whatever before with us was called a benefit, and we look, not at the things which set us above others, but at those alone which the fortune of those ahead displays. 3.3 But no man can at once envy and give thanks, because to envy belongs to the complaining and the sad, to give thanks to the rejoicing. 3.4 Then, because none of us knows any time but that which is at the very moment passing, few turn their minds back to the past; and so it comes that teachers and their benefits pass away, because we have left our whole boyhood behind; so it comes that what was bestowed on our youth perishes, because youth itself is never gone over again. No one reckons what once was as in the past, but as in the lost, and therefore the memory of those who lean toward the future is fleeting. 4.1 At this point testimony must be rendered to Epicurus, who continually complains that we are ungrateful toward the past, that whatever goods we have enjoyed we do not bring back nor count among our pleasures, although no pleasure is more certain than that which can no longer be snatched away. 4.2 Present goods are not yet wholly on solid ground; some chance may yet fall upon them; future goods hang in the balance and are uncertain; what has passed is laid away among things secure. How can anyone be grateful toward benefits who leaps over his whole life, wholly given to the present and the future? It is memory that makes a man grateful; whoever gives most to hope gives least to memory. 5.1 Just as, my Liberalis, certain things, once learned, cling fast, while certain things it is not enough, in order to know them, to have once learned (for the knowledge of them slips away unless it is kept up), I mean geometry and the courses of the heavenly bodies and whatever else, by reason of its subtlety, is slippery, so certain benefits their very greatness does not suffer to fall away, while certain smaller ones, very many in number and scattered over diverse times, flow off, because, as I have said, we do not handle them again and again, nor gladly recognize what we owe to each. 5.2 Hear the words of those who ask. There is no one who has not said that the memory of it will live forever in his soul, no one who has not professed himself given over and devoted, and if he has found any humbler word by which to pledge himself. After a little time these same men avoid their former words as too groveling and too little free; then they arrive at the point at which, as I think, every worst and most ungrateful man arrives, namely, forgetfulness. For so truly is he ungrateful who has forgotten that he is ungrateful into whose mind the benefit comes. 6.1 It is asked whether this so hateful vice ought to go unpunished, and whether this law, which is rehearsed in the schools, ought to be set up also in the state, by which an action is granted against the ungrateful; which seems fair to all men. "Why not? Since even cities reproach cities with what they have bestowed, and exact from posterity what was conferred upon their forefathers." 6.2 Our ancestors, great men assuredly, sought the recovery of property only from enemies; benefits they gave with a great spirit, with a great spirit they lost. Except among the people of the Macedonians, no action was granted anywhere against the ungrateful man. And this is a strong proof that none should have been granted, that, while we have agreed in our condemnation of every evil deed, and the penalty for murder, poisoning, parricide, and the violation of religion is different in one place and another, yet everywhere there is some penalty, this most frequent crime is nowhere punished, everywhere disapproved. Nor did we acquit it, but, since the appraisal of an uncertain matter was difficult, we condemned it only with hatred and left it among those things which we remit to the gods as judges. 7.1 But many reasons occur to me why this crime ought not to fall under the law. First of all, the best part of a benefit perishes, if an action is granted for it as for a fixed sum of money, or as on a hiring or a leasing. For this is the most splendid thing in it, that we gave even though we should lose it, that we left it wholly to the discretion of the receiver; if I sue, if I summon him before a judge, it begins to be, not a benefit, but a loan. 7.2 Then, since the returning of gratitude is a most honorable thing, it ceases to be honorable if it is necessary; for no one will praise a grateful man any more than a man who has returned a deposit, or paid what he owed without going before a judge. 7.3 Thus we corrupt the two things than which nothing in human life is fairer, the grateful man and the benefit; for what is magnificent either in this man, if he does not give a benefit but lends it, or in that man, who repays, not because he wishes, but because he must? It is no glorious thing to be grateful, unless it is safe to have been ungrateful. 7.4 Add now that for this one law all the courts would scarcely suffice. Who will there be who does not sue? Against whom will there be no suit? All men extol their own services, all magnify even the least things they have conferred on others. 7.5 Besides, whatever falls under judicial cognizance can be grasped and does not give unlimited license to the judge; therefore the condition of a good cause seems better, if it is sent to a judge than if to an arbiter, because a fixed formula hems the former in and sets bounds, certain ones, which he may not pass, while the latter, with a conscience free and bound by no chains, can both take away something and add it, and rule his verdict, not as the law or justice advises, but as humanity or pity has impelled him. The action against ingratitude would not have bound the judge but would have set him in a most untrammeled sovereignty. For what a benefit is, is not settled, nor next how great it is; 7.6 it makes a difference how kindly the judge interprets it. What an ungrateful man is, no law shows; often both he who has returned what he received is ungrateful, and he who has not returned it is grateful. 7.7 Concerning certain matters even an unskilled judge can cast his vote, where it must be pronounced that a thing was done or not done, where bonds being produced the controversy is removed, where between the disputants the account settles the right. But where the conjecture of the mind must be made, where that on which wisdom alone decides falls into controversy, a judge for these things cannot be taken from the throng of those selected, whom his property has sent to the roll and an equestrian inheritance has admitted. 8.1 And so it was not that this matter seemed too little fit to be brought before a judge, but that no one was found fit enough to be a judge of it; which you will not wonder at, if you weigh what difficulty anyone would have had who came out against such a defendant. 