having, amongst other
matters, reproached old Manlius with sending him into exile, treating
it as a very serious accusation; but the youth, having caught him alone,
drew a sword which he had hidden in his robe, and said, "Unless you
swear to give up your suit against my father, I will run you through
with this sword. It is in your power to decide how my father shall be
freed from his prosecutor." The tribune swore, and kept his oath; he
related the reason of his abandonment of his action to an assembly at
the Rostra. No other man was ever permitted to put down a tribune with
impunity.

XXXVIII. There are instances without number of men who have saved their
parents from danger, have raised them from the lowest to the highest
station, and, taking them from the nameless mass of the lower classes,
have given them a name glorious throughout all ages. By no force of
words, by no power of genius, can one rightly express how desirable, how
admirable, how never to be erased from human memory it is to be able to
say, "I obeyed my parents, I gave way to them, I was submissive to their
authority whether it was just, or unjust and harsh; the only point in
which I resisted them was, not to be conquered by them in benefits."
Continue this struggle, I beg of you, and even though weary, yet re-form
your ranks. Happy are they who conquer, happy they who are conquered.
What can be more glorious than the youth who can say to himself--it
would not be right to say it to another--"I have conquered my father
with benefits"? What is more fortunate than that old man who declares
everywhere to everyone that he has been conquered in benefits by
his son? What, again, is more blissful than to be overcome in such a
contest?

BOOK IV.

I.

Of all the matters which we have discussed, Aebutius Liberalis, there is
none more essential, or which, as Sallust says, ought to be stated with
more care than that which is now before us: whether the bestowal of
benefits and the return of gratitude for them are desirable objects
in themselves. Some men are found who act honourably from commercial
motives, and who do not care for unrewarded virtue, though it can confer
no glory if it brings any profit. What can be more base than for a man
to consider what it costs him to be a good man, when virtue neither
allures by gain nor deters by loss, and is so far from bribing any one
with hopes and promises, that on the other hand she bids them spend
money upo