Book 5

1.1 In the earlier books I seemed to have completed my purpose, when I had treated how a benefit ought to be given, how received; for these are the bounds of this duty. Whatever I linger over beyond this, I am not serving my subject but indulging it, which is to be followed where it leads, not where it allures; for from time to time something will arise to provoke the mind with some sweetness, more not-superfluous than necessary. 1.2 But, since you wish it so, let us persevere, and, the matters which contained the subject being finished, scrutinize even those things which, if you wish the truth, are linked to it, not bound up with it; whoever inspects these carefully neither does a thing worth the labor nor yet wastes his labor. 1.3 But for you, a man by nature most excellent and inclined to benefits, Liberalis Aebutius, no praise of them is enough. I have never seen anyone so kindly an appraiser even of the slightest services; by now your goodness has slipped so far that you think a benefit is given to you which is given to anyone; you are ready, that no one may repent of a benefit, to pay out on behalf of the ungrateful. 1.4 You yourself are so far from all boasting, so far do you wish at once to unburden those whom you lay under obligation, that whatever you confer on anyone you wish to seem, not to bestow, but to repay; and for that reason what is so given will return to you more abundantly. For benefits generally follow the man who does not ask them back, and, as glory the more follows those who flee it, so the fruit of benefits answers more graciously through those by whose means it is permitted even to the ungrateful to be ungrateful. 1.5 Through you, indeed, there is no delay, but that those who have received benefits should ask for them again of their own accord; nor will you refuse to confer others, and to add more and greater ones to those suppressed and concealed: it is the purpose of an excellent man and of a vast spirit to bear with the ungrateful man so long until you have made him grateful. Nor will this method deceive you; vices give way to virtues, if you have not hastened too quickly to hate them. 2.1 That saying, at any rate, uniquely pleases you, as though magnificently spoken, that it is base to be surpassed in benefits. Whether this is true is not without reason wont to be asked, and it is far other than you conceive in your mind. For it is never base to be surpassed in a contest of honorable things, provided only that you do not fling away your arms, and that, even when conquered, you wish to conquer. 2.2 Not all bring to a good purpose the same powers, the same means, the same fortune, which controls even the issues, merely, of the best resolves; the will itself, seeking the right, is to be praised, even if another has outstripped it with a swifter step. It is not as in contests given for a spectacle, where the palm declares the better man, although even in those chance has often preferred the worse. 2.3 Where it is a matter of duty, which each desires to be as full as possible on his own part, if the one could do more and had at hand material sufficient for his spirit, if fortune permitted him as much as he attempted, but the other is his equal in will, even if he repaid less than he received, or did not repay all but wishes to repay and is intent upon this with his whole mind, he is no more conquered than the man who dies under arms, whom the enemy could more easily kill than turn aside. 2.4 What you think base, that cannot befall a good man, namely, to be conquered. For he will never give way, never renounce the struggle; he will stand ready to the very last day of his life, and in this station he will die, declaring that he has received great things, that he wished to give as great. 3.1 The Lacedaemonians forbid their citizens to compete in the pancratium or with the cestus, where the confession of the conquered shows the inferior. The runner touched the chalk first; he outstripped his rival in speed, not in spirit. The wrestler, thrown three times, lost the palm, did not surrender it. Since the Lacedaemonians set great store by their citizens' being unconquered, they removed them from those contests in which it is not the judge, nor the issue itself, but the voice of one yielding and bidding the surrender, that makes the victor. 3.2 This, which they guard among their citizens, virtue and good will furnish to all men, that they never be conquered, since indeed even amid things that overwhelm it the spirit is unconquered. Therefore no one says that the three hundred Fabii were conquered, but slain; and Regulus was captured by the Carthaginians, not conquered; and whoever else, crushed by the force and weight of a raging fortune, does not bow his spirit. In benefits it is the same. 3.3 Someone has received more, greater, more frequent benefits; yet he is not conquered. Benefits perhaps are conquered by benefits, if you reckon up between yourselves what was given and received; if you compare the giver and the receiver, whose spirits are to be appraised in themselves, with neither will the palm rest. For it is wont to happen that, even when one is pierced with many wounds, the other but lightly hurt, they are said to have come off equal, although the one seems inferior. 4.1 Therefore no one can be conquered in benefits, if he knows that he owes, if he wishes to repay: if, where he cannot match the man in things, he matches him in spirit. So long as he abides in this, so long as he holds the will to prove his grateful mind by tokens, what does it matter on which side the more little gifts are counted? You can give much, and I can only receive; fortune stands with you, good will with me; yet I am as much your equal as the naked or lightly armed are equal to many men most heavily armed. 4.2 And so no one is conquered in benefits, because each man is as grateful as he wished. For if it is base to be conquered in benefits, one ought not to receive a benefit from very powerful men, to whom you cannot return gratitude, from princes, I mean, from kings, whom fortune has placed in such a position that from it they can bestow many things, but receive few and unequal to what was given. 4.3 I have said kings and princes, to whom yet service can be rendered, and whose surpassing power stands by the consent and the ministry of lesser men. But there are some withdrawn beyond all desire, who are scarcely touched by any human longings; to these fortune itself can bestow nothing. I must needs be conquered in benefits by Socrates, must needs be conquered by Diogenes, who walked naked through the midst of the treasures of the Macedonians, having trampled the king's wealth. 