8.2 Someone has given a great sum of money, but he was rich, but he would not feel the expense; another has given, but at the cost of his whole estate. The sum is the same, the benefit is not the same. Add still this: this man paid down money for one adjudged to slavery, but after he had brought it out from his own house; that man gave the same, but took it as a loan or begged for it, and suffered himself to be laid under obligation for a vast service. Do you think him in the same case who has bestowed a benefit out of easy means, and this man who received in order to give? 8.3 Certain things are made great by their time, not by their sum. It is a benefit to have given a piece of land whose fertility might lower the price of grain; it is a benefit to give a single loaf in a famine; it is a benefit to give regions through which great and navigable rivers run; it is a benefit to point out a spring to men parched with thirst and scarcely drawing breath through their dry throats. Who will compare these things with one another? Who will weigh them? Difficult is the verdict which seeks, not the thing, but the force of the thing; though the things be the same, given otherwise they do not weigh the same. 8.4 This man gave me a benefit, but not willingly, but complained that he had given it, but looked at me more haughtily than he was wont, but gave so slowly that he would have bestowed more if he had refused quickly. How will a judge enter upon the appraisal of these things, when speech and hesitation and the face destroy the gratitude due the service? 9.1 What of this, that certain things are called benefits because they are too keenly craved, while certain things are not of this common stamp but are greater, even though they appear less? 9.2 You call it a benefit to have given the citizenship of a powerful people, to have brought a man into the fourteen rows, to have defended a man on a capital charge. What of having counseled what was useful? Of having held a man back, that he might not rush into crime? Of having struck the sword from one about to die? Of having brought back to the resolve of living, by effective remedies, one who mourned and was willing to follow those he longed for? Of having sat by the sick, and, when his health and safety hung upon moments, of having seized the times fit for food, and revived his sinking veins with wine, and brought a physician to the dying? 9.3 Who will appraise these things? Who will bid benefits be weighed against unlike benefits? "I gave you a house." But I foretold to you that your own was tumbling above your head. "I gave you an estate." But I gave you a plank in shipwreck. "I fought for you and took wounds." But I gave you your life by my silence. Since a benefit is given in one way, repaid in another, it is difficult to make them even. 10.1 Besides, no day is named for repaying a benefit, as there is for money lent; and so he who has not yet repaid can repay. For say within what time the ungrateful man is to be detected. 10.2 The greatest benefits have no proof; often they lie hidden within the silent knowledge of two; or shall we bring this in, that we should not give benefits without a witness? 10.3 Then what penalty shall we appoint for the ungrateful? One for all, though they are unequal? An unequal one, greater or less according to each man's benefit? Come, the assessment will turn upon money. What then, that certain benefits are life itself, and greater than life? For these what penalty shall be pronounced? Less than the benefit? It is unjust. Equal, and capital? What is more inhuman than that the issues of benefits should be bloody? 11.1 "Certain privileges," says he, "have been granted to parents; as the account of these is held outside the common order, so the account of other benefits too ought to be held." We made the condition of parents sacred, because it was expedient that children should be reared; men had to be urged on to this labor, who would meet an uncertain fortune. It could not be said to them what is said to those who give benefits: "Choose to whom you give; complain only of yourself, if you are deceived; help one who is worthy." In the rearing of children nothing is left to the judgment of those who rear; the whole matter is one of hope. And so, that they might face the hazard with a more even mind, some power had to be given them. 11.2 Then the condition of parents is different, who give benefits to those to whom they have given them nonetheless, and will give them still, and there is no danger that they should lie about having given them. In other men it must be asked, not only whether they have received, but whether they have given; in these the services are admitted, and, because it is useful that youth be governed, we have set over it, as it were, domestic magistrates, under whose guardianship it might be held in check. 11.3 Then, the benefit of all parents was one, and so it could be appraised once for all; other benefits are diverse, unlike, separated from one another by infinite intervals; and so they could fall under no rule, since it were more just that all be left free than that all be made equal. 12.1 Certain things cost much to the givers, certain things are great to the receivers but cost nothing to the bestowers. Certain things are given to friends, certain things to strangers; it is more, though the same be given, if it is given to one whom you only begin to know from your benefit. This man bestows aid, that man honors, that man consolations. 12.2 You will find one who thinks nothing more pleasant, nothing greater, than to have something on which his calamity may rest; you will find again one who would rather provision be made for his dignity than for his security; there is one who judges that he owes more to him through whom he is safer than to him through whom he is more honored. Accordingly these things will be greater or less, as the judge has been inclined in mind this way or that. 12.3 Besides, I choose my own creditor for myself, but I often receive a benefit from one from whom I would not, and sometimes I am laid under obligation unknowing. What will you do? Will you call him ungrateful upon whom a benefit was imposed without his knowledge and which, had he known, he would not have accepted? Will you not call him ungrateful who, however he received it, did not return it? 12.4 Someone gave me a benefit, but the same man afterward did me an injury. Am I bound by one gift to the endurance of all injuries, or will it be just as if I had returned gratitude, because he himself canceled his own benefit by the injury that followed? How then will you appraise whether what he received is the more, or that by which he was harmed? The day will fail me, if I try to follow out all the difficulties. 