On the other hand, I am not so unjust as to feel under no obligation to a man who, when he was profitable to me, was also profitable to himself. For I do not require that he should consult my interests without any regard to his own, nay, I am also desirous that a benefit given to me should be even more advantageous to the giver, provided that, when he gave it, he was considering us both, and meant to divide it between himself and me. Though he should possess the larger part of it, provided that he allowed me to share in it, provided that he considered both of us, I am, not merely unjust, I am ungrateful, if I do not rejoice that, while he has benefited me, he has also benefited himself. It is supreme niggardliness to say that nothing can be a benefit that does not inflict some hardship upon the giver of it.
To one of the other type, the man who gives a benefit for his own sake only, I shall reply: “Having made use of me, why have you any more right to say that you have been of service to me, than I have to you?” “Suppose,” he retorts, “that the only way in which I can obtain a magistracy is to ransom ten out of a great number of captive citizens; will you owe me nothing when I have freed you from bondage and chains? Yet I shall do that for my own sake only.” To this I reply: “In this case you are acting partly for your own sake, partly for mine — for your own, in paying the ransom, for mine, in paying a ransom for me. For you would have served your own interests sufficiently by ransoming any you chose. I am, therefore, indebted to you, not because you ransom me, but because you choose me; for you might have attained the same thing by ransoming someone else instead of me. You divide the advantage of your act with me, and you permit me to share in a benefit that will be of profit to both of us. You prefer me to others; all this you do for my sake only. If, therefore, you would be made praetor by ransoming ten captives, and there were only ten of us in captivity, no one of us would owe you anything, for you would have nothing apart from your own advantage which you could charge up to anyone of us. I do not regard a benefit jealously, nor desire that the whole of it should be given to me, but, I desire a part.”