4.4 O, then indeed deservedly did he seem, both to himself and to the rest to whom, for discerning the truth, no mist had been spread, to tower above the man beneath whom all things lay. Far more powerful, far richer was he than Alexander, who then possessed all things; for greater was what this man would not receive than what that man could give. 5.1 It is not base to be conquered by these; for I am no less brave if you match me against an invulnerable foe, nor for that reason can fire burn the less if it falls upon material inviolable by flames, nor has iron for that reason lost its power of cutting, if a stone, not admitting the blow, and solid, and of a nature unconquered against hard things, must be cleaved. The same I answer you concerning the grateful man. He is not basely conquered in benefits, if he has been laid under obligation by those to whom either the greatness of fortune or surpassing virtue has shut the way against benefits returning to themselves. 5.2 By our parents we are generally conquered. For we hold them so long as we judge them harsh, and so long as we do not understand their benefits. When at last our years have gathered some prudence, and it begins to appear that we ought to love them for those very things for which they were not loved, their admonitions, their severity, and their careful guardianship of an inconsiderate youth, they are snatched from us. To few has age brought the gathering from their children of the true fruit; the rest have felt their sons as a burden. 5.3 Yet it is not base to be conquered in benefits by a parent; how should it not be no shame, since it is no shame from anyone? For with certain persons we are both equals and unequals, equals in spirit, which alone they exact, which alone we promise, unequals in fortune, which if it has stood in anyone's way, that he could not return gratitude, he need not for that blush as though conquered. It is no shame not to overtake, provided only you follow. 5.4 Often we must of necessity ask other benefits before we have repaid the former, nor for that reason do we not ask, or ask basely, because, not about to repay, we shall be in debt, because it will be no delay on our part, but that we should be most grateful, but something from without will intervene to hinder it. Yet we shall neither be conquered in spirit nor basely surpassed by those things which are not in our own power. 6.1 Alexander, king of the Macedonians, used to boast that he had been surpassed by no one in benefits. There is no reason why, too high in spirit, he should look up to the Macedonians and the Greeks and the Carians and the Persians and the nations enrolled in his army, nor judge that this kingdom, stretched from a corner of Thrace to the shore of an unknown sea, was furnished by himself for himself. By the same thing Socrates could have boasted, by the same Diogenes, by whom assuredly he was conquered. How should he not have been conquered on that day on which a man, swollen now beyond the measure of human pride, saw someone to whom he could neither give anything nor take anything away? 6.2 King Archelaus asked Socrates to come to him; Socrates is reported to have said that he was unwilling to come to one from whom he would receive benefits, when he could not return him equal ones. In the first place, it was in his own power not to receive; in the second place, Archelaus himself was beginning first to give a benefit, for he came at his invitation, and gave that which the other was assuredly not going to return to Socrates. Furthermore Archelaus was going to give gold and silver, and to receive contempt of gold and silver: could Socrates not return Archelaus gratitude? 6.3 And what so great would he have received as he was giving, if he had shown him a man skilled in life and in death, holding the limits of both? If he had admitted to the nature of things a king wandering in broad daylight, so ignorant of it that, on the day on which there was an eclipse of the sun, he shut up his palace and, as is the custom in mourning and adversity, sheared his son? 6.4 How great a benefit it would have been, if he had drawn the frightened king from his hiding places and bidden him be of good cheer, saying: "This is no eclipse of the sun, but the meeting of two heavenly bodies, when the moon, running on a lower path, has set her own orb beneath the sun himself and hidden him by her interposition; which now, if in her passing she has grazed his small parts, draws a veil over them, now covers more, if she has set a greater part of herself across, now shuts out the sight of the whole, if with even poise she has come midway between the sun and the lands. 6.5 But soon their own swiftness will draw these heavenly bodies apart this way and that; soon the lands will receive the day again, and this order will go on through the ages, and has its days appointed and foretold, on which the sun is forbidden, by the moon's running across, to pour forth all his rays. Wait a little; soon he will emerge, soon he will leave that cloud, as it were, soon, loosed from his hindrances, he will freely send forth his light." 6.6 Could not Socrates have returned Archelaus an equal gratitude, if he had forbidden him to reign? No doubt he was receiving from Socrates too little a benefit, if he could have given Socrates any. Why then did Socrates say this? A witty man, and one whose speech went forward by figures, a mocker of all men, especially the powerful, he chose rather to refuse him with a jest than stubbornly or proudly; he said that he was unwilling to receive benefits from one to whom he could not render equal ones. He feared, perhaps, lest he be compelled to receive what he did not wish; he feared lest he receive something unworthy of Socrates. Someone will say: "He could have refused, if he wished. 6.7 But he would have stirred up against himself an insolent king who wished all his own to be highly valued. It makes no difference whether you are unwilling to give something to a king or to receive from a king; he sets either refusal on the same footing, and to a proud man it is more bitter to be disdained than not to be feared. Do you wish to know what he truly wished? He was unwilling to go to a voluntary servitude, he whose liberty a free state could not endure! 7.1 Enough, as I think, have we treated this part, whether it were base to be conquered in benefits. He who asks this knows that men are not wont to give a benefit to themselves; for it would have been manifest that it is no shame to be conquered by oneself. 7.2 And yet among certain Stoics this too is debated, whether a man can give himself a benefit, whether he ought to return gratitude to himself. That this should seem worth asking, these things have brought about: we are wont to say, "I give thanks to myself," and "I can complain of no one but myself," and "I am angry with myself," and "I will exact punishment of myself," and "I hate myself," and many things besides of this kind, through which each man speaks of himself as of another. 