13.1 "We make men," says he, "slower to give benefits, by not avenging what has been given nor visiting the deniers of them with a penalty." But let this too occur to you on the other side, that men will be far slower to receive benefits, if they are to incur the risk of pleading a cause and to hold their innocence in a more anxious case. 13.2 Then by this very thing we shall be slower also to give; for no one gives gladly to the unwilling, but whoever is invited to do good by goodness itself and by the very beauty of the deed will give even more gladly to those who will owe nothing save what they shall wish to owe. For the glory of that service is diminished against which careful provision has been made. 14.1 Then benefits will be fewer, but truer; and what evil is there in checking the rashness of benefits? For this very thing they aimed at who appointed no law for it, that we should give more circumspectly, should more circumspectly choose those on whom services are conferred. Again and again consider to whom you give: 14.2 there will be no action, no recovery. You are mistaken if you think a judge will come to your aid; no law will restore you to your former state; look to the receiver's good faith alone. In this way benefits keep their authority and are magnificent; you will defile them, if you make them the matter of lawsuits. 14.3 Most just is the saying, and one that bears upon its face the law of nations: "Pay back what you owe"; this is most base in a benefit. "Pay back!" What? Will he pay back the life that he owes? His dignity? 14.4 His security? His health? The greatest things cannot be paid back. "But for them," says he, "let him pay something of equal worth." This is what I was saying, that the dignity of so great a thing will perish, if we make a benefit a piece of merchandise. The mind must not be goaded toward avarice, toward complaints, toward discord; of its own accord it is borne toward these things. So far as we can, let us resist, and cut off the occasions it seeks. 15.1 Would, indeed, that we could persuade men to receive money lent only from those willing to lend! Would that no stipulation bound the buyer to the seller, nor pacts and devices were guarded by impressed seals, but that good faith rather kept these things, and a mind that cherishes equity! 15.2 But men have preferred the necessary to the best, and would rather compel good faith than wait for it. Witnesses are called in by both parties. The one, through his ledgers, with brokers brought in, opens accounts in the names of several; the other is not content with interrogation, unless he has held the debtor with his own hand. 15.3 O shameful confession of the fraud and the public wickedness of the human race! More is trusted to our rings than to our minds. To what end have these decked-out men been called in? To what end do they impress their seals? Surely that the one may not deny that he has received what he received! Do you think these men incorruptible and champions of truth? But to these very men money will straightway be entrusted no otherwise. Was it not, then, more honorable that good faith should be betrayed by some, than that treachery should be feared from all? 15.4 This one thing is lacking to avarice, that we should not give benefits without a surety! It is the mark of a generous and a magnificent mind to help, to be of use; he who gives benefits imitates the gods, he who asks them back, moneylenders. Why, while we avenge benefits, do we reduce them to that most sordid company? 16.1 "More men," says he, "will be ungrateful, if no action is granted against the ungrateful." Nay, fewer, because benefits will be given with greater discrimination. Then it is not expedient that it should become known to all how many men are ungrateful; for the multitude of offenders will take away the shame of the thing, and a common reproach will cease to be in the place of disgrace. 16.2 Does any woman now blush at a divorce, since certain illustrious and noble women reckon their years, not by the number of consuls, but by that of their husbands, and go forth for the sake of marriage, marry for the sake of divorce? This was feared just so long as it was rare; because no records are kept without a divorce, what they often heard of they have learned to do. 16.3 Is there now any shame of adultery, since we have come to this, that no woman has a husband except to provoke an adulterer? Chastity is the proof of ugliness. Whom will you find so wretched, so sordid, as to be content with a single pair of adulterers, unless she has parceled out her hours among several? And the day does not suffice for all, unless she has been carried to one in her litter, has lodged with another. She is silly and old-fashioned who does not know that to be married to one man is called adultery. 16.4 Just as the shame of these offenses has now vanished, after the practice spread more widely, so you will make the ungrateful more in number and bolder, if they have begun to count themselves. 17.1 "What then? Shall the ungrateful man go unpunished?" What then, shall the impious man go unpunished? The malicious? The avaricious? The intemperate? The cruel? Do you believe those things to be unpunished which are hated, or do you think any punishment heavier than the public hatred? 17.2 It is a penalty that he dare not receive a benefit from anyone, that he dare not give one to anyone, that he is marked by the eyes of all or judges that he is so marked, that he has lost the understanding of a thing most good and most sweet. Or do you call that man unhappy who has lost his sight, whose ears disease has stopped, and do you not call him wretched who has lost the sense of benefits? 17.3 He fears the gods, the witnesses of all the ungrateful; the consciousness of an intercepted benefit burns and torments him. In short, this very thing is penalty great enough, that he does not reap the fruit of a thing, as I was saying, most pleasant. But the man who is glad to have received enjoys an even and perpetual pleasure, and rejoices, looking at the spirit of the one from whom he received, not at the thing. A benefit ever delights the grateful man, the ungrateful but once. 17.4 The life of the two can be compared, since the one is gloomy and anxious, such as a defaulter and a cheat is wont to be, in whose eyes there is no honor for parents, to whom he owes it, none for his rearer, none for his teachers, while the other is glad, cheerful, awaiting the occasion to return gratitude, and from this very feeling reaping a great joy, and seeking, not how he may default, but how he may respond more fully and more richly, not only to parents and friends, but to humbler persons too. For even if he has received a benefit from his own slave, he weighs, not from whom, but what he received. 