y sometimes brought them into trouble. A senator named
Rufus, while at dinner, expressed a hope that Caesar would not return
safe from a journey for which he was preparing, and added that all bulls
and calves wished the same thing. Some of those present carefully noted
these words. At daybreak, the slave who had stood at his feet during the
dinner, told him what he had said in his cups, and urged him to be the
first to go to Caesar, and denounce himself. Rufus followed this advice,
met Caesar as he was going down to the forum, and, swearing that he was
out of his mind the day before, prayed that what he had said might fall
upon his own head and that of his children; he then begged Caesar pardon
him, and to take him back into favour. When Caesar said that he would
do so, he added, "No one will believe that you have taken me back into
favour unless you make me a present of something;" and he asked for and
obtained a sum of money so large, that it would have been a gift not to
be slighted even if bestowed by an unoffended prince. Caesar added: "In
future I will take care never to quarrel with you, for my own sake."
Caesar acted honourably in pardoning him, and in being liberal as well
as forgiving; no one can hear this anecdote without praising Caesar,
but he must praise the slave first. You need not wait for me to tell
you that the slave who did his master this service was set free; yet his
master did not do this for nothing, for Caesar had already paid him the
price of the slave's liberty.

XXVIII. After so many instances, can we doubt that a master may
sometimes receive a benefit from a slave? Why need the person of the
giver detract from the thing which he gives? why should not the gift add
rather to the glory of the giver. All men descend from the same original
stock; no one is better born than another, except in so far as his
disposition is nobler and better suited for the performance of good
actions. Those who display portraits of their ancestors in their halls,
and set up in the entrance to their houses the pedigree of their family
drawn out at length, with many complicated collateral branches, are they
not notorious rather than noble? The universe is the one parent of all,
whether they trace their descent from this primary source through a
glorious or a mean line of ancestors. Be not deceived when men who are
reckoning up their genealogy, wherever an illustrious name is wanting,
foist in that of a god in its place.