7.3 "If I can harm myself," says he, "why can I not also give a benefit to myself? Besides, the things which, if I had conferred them on another, would be called benefits, why, if I have conferred them on myself, should they not be? What, if I had received it from another, I should owe, why, if I have given it to myself, should I not owe? Why should I be ungrateful toward myself, which is no less base than to be sordid toward oneself, and toward oneself harsh and savage and careless of oneself? 7.4 The pander of another's body is as ill spoken of as the pander of his own. Surely the flatterer is blamed, and he who echoes another's words, ready to praise falsehoods; no less he who pleases himself and looks up to himself is, so to speak, his own flatterer. Vices are hateful, not only when they sin abroad, but when they are turned back upon oneself. 7.5 Whom will you admire more than the man who commands himself, who has himself in his power? It is easier to rule barbarous nations impatient of another's authority than to restrain one's own mind and deliver it over to oneself. Plato," says he, "gives thanks to Socrates, because he learned from him; why should not Socrates give thanks to himself, because he taught himself? Marcus Cato says: 'What you shall lack, borrow from yourself.' Why can I not give to myself, if I can lend? There are countless things in which custom divides us; 7.6 we are wont to say: 'Let me speak with myself,' and 'I will pull my own ear.' If these things are true, then, as a man ought to be angry with himself, so also to give himself thanks; as to upbraid himself, so also to praise himself; as to be his own loss, so also he can be his own gain. Injury and benefit are contraries; if we say of someone, 'He has done himself an injury,' we shall be able to say also, 'He has given himself a benefit.'" 8.1 It is prior in nature that one should owe, then that he should return gratitude; there is no debtor without a creditor, no more than a husband without a wife or a father without a son; one must give, that another may receive. To give and to receive is not to transfer from the left hand into the right. 8.2 As no one carries himself, although he moves and transfers his body, as no one, although he has spoken for himself, is said to have stood by himself as advocate, nor sets up a statue to himself as to his own patron, as a sick man, when by his own care he has recovered, does not exact a fee from himself, so in every transaction, even when a man has done something which would profit himself, he yet will not owe to return gratitude to himself, because he will have no one to whom to return it. 8.3 Granting that a man gives himself a benefit, in giving it he also receives it; granting that a man receives a benefit from himself, in receiving it he repays it. At home, as they say, a mere transfer of credit is made, and, like a counter in a game, it passes back at once; for it is no other who gives than who receives, but one and the same. This word "owe" has no place save between two; how then will it stand in one man, who frees himself by binding himself? 8.4 As in a circle and a ball there is nothing lowest, nothing highest, nothing last, nothing first, because by motion the order is changed, and what was following goes before, and what was setting rises, and all things, however they have gone, return to the same point, so consider that it happens in a man; when you have changed him into many parts, he is one. He has struck himself: he has no one with whom to bring an action for injuries; he has bound and shut himself up: he is not liable for violence; he has given himself a benefit: he has at once repaid it to the giver. 8.5 The nature of things is said to lose nothing, because, whatever is torn from it, returns to it, nor can anything perish which has no place into which to fall out, but rolls back to the same point whence it departed. "What likeness," you say, "has this example to the question now proposed?" 8.6 I shall tell you. Suppose you are ungrateful: the benefit does not perish, he who gave it has it. Suppose you are unwilling to receive it: it is with you, before it is repaid. You can lose nothing, because what is taken away is nonetheless acquired by you. The circle is wheeled within yourself; by receiving you give, by giving you receive. 9.1 "One ought," says he, "to give oneself a benefit; therefore one ought also to return gratitude." First, that is false, on which the consequences hang; for no one gives himself a benefit, but obeys his own nature, by which he is so framed as to love himself, whence comes his utmost care of avoiding what will harm, of seeking what will profit. 9.2 And so neither is he liberal who gives to himself, nor merciful who pardons himself, nor pitiful who is moved by his own ills. What it is liberality, clemency, pity to render to others, to render to oneself is nature. A benefit is a voluntary thing, but to be of use to oneself is necessary. The more benefits a man has given, the more beneficent he is; who was ever praised because he had been a help to himself? Because he had snatched himself from robbers? No one gives himself a benefit, no more than hospitality; no one makes himself a gift, no more than a loan. 9.3 If each man gives himself a benefit, he gives always, gives without intermission, cannot enter the number of his own benefits. When then will he return gratitude, since by this very act, by which he returns gratitude, he gives a benefit? For how will you be able to distinguish whether he gives himself a benefit or repays it, when the matter is transacted within the same man? I freed myself from peril: I gave myself a benefit. Again I free myself from peril: do I give a benefit or repay it? 9.4 Then, granting that first point, that we give ourselves a benefit, what follows I shall not grant; for even if we give, we do not owe. Why? Because we receive it at once. I ought to receive a benefit, then to owe, then to return it; there is no place for owing, because without any delay we receive it. No one gives save to another, no one owes save to another, no one repays save to another. That cannot happen within one which so often requires two. 10.1 A benefit is to have rendered something usefully; but the word "rendered" looks to others. Will not a man seem mad who shall say that he has sold something to himself? Because selling is an alienation, and the transfer to another of one's own thing and of one's right in it. And yet, as to sell, so to give something is to send it away from oneself, and to hand over to another, to be held, what you had held. And if this is so, no one has given himself a benefit, because no one gives to himself; otherwise two contraries meet in one, that to give and to receive be the same. 10.2 Furthermore there is much difference between giving and receiving; how should there not, since these words are set opposite each other? And yet, if a man gives himself a benefit, there is no difference between giving and receiving. A little before I was saying that certain things pertain to others and are so framed that their whole meaning departs from us: I am a brother, of another, for no one is his own brother; I am an equal, but to someone, for who is equal to himself? That which is compared is not understood without the other; that which is joined is not without the other; so too that which is given is not without the other, and a benefit is not without the other. 