18.1 And yet it is asked by some, as by Hecaton, whether a slave can give a benefit to his master. For there are those who so distinguish, that certain things are benefits, certain things duties, certain things services; that a benefit is what a stranger gives (a stranger is one who could without blame have refrained); that a duty is that of a son, a wife, of those persons whom kinship rouses and bids to bring aid; that a service is that of a slave, whom his condition has placed in such a position that nothing of what he renders may be charged to his superior's account. 18.2 Besides, he who denies that a slave can ever give his master a benefit is ignorant of human right; for it matters of what spirit he is who renders the service, not of what station. To no one is virtue shut off; it lies open to all, admits all, invites all, both the freeborn and the freedmen and slaves and kings and exiles; it does not choose a house or a fortune; it is content with the bare man. For what would be safe against sudden things, what great thing would the mind promise itself, if fortune could rob it of a sure virtue? 18.3 If a slave does not give his master a benefit, then no man gives one to his king, nor any soldier to his commander; for what does it matter under what kind of authority a man is held, if he is held under the highest? For if necessity, and the fear of the uttermost suffering, bars the slave from coming to the name of one who deserves well, the same will bar both the man who has a king and the man who has a commander, since under unlike titles the like things are permitted against them. And yet men do give benefits to their kings, do give them to their generals; therefore to their masters too. 18.4 A slave can be just, can be brave, can be of a great spirit; therefore he can give a benefit too, for this also belongs to virtue. So truly indeed can slaves give benefits to their masters that they have often made the masters themselves the objects of their benefit. 19.1 There is no doubt that a slave can give a benefit to anyone you please; why then could he not give one to his master too? "Because," says he, "he cannot become his master's creditor by giving him money. Otherwise he lays his master under obligation daily; he follows him on his travels, waits on him when sick, tills his farm with the greatest labor; yet all these things, which, when another renders them, would be called benefits, are services when a slave renders them. For a benefit is that which a man has given when he was permitted also not to give. But a slave has not the power to refuse; so he does not render a benefit, but obeys, nor does he boast that he has done what he could not have left undone." 19.2 Now under this very law I shall conquer, and shall bring the slave to the point where in many things he is free. Meanwhile tell me, if I show you a man fighting for the safety of his master without regard for himself, and, pierced with wounds, yet pouring out the remnants of his blood from his very vitals, and, that his master may have time to escape, seeking by his own death to gain delay, will you deny that this man has given a benefit, because he is a slave? 19.3 If I show you a man who, that he might betray his master's secrets, was corrupted by no promise of the tyrant, terrified by no threats, overcome by no tortures, and who turned aside, so far as he could, the suspicions of the inquirer, and spent his breath for his faith, will you deny that this man has given his master a benefit, because he is a slave? 19.4 Consider whether it be not the greater the rarer such an example of virtue in slaves is, and the more welcome because, although commands are generally hated and every necessity is grievous, love of the master has conquered in someone the common hatred of slavery. So it is not for this reason no benefit, because it has proceeded from a slave, but for this reason the greater, because not even slavery could deter him from it. 20.1 He is mistaken who thinks that slavery descends into the whole man. The better part of him is exempt. The bodies are subject and assigned to masters; the mind indeed is its own, and is so free and roving that not even by this prison in which it is shut up can it be kept from using its own impulse, and doing vast things, and going forth into the infinite as the comrade of the heavenly bodies. 20.2 It is the body, therefore, which fortune has handed over to a master; this he buys, this he sells; that inner part cannot be conveyed in ownership. Whatever comes from this is free; for neither can we command all things, nor are slaves compelled to obey in all things; against the commonwealth they will not do what is bidden, to no crime will they lend their hands. 21.1 There are certain things which the laws neither bid nor forbid us to do; in these a slave has the material of a benefit. So long as what is wont to be exacted of a slave is rendered, it is a service; when more is rendered than is necessary for a slave, it is a benefit; when it passes into the affection of a friend, it ceases to be called a service. 21.2 There is something which a master ought to render his slave, such as food, such as clothing; no one has called this a benefit. But he has been indulgent, has reared him more liberally, has handed on to him the arts in which the freeborn are educated: it is a benefit. The same thing happens conversely in the person of the slave. Whatever there is that exceeds the formula of a slave's office, that is rendered not from command but from goodwill, is a benefit, provided only that it is so great that it could be so called when rendered by anyone else. 22.1 A slave, as Chrysippus holds, is a perpetual hired servant. Just as the hired man gives a benefit when he renders more than that for which he hired out his labor, so the slave: when his good will toward his master passes the measure of his fortune, and, daring something higher, which would be a credit even to men more happily born, he has outrun his master's hope, it is a benefit found within the household. 22.2 Or does it seem fair to you that, while we are angry with those who do less than is owed, no gratitude be felt if they have done more than was owed and customary? Do you wish to know when there is no benefit? When it can be said: "What if he had been unwilling?" But when he has rendered that which he was free to be unwilling to render, the willing is to be praised. 