mething
will arise, which, although it is all but unconnected with the subject,
instead of being a necessary part of it, still thrills the mind with a
certain charm. However, since you wish it to be so, let us go on, after
having completed our discussion of the heads of the subject itself,
to investigate those matters which, if you wish for truth, I must
call adjacent to it, not actually connected with it; to examine which
carefully is not one worth one's while, and yet is not labour in vain.
No praise, however, which I can give to benefits does justice to
you, Aebutius Liberalis, a man of excellent disposition and naturally
inclined to bestow them. Never have I seen any one esteem even the most
trifling services more kindly; indeed, your good-nature goes so far
as to regard whatever benefit is bestowed upon anyone as bestowed upon
yourself; you are prepared to pay even what is owed by the ungrateful,
that no one may regret having bestowed benefits. You yourself are so far
from any boastfulness, you are so eager at once to free those whom you
serve from any feeling of obligation to you, that you like, when giving
anything to any one, to seem not so much to be giving a present as
returning one; and therefore what you give in this manner will all the
more fully he repaid to you: for, as a rule, benefits come to one who
does not demand repayment of them; and just as glory follows those who
avoid it, so men receive a more plentiful harvest in return for benefits
bestowed upon those who had it in their power to be ungrateful. With you
there is no reason why those who have received benefits from you should
not ask for fresh ones; nor would you refuse to bestow others, to
overlook and conceal what you have given, and to add to it more and
greater gifts, since it is the aim of all the best men and the noblest
dispositions to bear with an ungrateful man until you make him grateful.
Be not deceived in pursuing this plan; vice, if you do not too soon
begin to hate it, will yield to virtue.

II. Thus it is that you are especially pleased with what you think the
grandly-sounding phrase, "It is disgraceful to be worsted in a contest
of benefits." Whether this be true or not deserves to be investigated,
and it means something quite different from what you imagine; for it is
never disgraceful to be worsted in any honourable contest, provided that
you do not throw down your arms, and that even when conquered you
wish to conquer. All men