10.3 The same appears from the very word in which this is contained, "to have done good"; but no one does good to himself, no more than he is favorable to himself, than he is of his own party. This may be pursued longer and with more examples. 10.4 How should it not? Since a benefit is to be reckoned among those things which require a second person. Certain things, although they be honorable, most beautiful, of the highest virtue, have no place save in another. Good faith is praised and cultivated among the greatest goods of the human race; is anyone then said to have kept faith with himself? 11.1 I come now to the last part. He who returns gratitude must expend something, as he who pays expends money; but he expends nothing who returns gratitude to himself, no more than he attains anything who has received a benefit from himself. A benefit and the returning of gratitude ought to go to and fro; within one man there is no alternation. He who returns gratitude is in turn of use to him from whom he has obtained something. He who returns gratitude to himself, to whom is he of use? To himself. And who does not think of the returning of gratitude in one place, of a benefit in another? He who returns gratitude to himself is of use to himself. And what ungrateful man was ever unwilling to do this? Nay, what man was not ungrateful in order to do this? 11.2 "If we ought," says he, "to give ourselves thanks, we ought also to return gratitude to ourselves; and we do say, 'I give myself thanks that I was unwilling to marry that wife,' and 'that I did not enter into partnership with that man.'" When we say this, we praise ourselves, and, to approve our own deed, we misuse the words of those who give thanks. 11.3 A benefit is that which, when it has been given, can also not be repaid; he who gives himself a benefit cannot fail to receive what he gave; therefore it is no benefit. A benefit is received at one time, repaid at another. In 11.4 a benefit this too is commendable, this is to be admired, that someone, in order to be of use to another, has meanwhile forgotten his own advantage, that he gave to another what he was about to take from himself. This he does not do who gives himself a benefit. 11.5 To give a benefit is a social thing, it wins someone, lays someone under obligation; to give to oneself is no social thing, wins no one, lays no one under obligation, leads no one into the hope of saying: "This man must be cultivated; he gave that man a benefit, he will give to me too." 11.6 A benefit is that which a man gives, not for his own sake, but for the sake of him to whom he gives; but he who gives himself a benefit gives for his own sake; therefore it is no benefit. 12.1 It seems to you now that I have lied in what I said at the beginning. You say that I am far from one who does a thing worth the labor, nay, that I lose my whole labor in good faith. Wait, and presently you will say this more truly, once I have led you to these hiding places, from which, when you have escaped, you will have attained nothing more than to have escaped those difficulties into which you might have not descended. 12.2 For what good is it to untie laboriously the knots which you yourself have tied in order to untie them? But just as certain things are tangled together for amusement and sport in such a way that the untying of them is difficult to the unskilled, which to the man who entangled them obeys without any trouble, because he knows their junctures and stops, yet these have nonetheless some pleasure (for they test the keenness of minds and rouse their attention), so these things, which seem cunning and insidious, take away security and sloth from the wits, for which now a field must be spread on which they may roam, now something dim and rugged must be set, through which they may creep out and anxiously make their way. 12.3 No one is said to be ungrateful; this is gathered thus: "A benefit is that which profits; but no one can profit a wicked man, as you Stoics say; therefore a wicked man does not receive a benefit, and is ungrateful." Furthermore, a benefit is an honorable and commendable thing; with a wicked man there is no place for any honorable or commendable thing, therefore none for a benefit; and if he cannot receive it, neither ought he to repay it, and so he does not become ungrateful. 12.4 "Furthermore, as you say, a good man does all things rightly; if he does all things rightly, he cannot be ungrateful. To a wicked man no one can give a benefit. The good man repays a benefit, the wicked man does not receive one; and if this is so, neither is any good man ungrateful nor any wicked man. So no man in the nature of things is ungrateful, and this is an empty name." 12.5 With us there is one good, the honorable. This cannot come to a wicked man; for he will cease to be wicked, if virtue has entered into him; but so long as he is wicked, no one can give him a benefit, because the wicked and the good are at variance and do not go into one. Therefore no one profits him, because whatever comes to him is corrupted by his perverse use. 12.6 As a stomach vitiated by disease and gathering bile changes whatever foods it has received and turns all nourishment into a cause of pain, so a crooked mind makes whatever you have entrusted to it its own burden and ruin and the occasion of misery. Therefore the most fortunate and most opulent have very much of seething beneath, and find themselves the less the greater the matter on which they have fallen, in which to be tossed about. 