22.3 A benefit and an injury are contraries; a slave can give his master a benefit, if he can receive an injury from his master. And yet for the injuries of masters against slaves there is appointed one to hear, who may restrain both cruelty and lust and avarice in supplying the necessaries of life. What then? Does a master receive a benefit from a slave? 22.4 Nay, a man from a man. In short, he has done what was in his power: he has given his master a benefit; that you should receive a benefit from a slave is in your own power. But who is so great that fortune does not compel him to need even the lowliest? 23.1 I shall now relate many examples of benefits, both unlike and some of them contrary to one another. Someone gave his master life, someone death; one saved him who was about to perish, and, if that is too little, by perishing saved him; another helped his master's death, another deceived it. 23.2 Claudius Quadrigarius relates in the eighteenth book of his Annals that, when Grumentum was being besieged and matters had now come to the utmost despair, two slaves deserted to the enemy and did good service. Then, when the city was taken and the conqueror was rushing this way and that, they ran ahead by the familiar streets to the house in which they had been slaves, and drove their mistress before them; and, when men asked who she was, they declared that she was their mistress, and a most cruel one, and that they were leading her to punishment by their own hands. Then, having brought her out beyond the walls, they hid her with the greatest care, until the enemy's rage should subside; then, when the soldiery, glutted, soon returned to Roman manners, they too returned to their own, and gave their mistress back to herself. 23.3 She at once set both free, nor did she disdain to have received her life from those over whom she had held the power of life and death. She could even the more congratulate herself on this; for, saved otherwise, she would have had the gift of a common and vulgar clemency, but, saved thus, she was the noble theme of a tale and an example to two cities. 23.4 In the great confusion of a captured city, when each man took thought for himself, all fled from her save the deserters; but these, to show with what spirit that earlier desertion had been made, deserted from the victors to the captive, putting on the mask of parricides; and what was greatest in that benefit, they judged it worth so much, that their mistress might not be killed, to seem to have killed their mistress. It is not, believe me, the part, I will not say of a servile, but of a base mind, to buy an excellent deed at the cost of the rumor of a crime. 23.5 Vettius, praetor of the Marsi, was being led to the Roman commander; his slave drew the sword of the very soldier by whom he was being dragged, and first killed his master, then said: "It is time for me to take thought for myself too! I have already set my master free," and so ran himself through with a single blow. Give me anyone who saved his master more magnificently. 24.1 Caesar was besieging Corfinium, and the renowned Domitius was held there; he ordered his physician, who was also his slave, to give him poison. When he saw the man hanging back: "Why do you delay," said he, "as though all that were in your own power? I ask for death, and I am armed." Then the slave promised, and gave him a harmless draught to drink; and when by it Domitius had been put to sleep, he came to his son and said: "Order me to be kept under guard, until from the outcome you understand whether I have given your father poison." Domitius lived, and was saved by Caesar; yet his slave had saved him first. 25.1 In the civil war a slave hid his master, who had been proscribed, and, when he had fitted the master's rings to himself and put on his clothing, he met the executioners and said that he begged nothing to keep them from carrying out their orders, and then stretched out his neck. How great a man's part it is to be willing to die for his master at that time when it was rare to be faithful enough not to wish one's master to die! To be found gentle amid the public cruelty, faithful amid the public treachery! When the rewards of betrayal were displayed as vast, to crave death as the reward of faith! 26.1 I shall not pass by the examples of our own age. Under Tiberius Caesar there was a frequent and almost universal madness of accusing, which destroyed the togaed state more grievously than any civil war; the talk of drunken men, the frankness of jesters, was caught up; nothing was safe; every occasion for savagery was welcome, and the outcomes of the accused were no longer awaited, since there was but one. Paulus, a man of praetorian rank, was dining at a certain banquet, wearing a portrait of Tiberius Caesar embossed and standing out upon a gem. 26.2 I shall have done a most silly thing if I now seek for words in which to say that he took up a chamber-pot; which deed both Maro, one of the notable informers of that time, marked, and the slave whose master the snares were being woven against, who drew the ring from his drunken master. And when Maro called the guests to witness that the portrait had been brought near to obscene things, and was already composing the indictment, the slave showed the ring on his own hand. If anyone calls this man a slave, he will also call that man a guest. 27.1 Under the deified Augustus men's words were not yet perilous to them, but already troublesome. Rufus, a man of senatorial rank, had wished at a dinner that Caesar might not return safe from the journey he was preparing; and he had added that the same was the wish of all the bulls and calves. There were those who listened carefully to those words. As soon as it grew light, the slave who had stood at his feet while he dined told him what he had said in his cups during the dinner, and urged him to forestall Caesar and inform against himself. 27.2 Following the advice, he met Caesar as he was coming down, and, having sworn that he had had an evil mind the day before, he wished that the consequence might fall upon himself and his children, and begged Caesar to pardon him and to return into favor with him. 27.3 When Caesar had said that he would do so: "No one," said he, "will believe that you have returned into favor with me, unless you give me something," and he asked a sum that even a favorable man would not have scorned, and obtained it. Caesar said: "For my own sake I shall take care never to be angry with you!" 27.4 Honorably did Caesar act, in that he pardoned, in that he added liberality to clemency. Whoever shall hear this example must needs praise Caesar, but only after he has first praised the slave. You do not wait for me to tell you that the slave who had done this was set free. Yet not for nothing: Caesar had counted out the money for his freedom. 