even though you did not receive
a benefit from him. Moreover, this man, being always eager, and on the
watch for an opportunity of doing this, as he has expended much anxiety
and much trouble upon it, has really done more than he who quickly had
an opportunity of repaying your kindness. The case of a debtor is not
the same, for it is not enough for him to have tried to find the money
unless he pays it; in his case a harsh creditor stands over him who will
not let a single day pass without charging him interest; in yours there
is a most kind friend, who seeing you busy, troubled, and anxious would
say.

"'Dismiss this trouble from thy breast;'

leave off disturbing yourself; I have received from you all that I wish;
you wrong me, if you suppose that I want anything further; you have
fully repaid me in intention."

"Tell me," says our adversary, "if he had repaid the benefit you would
say that he had returned your kindness: is, then, he who repays it in
the same position as he who does not repay it?"

On the other hand, consider this: if he had forgotten the benefit which
he had received, if he had not even attempted to be grateful, you would
say that he had not returned the kindness; but this man has laboured day
and night to the neglect of all his other duties in his devoted care to
let no opportunity of proving his gratitude escape him; is then he who
took no pains to return a kindness to be classed with this man who never
ceased to take pains? you are unjust, if you require a material payment
from me when you see that I am not wanting in intention.

XV. In short, suppose that when you are taken captive, I have borrowed
money, made over my property as security to my creditor, that I have
sailed in a stormy winter season along coasts swarming with pirates,
that I have braved all the perils which necessarily attend a voyage even
on a peaceful sea, that I have wandered through all wildernesses seeking
for those men whom all others flee from, and that when I have at length
reached the pirates, someone else has already ransomed you: will you
say that I have not returned your kindness? Even if during this voyage I
have lost by shipwreck the money that I had raised to save you, even if
I myself have fallen into the prison from which I sought to release you,
will you say that I have not returned your kindness? No, by Hercules!
the Athenians call Harmodius and Aristogiton, tyrannicides; the hand of
Mucius which he left