12.7 Therefore nothing can come to the wicked which profits them, nay, nothing which does not harm. For whatever has befallen them they turn into their own nature, and things outwardly fair and likely to profit, if they were given to a better man, are to them pestilent. Therefore neither can they give a benefit, since no one can give what he has not; this man lacks the will to do good. 13.1 But although these things are so, a wicked man nevertheless can receive certain things which are like benefits, by not returning which he will be ungrateful. There are goods of the mind, there are goods of the body, there are goods of fortune. Those goods of the mind are removed from the fool and the wicked man; to these he is admitted which he can both receive and ought to return, and, if he does not return them, he is ungrateful. Nor is this from our doctrine alone. The Peripatetics too, who set the bounds of human happiness far and wide, say that minor benefits will come to the wicked; he who does not return these is ungrateful. 13.2 And so it does not please us that those things are benefits which are not going to make the mind better; yet we do not deny that they are advantages and to be sought. These a wicked man can both give to a good man and receive from a good one, as money and clothing and honors and life; which if he does not return, he will fall under the name of an ungrateful man. 13.3 "But how do you call him ungrateful for not returning that which you deny to be a benefit?" Certain things, even if they are not the true thing, are by reason of likeness comprehended under the same word. So we speak of a box, both silver and gold; so of an unlettered man, not wholly rude, but not brought on to the higher letters; so he who has seen a man badly clothed and in rags says he has seen him naked. Those things are not benefits, yet they have the appearance of a benefit. 13.4 "As those things are, as it were, benefits, so too that man is, as it were, ungrateful, not ungrateful." It is false, because both he who gives and he who receives call those things benefits. So he who has played false to the appearance of a true benefit is as ungrateful as a poisoner who has mixed a sleeping-draught, believing it to be poison. 14.1 Cleanthes argues more vehemently. "Although," says he, "what he received be not a benefit, yet he himself is ungrateful, because he would not have repaid it, even if he had received it. 14.2 So a man is a robber even before he stains his hands, because he is already armed for slaying and has the will to plunder and to kill; wickedness is exercised and revealed by the deed, it does not begin there. The sacrilegious pay the penalty, although no one stretches out his hands so far as the gods themselves." 14.3 "How," says he, "is anyone ungrateful toward a wicked man, since a benefit cannot be given by a wicked man?" By this reasoning, namely, that the very thing which he received was not a benefit, but was called one; he who shall receive from him anything of those things which among the unskilled pass for goods, of which the wicked too have abundance, he himself also, in like material, ought to be grateful, and to return those things, of whatever sort they are, since he received them as goods, as goods. 14.4 He is said to be in debt both who owes gold coins and who owes leather stamped with the public mark, such as there was among the Lacedaemonians, which furnishes the use of counted money. By whatever kind you are bound, by this discharge your faith. 14.5 What benefits may be, whether the greatness of a name so illustrious ought to be brought down even to this sordid and humble material, does not concern you; in regard to others is the truth sought. But do you compose your mind to the appearance of the true, and, while you learn the honorable, cultivate whatever it is in which the name of the honorable is vaunted. 15.1 "As, by your account," says he, "no man is ungrateful, so on the contrary all men are ungrateful." For, as we say, all fools are wicked; but he who has one vice has all; but all men are foolish and wicked; therefore all are ungrateful. 15.2 What then? Are they not? Is not reproach hurled at the human race from every side? Is it not a common complaint that benefits have perished, and that there are very few who do not in turn deserve most ill of those who have deserved well of them? Nor is there reason for you to think this only our murmuring, who count as worst and crooked whatever has fallen short of the rule of right. 15.3 Lo, some man, not from the philosophers' house, cries out; from the midst of the assembly a voice condemning peoples and nations is sent forth. This now is something further: 15.4 benefits have been turned into crime, and the blood of those is not spared for whom blood ought to be shed; with sword and poisons we pursue benefits. To lay hands on one's own country and to crush her with her own fasces is held power and dignity; a man thinks he stands in a low and humble place, whoever has not stood above the commonwealth; the armies received from her are turned against her, and the general's harangue is: 15.5 "Fight against your wives, fight against your children! Assail with arms the altars, the hearths, the household gods!" You who ought not even to enter the city in triumph without the senate's bidding, and to whom, when you brought back a victorious army, the senate-house was offered outside the walls, now, citizens slain and yourselves drenched with kindred gore, enter the city with standards raised. 15.6 Let liberty fall dumb amid the military standards, and let that people, the conqueror and pacifier of nations, with wars far removed, all terror crushed, beleaguered within its own walls, shudder at its own eagles. 16.1 Ungrateful was Coriolanus, dutiful late and after repentance for his crime; he laid down his arms, but he laid them down in the midst of his parricide. Ungrateful Catiline; it is too little for him to seize his country, unless he overthrows her, unless he sends the cohorts of the Allobroges against her and, summoning an enemy from across the Alps, glut his old and inbred hatreds and pay to the Gallic tombs, as long-owed funeral offerings, the Roman commanders. 16.2 Ungrateful Gaius Marius, brought from the soldier's boot up to consulships, who, unless he matched the Roman funerals with the slaughters of the Cimbri, unless he both gave the signal for civil destruction and butchery and was himself the signal, will feel his fortune too little changed and restored to its former place. 16.3 Ungrateful Lucius Sulla, who healed his country with remedies harsher than the perils were, who, when he had marched through human blood from the citadel of Praeneste all the way to the Colline gate, gave other battles in the city, other slaughters: two legions, which is cruel, after the victory, which is impious, after a pledge of faith, gathered into a corner he butchered, and devised a proscription, ye great gods, that whoever had killed a Roman citizen should receive impunity, money, all but the civic crown! 