28.1 After so many examples, is it doubtful that a master sometimes receives a benefit from a slave? Why should the person rather lessen the thing, than the thing itself ennoble the person? The beginnings of all are the same, and the same their origin; no one is nobler than another, save him whose nature is more upright and more apt for the good arts. 28.2 Those who set out portraits in the hall and place the names of their family, in a long row and bound with many windings of the genealogical tree, in the front part of their house, are they not better known than noble? The one parent of all is the universe, whether by splendid steps or by sordid ones the first origin of each is traced back to it. There is no reason why those men should deceive you who, when they review their ancestors, wherever an illustrious name has failed, foist in a god. 28.3 Despise no one, even though about him the names are worn and aided by too little indulgent a fortune. Whether freedmen are reckoned before you, or slaves, or men of foreign nations, lift up your spirits boldly, and leap over whatever sordid thing lies between; at the summit a great nobility awaits you. 28.4 Why are we raised by pride into such vanity that we disdain to receive benefits from slaves, and look at their lot, forgetful of their services? Do you call any man a slave, you who are the slave of lust and gluttony and of an adulteress, nay, the common chattel of adulteresses? 28.5 Do you call any man a slave? Whither, pray, are you being hurried by those litter-bearers who carry around that couch of yours? Whither do those men, in their cloaks, decked out in a soldier's no common attire, whither, I say, do they bear you off? To the door of some doorkeeper, to the gardens of some man who does not even hold a regular office; and then you deny that a benefit can be given you by your own slave, you to whom the kiss of another man's slave is a benefit? What is so great a discord of the mind? 28.6 At the same time you despise slaves and court them, masterful within your threshold and uncontrolled, humble abroad and as much despised as despising. For none more cast down their spirits than those who wickedly lift them up, and none are more ready to trample on others than those who have learned to do insults by receiving them. 29.1 These things had to be said to crush the insolence of men who hang upon fortune, and to vindicate the right of giving a benefit for slaves, that it might be vindicated for sons too. For it is asked whether children can ever give greater benefits to their parents than they have received. 29.2 This is conceded, that many sons have proved greater and more powerful than their parents; this too equally, that they have been better. And if this is granted, it may come to pass that they have bestowed better things, since both their fortune was greater and their will better. 29.3 "Whatever it is," says he, "that a son gives his father, it is at any rate less, because he owes to his father this very power of giving. So a father is never surpassed in benefit, whose benefit is the very thing by which he is surpassed." In the first place, certain things draw their beginning from others, and yet are greater than their beginnings; nor is a thing for that reason not greater than that with which it began, because it could not have advanced so far had it not begun. 29.4 There is nothing that does not pass its own beginnings by a great stride. Seeds are the causes of all things, and yet they are the smallest parts of what they bring forth. Look at the Rhine, look at the Euphrates, look in fine at all the famous rivers. What are they, if you appraise them there whence they flow forth? Whatever it is for which they are feared, for which they are named, they have acquired in their advance. 29.5 Look at trees, whether you appraise their height, the loftiest, or their thickness and the spread of their branches, the most widely outpoured. How small is that thing, compared with these, which the root grasps with its slender fiber! Take away the root: the groves will not rise, nor will mountains so great be clothed. Upon their foundations the lofty temples of the city lean; yet the stones laid for the support of the whole work lie hidden. The same happens in all other cases; 29.6 ever does the greatness that follows overwhelm its own beginnings. I could not have attained anything, had not my parents' benefit gone before; but not for that reason is whatever I have attained less than that without which I should not have attained it. 29.7 Had not my nurse fed me as an infant, I could have done none of the things which I do by my counsel and my hand, nor have emerged into this brightness of name which I have earned by civil and military industry; will you for that reason prefer the nurse's service to the greatest works? And yet what difference is there, since I could no more have advanced to further things without the father's benefit than without the nurse's? But if I owe whatever I can now do to my beginning, consider that my father is not my beginning, nor even my grandfather; for there will always be something further back, from which the origin of the nearest origin descends. And yet no one will say that I owe more to unknown ancestors, set beyond the reach of memory, than to my father; but I owe more, if this very thing, that my father begot me, my father owes to his ancestors. 30.1 "Whatever I have rendered my father, even if it is great, is below the appraisal of the paternal gift, because I should not be, if he had not begotten me." In that case too, even if someone has healed my father when sick and like to die, I shall be able to render him nothing which is not less than his benefit; for my father would not have begotten me, had he not been healed. But consider whether this be not truer: that it must be appraised whether what I could do and what I have done is my own, of my own powers, of my own will. 30.2 Consider in itself the thing that I was born, of what kind it is: you will perceive it slight and uncertain, the common material of good and evil, without doubt the first step toward all things, but not for that reason greater than all, because it is the first. 