What, then? Because his commander’s memory of a benefit he received had been dimmed by a multitude of happenings, and his position as the organizer of vast armies did not permit him to meet individual soldiers, should the veteran not have asked him to return the benefit he had conferred? This is, not so much asking for the repayment of a benefit, as taking repayment when it lies waiting in a convenient place, although one must stretch forth one’s hand in order to take it. I shall, therefore, ask for repayment, when either the pressure of great necessity, or the best interest of him from whom I am asking it shall urge me to do so.
Tiberius Caesar, when a certain man started to say “You remember — ,” interrupted him before he could reveal more evidence of an old intimacy with: “I do not remember what I was.” Why should he not have been asked to repay a benefit? He had a reason for desiring forgetfulness; he was repudiating the acquaintance of all friends and comrades, and wished men to behold only the high position he then filled, to think and to talk only of that. He regarded an old friend as an accuser!
It is even more needful to choose the right time for requesting the return of a benefit than for requesting its bestowal. We must be temperate in our language, so that the grateful man may not take offense, nor the ungrateful pretend to do so. If we lived among wise men, it would have been our duty to keep silence and wait; and yet it would have been better to indicate even to wise men what the condition of our affairs demanded. We petition even the gods, whose knowledge nothing escapes, and, although our prayers do not prevail upon them, they remind them of us. Homer’s priest,26 I say, recounts even to the gods his services and his pious care of their altars. The second best form of virtue is to be willing and able to take advice.27 The horse that is docile and obedient can easily be turned hither and thither by a gentle movement of the reins. Few men follow reason as their best guide; next best are those who return to the right path when they are admonished; these must not be deprived of their guide. The eyes, even when they are closed, still have the power of sight, but do not use it; but the light of day, when it has been admitted to them, summons their power of sight into service. Tools lie idle unless the workman uses them to perform his task. Our minds all the while possess the virtuous desire, but it lies torpid, now from their softness and disuse, now from their ignorance of duty. We ought to render this desire useful, and, instead of abandoning it in vexation to its weakness, we should bear with it as patiently as schoolmasters bear with the blunders of young pupils when their memory fails; and, just as one or two words of prompting will bring back to their memory the context of the speech they must deliver, so the virtuous desire needs some reminder to recall it to the repayment of gratitude.