16.4 Ungrateful Gnaeus Pompey, who, for three consulships, for three triumphs, for so many honors which for the most part he had seized before his time, returned the commonwealth this gratitude, that he should bring others too into possession of her, as though about to lessen the ill will of his own power, if what ought to be permitted to none had been permitted to several; while he craves extraordinary commands, while he distributes the provinces for himself to choose, while he so divides the commonwealth with a third partner that yet two parts were in his own house, he reduced the Roman people to this, that it could not be safe save by the benefit of servitude. 16.5 Ungrateful was Pompey's very enemy and conqueror; he wheeled the war from Gaul and Germany round upon the city, and that friend of the plebs, that champion of the people, pitched his camp in the Flaminian Circus nearer than Porsenna's had been. He tempered indeed the right and the cruelty of victory; what he was wont to say he made good: he killed no one save under arms. What then? The rest plied their arms more bloodily, yet glutted at last they flung them down; this man quickly sheathed his sword, never laid it aside. 16.6 Ungrateful was Antony toward his own dictator, whom he pronounced justly slain, and yet sent the slayers into the provinces and into commands; but his country, torn by proscriptions, incursions, wars, he destined, after so many evils, to be subject not even to Roman kings, that, the rights and the liberty which she had restored intact, with immunity, to the Achaeans, the Rhodians, to many illustrious cities, she herself should pay tribute to eunuchs! 17.1 The day will fail me as I enumerate the ungrateful, down to the last ruins of their country. Equally vast will it be, if I begin to run through how ungrateful the very commonwealth has been toward the best men and those most devoted to her, and how she has sinned no less often than she has been sinned against. 17.2 Camillus she sent into exile, Scipio she let go; Cicero went into exile after Catiline, his household gods razed, his goods plundered, everything done that a victorious Catiline would have done; Rutilius bore the price of his innocence in lying hidden in Asia; the Roman people refused Cato the praetorship, utterly denied him the consulship. 17.3 We are ungrateful as a people. Let each man question himself: there is no one who does not complain of someone as ungrateful. And yet it cannot be that all complain unless there is cause to complain of all: therefore all are ungrateful. Are they ungrateful only? Both covetous all, and malicious all, and timid all, those above all who seem bold. Add: ambitious too are all, and impious all. But there is no reason for you to be angry; pardon them, all are mad. 17.4 I am unwilling to recall you to uncertain things, so as to say: "See how ungrateful youth is! Who does not wish for his father's last day, even if he is innocent? Who does not, even if moderate, await it? Who does not, even if dutiful, think of it? How few there are who fear the death of an excellent wife without also reckoning on it? To whom, I ask, of those whose suit he has defended, has the memory of so great a benefit endured beyond the nearest concerns?" 17.5 This is admitted: who dies without complaint? Who on his last day dares to say: "I have lived, and the course which fortune had given I have run"? Who goes forth not refusing, who not groaning? And yet this is the part of an ungrateful man, not to be content with the past time. The days will always be few, if you have counted them. 17.6 Consider that the highest good does not lie in time; however much there is, take it in good part. Though the day of your death be prolonged for you, nothing is gained toward happiness, since by delay life is not made more blessed, but only longer. 17.7 How much better, grateful for the pleasures we have enjoyed, not to reckon the years of others, but to appraise our own kindly and to set them down as gain! "Of this God judged me worthy, this is enough; he could have given more, but this too is a benefit." Let us be grateful toward the gods, grateful toward men, grateful toward those who have rendered us something, grateful too toward those who have rendered something to ours. 18.1 "Into a boundless obligation," says he, "you bind me, when you say 'and to ours'; therefore set some limit. He who gives a son a benefit, as you say, gives also to his father: the first point, about which I ask. Then this above all I wish determined for me: if a benefit is given to the father too, is it not also to the brother? Not also to the uncle? Not also to the grandfather? Not also to the wife and the father-in-law? Tell me where I ought to stop, how far I am to follow the chain of persons." 18.2 If I shall till your field, I shall have given you a benefit; if I shall put out your house when it is burning, or prop it up that it may not fall, I shall give you a benefit; if I shall heal your slave, I shall charge it to your account; if I shall save your son, will you not have my benefit? 19.1 "You set unlike examples, because he who tills my field gives a benefit, not to the field, but to me; and he who shores up my house, that it may not fall, renders it to me, for the house itself has no feeling; it has me for its debtor, because it has none; and he who tills my field wishes to oblige, not it, but me. The same I shall say of the slave: he is the property of my chattel, he is saved for me; therefore I owe on his behalf. The son himself is capable of a benefit; and so he receives it, I rejoice at the benefit and am touched by it, I am not laid under obligation." 19.2 Yet I should like you, who think you do not owe, to answer me. The son's good health, his good fortune, his estate concern the father; he will be the more fortunate if he has a son safe, the more unfortunate if he has lost him. What then? He who is both made more fortunate by me and freed from the peril of the greatest misfortune, does he not receive a benefit? 19.3 "No," says he; "for certain things are conferred on others, but flow through to us; but each thing ought to be exacted of him on whom it is conferred, as money is asked back of him to whom it was lent, although it has in some way come to me. There is no benefit whose advantage does not touch those nearest, sometimes even those set farther off; 19.4 it is not asked to whom the benefit has passed from him to whom it was given, but where it is first placed; the recovery is from the defendant himself and from the principal." What then? I beseech you, do you not say: "You gave me a son, and, if he had perished, I should not have lived"? Do you not owe a benefit for his life, whose life you prefer to your own? Furthermore, when I have saved your son, you fall down at my knees, you pay your vows to the gods as though yourself saved; these words come from you: 19.5 "It makes no difference to me whether you saved me; you saved two, nay, me rather." Why do you say this, if you do not receive a benefit? "Because, even if my son shall have taken money as a loan, I shall count it out to the creditor, yet not for that reason shall I have owed it; because, even if my son shall be caught in adultery, I shall blush, not for that reason shall I be an adulterer. 