30.3 I saved my father and advanced him to the highest dignity and made him the chief man of his own city, and I ennobled him not only by the things done by me, but I gave him too a vast and easy material for doing things, and one no less safe than glorious; honors, wealth, whatever drags human minds toward itself, I heaped upon him, and, while I stood above all, I stood below him. Say now: 30.4 "This very thing, that you were able to do these things, is your father's gift"; I shall answer you: "It is, assuredly, if to be born is enough for the doing of these things; but if for living well it is the least part to live, and you have given me that which is common to me with wild beasts and certain very small animals, certain even most foul, do not claim for yourself what springs, not from your benefits, even if not without them." 31.1 Suppose that I have given life in return for life. Even so I have surpassed your gift, since I gave to one who felt it, while I myself felt that I was giving, since I gave you life not for the sake of my own pleasure or at least through pleasure, since it is as much greater to keep one's breath than to receive it as it is lighter to die before the fear of death. 31.2 I gave life to one who would use it at once, you to one who would not know whether he lived; I gave life to one who feared death, you gave life that I might be able to die; I gave you life consummate, perfect, you begot me without a share of reason, a burden upon others. 31.3 Do you wish to know how no great benefit it is to give life thus? You should have exposed me; surely it was an injury to have begotten me! From this what do I conclude? That the union of father and mother is the smallest benefit, unless other things have been added to attend this beginning of the gift and to ratify it by other services. 31.4 It is not a good to live, but to live well. But I do live well. Yet I could have lived ill; so this only is yours, that I live. If you charge me with my life in itself, bare, destitute of counsel, and boast of it as a great good, consider that you are charging me with the good of flies and worms. 31.5 Then, to say nothing else than that I have devoted myself to the good arts and directed my course to the right path of life, in your very benefit you have received more than you had given; for you gave me to myself raw and unskilled, I have given you a son such as you might rejoice to have begotten. 32.1 My father reared me. If I render the same, I render more, because he rejoices not only that he is reared, but that he is reared by a son, and reaps a greater pleasure from my heart than from the thing itself, while his nourishment reached only to my body. What? 32.2 if someone has advanced so far that either by eloquence he becomes known among the nations, or by justice, or by deeds of war, and has shed a vast fame about his father too, and dispelled with a clear light the obscurity of his birth, has he not conferred a benefit beyond appraisal upon his parents? 32.3 Or would anyone know Ariston and Gryllus except on account of their sons, Xenophon and Plato? Socrates does not suffer Sophroniscus to die. It were long to enumerate the rest who endure for no other cause than that the surpassing virtue of their children handed them down to posterity. 32.4 Which gave the greater benefit, the father, not known even after Agrippa, to Marcus Agrippa, or Agrippa to his father, Agrippa distinguished by the naval crown, having won that one honor among military decorations, who raised in the greatest of cities so many works as both surpassed the former magnificence and were surpassed by none thereafter? 32.5 Which gave the greater benefit, Octavius to his son, or the deified Augustus to his father, although the shadow of his adoptive father hides Octavius? What pleasure would he have taken, had he seen him, after the civil wars were fought to a finish, presiding over an untroubled peace, not recognizing his own good, and scarcely believing, as often as he looked back upon himself, that such a man could have been born in his house! Why now should I follow out the rest, whom oblivion would by now have consumed, had not the glory of their sons dug them out of the darkness and still kept them in the light? 32.6 Then, since we are inquiring, not what son has returned greater benefits to his father than he had received from his father, but whether anyone can return greater, even if the examples I have related do not yet satisfy nor outweigh the benefits of their parents, yet nature admits this thing which no age has yet brought forth. If the single services of fathers cannot be exceeded in greatness, several heaped into one will exceed them. 33.1 Scipio saved his father in battle, and, still a boy, drove his horse against the enemy. Is it too little that, in order to reach his father, he despised so many dangers pressing most heavily upon the greatest captains, so many difficulties set in his way, that, going out, a raw recruit, to his first battle, he ran over the bodies of veterans, that he leaped beyond his years? 33.2 Add that the same man defends his father on a charge, and snatches him from the conspiracy of powerful enemies, that he heaps upon him a second consulship and a third, and other honors to be craved even by men of consular rank, that he hands over to his father, poor, the wealth seized by the right of war, and, what is most splendid for military men, makes him rich even with the enemy's spoils. 33.3 If this is still too little, add that he prolongs his father's provinces and extraordinary commands; add that, having razed the greatest cities, the defender and founder of a Roman empire that shall come, with no rival, to the East and the West, he adds a greater nobility to a noble man, that he is called the father of Scipio! Is it doubtful that surpassing devotion and virtue have conquered the common benefit of begetting, bringing to the city itself I know not whether the greater protection or the greater glory? 33.4 Then, if this is too little, imagine that someone has dashed away the torments of his father, imagine that he has transferred them to himself. You may extend the benefits of a son as far as you will, while the father's gift is both single and easy and pleasurable to the giver, which he must needs have given to many, even to those to whom he knows not that he gave it, in which he has a partner, in which he looked to the law, his country, the rewards of fathers, the perpetuity of his house and family, everything rather than the one to whom he was giving. What? 33.5 if someone, having attained wisdom, has handed this on to his father, shall we still debate whether he has now given something greater than he had received, since he has rendered his father a happy life, but received only life? 34.1 "But it is the father's benefit," says he, "whatever you do, whatever you can render him." It is also my teacher's, that I have profited by liberal studies; yet we transcend the very men who handed those things on, above all those who taught the first elements, and, although without them no one could attain anything, yet, however much a man has attained, he is not below them. There is much difference between the first and the greatest, nor are the first for that reason the equivalent of the greatest, because without the first the greatest cannot be. 35.1 It is now time to bring forth certain things, so to speak, from our own mint. He who has given that benefit than which there is something better can be surpassed. A father has given his son life, but there is something better than life; so a father can be surpassed, because he has given a benefit than which there is something better. 