, he will lose what he has sown; it
is only by great pains that seeds are brought to yield a crop; no plant
will bear fruit unless it be tended with equal care from first to last,
and the same rule is true of benefits. Can any benefits be greater than
those which children receive from their parents? Yet these benefits
are useless if they be deserted while young, if the pious care of the
parents does not for a long time watch over the gift which they have
bestowed. So it is with other benefits; unless you help them, you will
lose them; to give is not enough, you must foster what you have given.
If you wish those whom you lay under an obligation to be grateful to
you, you must not merely confer benefits upon them, but you must also
love them. Above all, as I said before, spare their ears; you will weary
them if you remind them of your goodness, if you reproach them with it
you will make them hate you. Pride ought above all things to be avoided
when you confer a benefit. What need have you for disdainful airs,
or swelling phrases? the act itself will exalt you. Let us shun vain
boasting: let us be silent, and let our deeds speak for us. A benefit
conferred with haughtiness not only wins no gratitude, but causes
dislike.

XII. Gaius Caesar granted Pompeius Pennus his life, that is, if not
to take away life be to grant it; then, when Pompeius was set free and
returning thanks to him, he stretched out his left foot to be kissed.
Those who excuse this action, and say that it was not done through
arrogance, say that he wished to show him a gilded, nay a golden slipper
studded with pearls. "Well," say they, "what disgrace can there be in a
man of consular rank kissing gold and pearls, and what part of Caesar's
whole body was it less pollution to kiss?" So, then, that man,
the object of whose life was to change a free state into a Persian
despotism, was not satisfied when a senator, an aged man, a man who had
filled the highest offices in the state, prostrated himself before him
in the presence of all the nobles, just as the vanquished prostrate
themselves before their conqueror! He discovered a place below his knees
down to which he might thrust liberty. What is this but trampling upon
the commonwealth, and that, too, with the left foot, though you may say
that this point does not signify? It was not a sufficiently foul and
frantic outrage for the emperor to sit at the trial of a consular for
his life wearing slippers, he must n