19.6 I say I am laid under obligation to you on my son's behalf, not because I am, but because I wish to offer myself to you as a voluntary debtor. But there has come to me the highest pleasure from his safety, the highest advantage, and I have escaped the most grievous wound of bereavement. It is not now asked whether you have profited me, but whether you have given a benefit; for both an animal profits and a stone and an herb, yet they do not give a benefit, which is never given save by one who is willing. 19.7 But you wish to give, not to the father, but to the son, and meanwhile you do not even know the father. And so, when you have said, 'Did I then not give the father a benefit by saving his son?' set against it: 'Did I then give a benefit to a father whom I do not know, of whom I did not think?' And what of this, that sometimes it will come to pass that you hate the father and save the son? You will seem to have given a benefit to the man to whom you were then most hostile, when you gave it?" 19.8 But, setting aside the wrangling of dialogues, to answer like a jurisconsult: the mind of the giver must be regarded; he gave a benefit to him to whom he wished it given. If he did it in the father's honor, the father received the benefit; if for the son's use, the father is not laid under obligation by the benefit conferred on the son, even if he enjoys it. Yet if he has the occasion, he too will wish to render something, not as though he had the necessity of paying, but as the cause of beginning. A benefit ought not to be asked back of the father; if he does anything kindly on this account, he is just, not grateful. 19.9 For that other thing cannot be limited: if I give a benefit to the father, I give it to the mother too, and the grandfather, and the maternal uncle, and the children, and the relations by marriage, and the friends, and the slaves, and the country. Where then does the benefit begin to stand still? For it enters upon that inexplicable maze on which it is difficult to set a measure, because it creeps in little by little and does not cease to wind on. 20.1 This is wont to be asked: "Two brothers are at variance; if I save the one, do I give a benefit to the other, who will bear it ill that his hated brother has not perished?" There is no doubt that it is a benefit to profit a man even against his will, just as he did not give a benefit who profited against his own will. 20.2 "Do you call," says he, "that a benefit by which a man is offended, by which he is tortured?" Many benefits have a sad and harsh front, like cutting and burning to heal, and restraining in bonds. We must not regard whether a man grieves at a benefit received, but whether he ought to rejoice; a coin is not bad which a barbarian, ignorant of the public stamp, has rejected. A man both hates and has received a benefit, if only it profits him, if he who gave it gave it that it might profit. It makes no difference whether a man receives a good thing with an evil mind. 20.3 Come now, turn this to the contrary. He hates his brother, whom it is expedient for him to have; this brother I killed: it is no benefit, although the other say it is and rejoices. Most insidiously does that man harm to whom thanks are given for an injury! 20.4 "I see: a thing profits, and therefore it is a benefit; it harms, and therefore it is not a benefit. Lo, I shall give that which neither profits nor harms, and yet it will be a benefit. I found a man's father lifeless in a solitary place, I buried his body. I profited neither the man himself (for what did it matter to him in what manner he should molder?) nor the son (for what advantage accrued to him by this?)." I shall tell you what he gained: a solemn and necessary duty was performed for him by me; 20.5 I rendered to his father what he himself would have wished to render, and indeed ought to have rendered. Yet this is a benefit only if I did not, out of pity and humanity, hide whatever corpse it was, but if I recognized the body, if I thought then to render this for the son. But if I have cast earth upon an unknown dead man, I have in this no debtor of this office, being humane toward the public. 20.6 Someone will say: "Why do you so anxiously ask to whom you have given a benefit, as though you were going one day to ask it back? There are those who judge that it is never to be asked back, and they bring these reasons. An unworthy man will not return it even to one asking; a worthy man will of his own accord return it. Besides, if you gave to a good man, wait, lest you do him an injury by demanding, as though he would not have repaid of his own accord. If you gave to a bad man, be punished; but corrupt not the benefit by making it a loan. Besides, the law, in not bidding it be asked back, has forbidden it." 20.7 These are mere words. So long as nothing presses me, so long as fortune compels me to nothing, I shall rather lose the benefit than ask it back. But if it is a matter of the safety of my children, if my wife is brought into peril, if the safety and liberty of my country sends me even where I would not go, I shall command my own shame and bear witness that I have done everything that I might not need the help of an ungrateful man; at the last the necessity of recovering the benefit will conquer my modesty in asking it back. Then, when I give a benefit to a good man, I so give it as though never about to ask it back, unless it shall be necessary. 21.1 "But the law," says he, "in not permitting it to be exacted, has forbidden it." Many things have no law and no action, to which a custom of human life stronger than any law gives access. No law bids us not to disclose the secrets of friends; no law bids us keep faith even with an enemy; what law binds us to render that which we have promised someone? None. Yet I shall complain of him who has not kept a secret conversation, and shall be indignant at faith given and not kept. 21.2 "But out of a benefit," says he, "you make a loan." By no means; for I do not exact it, but ask it back, and not even ask it back, but remind. Will the utmost necessity, too, drive me to this, that I come to one with whom I must long wrestle? If anyone is so ungrateful that it is not enough for him to be reminded, him I shall pass by, nor shall I judge him worthy to be compelled to be grateful. 