35.2 Further, he who has given anyone life, if he has both once and again been freed from the peril of death, has received a greater benefit than he gave. But a father has given life; therefore, if he has more than once been freed from the peril of death by his son, he can receive a greater benefit than he gave. 35.3 He who receives a benefit receives the greater the more he needs it. But he needs life more who lives than he who has not been born, who cannot even need it at all; a father therefore receives a greater benefit, if he receives life from his son, than the son from his father, namely that he was born. 35.4 "The benefits of a father cannot be surpassed by the benefits of a son. Why? Because he received from his father the life which, had he not received it, he could have given no benefits." This is common to a father with all who have given anyone life; for they could not have returned gratitude, had they not received life. Therefore neither can gratitude be returned to a physician in greater measure (for a physician too is wont to give life), nor to a sailor, if he has picked up a man from shipwreck. And yet the benefits both of these and of others who have in some way given us life can be surpassed; therefore the benefits of fathers can be too. 35.5 If someone has given me a benefit which had to be helped out by the benefits of many, but I have given him a benefit which needed the aid of none, I have given more than I received. A father gave his son life, which would have perished had not many things been added to safeguard it; but if a son has given his father life, he has given that which needs the help of none in order to abide; therefore a father has received a greater benefit from his son, when he received life, than he himself gave him. 36.1 These things do not undo the reverence due to parents nor make children worse toward them, nay, even better; for by nature virtue is glorious and craves to go before its predecessors. Devotion will be the more eager, if it comes to the repaying of benefits with the hope of surpassing. It will fall to the fathers themselves, willing and glad, since there are very many things in which we are surpassed to our own good. 36.2 Whence so desirable a contest? Whence so great a happiness for parents, that they confess themselves unequal to the benefits of their children? Unless we judge thus, we give children an excuse, and make them more sluggish to return gratitude, when we ought to add goads to them and say: "Up and to it, excellent youths! An honorable contest is set before parents and children: which shall have given the greater benefits, or received them. They have not for that reason conquered, because they came first. 36.3 Only take a spirit such as becomes you, and do not flag: you will conquer those who wish you to conquer. Nor are there lacking, for so fair a contest, leaders to exhort you to like deeds, and to bid you go by their footsteps to a victory often already won over parents. 37.1 Aeneas conquered his father, once a light and safe burden to him in infancy, by carrying him, heavy with age, through the midst of the enemy's ranks and through the ruins of the city falling about him, while the devout old man, embracing the sacred objects and the household gods, weighed down with no single load the one who walked; he bore him through the fires, and (what can devotion not do?) bore him through to the end, and set him to be honored among the founders of the Roman empire. The Sicilian youths conquered: when Aetna, driven with greater force, had poured forth its conflagration upon the cities, the fields, a great part of the island, they carried off their parents; it was believed that the fires drew apart, and that, the flame receding on either side, a path was opened through which there ran youths most worthy to dare great things in safety. Antigonus conquered, who, when he had overcome the enemy in a vast battle, transferred the prize of war to his father, and handed over to him the rule of Cyprus. This is to be unwilling to reign, when one can. He conquered his father, an imperious one indeed, did Manlius, who, when he had earlier been banished for a time by his father on account of a dull and slow youth, came to the tribune of the people who had appointed a day for the trial of his father; having asked for a moment, which the tribune granted, hoping that he would prove a betrayer of his hated parent (and he believed that he had deserved well of the young man, whose exile he was casting up against Manlius among other charges as a most grievous crime), the youth, having got him alone, drew the steel hidden in his bosom and said: 'Unless you swear that you will remit my father's day of trial, I will run you through with this sword. It is in your power by which course my father shall have no accuser.' The tribune swore and did not break his oath, and rendered to the assembly the reason why he had dropped the action. To no other man was it permitted with impunity to put a tribune in his place. 38.1 There are examples upon examples of those who have snatched their parents from dangers, who have raised them from the lowest to the highest, and from the commons and the ignoble heap have given them to be never silenced through the ages. 38.2 By no force of words, by no faculty of genius, can it be expressed how great a work it is, how praiseworthy and how never to pass from the memory of men, to be able to say this: 'I obeyed my parents, I yielded to their authority, whether it was fair or unfair and harsh, I showed myself compliant and submissive; in this one thing I was stubborn, that I would not be surpassed in benefits.' 38.3 Strive, I beseech you, and, even when weary, re-form your battle line. Happy they who shall conquer, happy they who shall be conquered! What is more glorious than that youth who shall be able to say to himself (for it is not lawful for another to say it): 'I have conquered my father in benefits'? What is more fortunate than that old man who shall proclaim everywhere that he has been conquered by his son in benefits? But what is happier than to yield in this?"