21.3 As a moneylender does not dun certain debtors whom he knows to have become bankrupt and in whose shame nothing is left save what may perish, so I shall openly and persistently pass by certain ungrateful men, nor shall I ask a benefit back of any save him from whom I shall be, not taking it away, but receiving it. 22.1 There are many who know neither how to deny what they have received nor how to return it, who are neither so good as the grateful nor so bad as the ungrateful, slothful and slow, sluggish debts, not bad ones. These I shall not dun, but I shall remind, and shall bring them back to their duty as they are busy with something else. They will straightway answer me thus: "Forgive me; by Hercules I did not know that you desired this, otherwise I would have offered it unasked; I beg you not to think me ungrateful; I remember what you rendered me." Why should I hesitate to make these men both better to themselves and to me? Whomever I can, I shall hinder from sinning; 22.2 much more a friend, both that he may not sin and that he may not sin against me above all. I give him a second benefit, if I do not suffer him to be ungrateful; nor shall I harshly reproach him with what I rendered, but as gently as I can. That I may give him the power of returning gratitude, I shall renew the memory of it and ask the benefit; he himself will understand that I am asking it back. 22.3 Sometimes I shall use harsher words, if I shall have hoped that he can be amended; for one given up I shall not on this account harass, lest I make of an ungrateful man an enemy. 22.4 But if we remit to the ungrateful even the sting of admonition, we shall make them more sluggish to return benefits; and certain men, curable and able to become good, if something has bitten them, we shall suffer to perish, admonition being taken away, by which both a father has sometimes corrected a son, and a wife has brought back to herself a straying husband, and a friend has raised up the languishing faith of a friend. 23.1 Some, that they may awake, are not to be struck but to be stirred; in the same way the faith of some men, for returning gratitude, does not cease, but languishes. This let us pull. "Do not turn your gift into an injury; for it is an injury, if you do not ask it back for this end, that I may be ungrateful. What, if I do not know what you want? What, if, distracted by occupations and called to other things, I have not watched for the occasion? Show me what I can do, what you wish. Why do you despair before you try? 23.2 Why do you hasten to lose both the benefit and a friend? Whence do you know whether I am unwilling or ignorant, whether the will or the means is wanting to me? Make trial." I shall therefore admonish without bitterness, not openly, without reproach, in such a way that he may think he has returned into memory, not been led back. 24.1 A certain one of the veterans, a little too violent toward his neighbors, was pleading his cause before the deified Julius, and the case was going against him. "Do you remember," said he, "general, that near Sucro in Spain you twisted your ankle?" When Caesar had said that he remembered: "Do you remember, too, that under a certain tree shedding very little shade, when you wished to sit down in a most burning sun, and the place was most rough, in which that one tree had broken out from the sharp rocks, one of your comrades spread his cloak beneath you?" 24.2 When Caesar had said: "Why should I not remember? Indeed, worn out with thirst, because, being hindered, I could not go to the nearest spring, I wished to crawl on my hands, had not a comrade, a brave and active man, brought me water in his helmet"—, "Can you then, general," said he, "recognize that man or that helmet?" Caesar said that he could not recognize the helmet, the man very well, and added, in anger, I suppose, because he was drawing him away from his hearing to an old tale: 24.3 "You at any rate are not that man." "Deservedly, Caesar," said he, "do you not recognize me; for when this happened I was whole; afterward at Munda in the line of battle my eye was knocked out and the bones in my head were splintered. Nor would you recognize that helmet, if you saw it; for it was split by a Spanish sword." Caesar forbade the suit to be pressed against him, and gave to his soldier the little fields about which the neighboring road had been the cause of brawls and lawsuits. 25.1 What then? Should he not have asked a benefit back of a general whose memory the multitude of affairs had confused, whom fortune, as he marshaled vast armies, did not suffer to meet his soldiers one by one? This is not to ask a benefit back, but to take up again what was set in a good place and ready, to which, however, that it may be taken, a hand must be stretched out. I shall therefore ask it back, because I shall do this either out of great necessity or for the sake of him from whom I ask it. 25.2 Tiberius Caesar, when someone at the beginning was saying to him "Do you remember—" before he could bring forth more tokens of an old intimacy, said: "I do not remember what I was." Why should not a benefit not be asked back of this man? Forgetfulness was to be desired; he turned away from the acquaintance of all his friends and equals, and wished only his present fortune to be looked upon, only that to be thought of and told. He had an old friend as an inquisitor! 25.3 More seasonably ought a benefit to be asked back than asked for. A moderation of words must be used, so that neither the grateful can be offended nor the ungrateful dissemble. We ought to be silent and wait, if we lived among the wise; and yet to the wise too it would have been better to make known what the state of our affairs demanded. 25.4 We ask the gods, whom no thing escapes the knowledge of, and our vows do not prevail upon them, but admonish them. To the gods too, I say, that Homeric priest alleges his services and his altars piously cultivated. To be willing and able to be admonished is the second virtue. 25.5 An obedient and compliant horse is easily to be turned this way and that by the reins lightly moved. Few are the best rulers of themselves; nearest are those who, admonished, return into the way; from these the leader must not be withdrawn. 25.6 In closed eyes there is keenness, but without use; the light of day let into them calls it forth to its services. Instruments lie idle, unless the craftsman has moved them to their work. There is meanwhile in minds a good will, but it lies torpid, now from indulgence and disuse, now from ignorance of duty. This we ought to make useful, and not, in anger, leave it in its vice, but, like teachers, patiently bear the stumblings of learning children whose memory fails; which, as it is often, by one or two words supplied, brought back to the connection of the speech to be rendered, so for the returning of gratitude it must be recalled by admonition.