a man
when I would not accept his offer to drink a glass of wine with him?"

When a consular named Rebilius, a man of equally bad character, sent
a yet larger sum to Graecinus, and pressed him to receive it. "I must
beg," answered he, "that you will excuse me. I did not take money from
Persicus either." Ought we to call this receiving presents, or rather
taking one's pick of the senate?

XXII. When we have decided to accept, let us accept with cheerfulness,
showing pleasure, and letting the giver see it, so that he may at once
receive some return for his goodness: for as it is a good reason for
rejoicing to see our friend happy, it is a better one to have made
him so. Let us, therefore, show how acceptable a gift is by loudly
expressing our gratitude for it; and let us do so, not only in the
hearing of the giver, but everywhere. He who receives a benefit with
gratitude, repays the first instalment of it.

XXIII. There are some, who only like to receive benefits privately: they
dislike having any witnesses and confidants. Such men, we may believe,
have no good intentions. As a giver is justified in dwelling upon those
qualities of his gift which will please the receiver, so a man, when he
receives, should do so publicly; you should not take from a man what
you are ashamed to owe him. Some return thanks to one stealthily, in a
corner, in a whisper. This is not modesty, but a kind of denying of the
debt: it is the part of an ungrateful man not to express his gratitude
before witnesses. Some object to any accounts being kept between them
and their benefactors, and wish no brokers to be employed or witnesses
to be called, but merely to give their own signature to a receipt. Those
men do the like, who take care to let as few persons as possible know
of the benefits which they have received. They fear to receive them in
public, in order that their success may be attributed rather to their
own talents than to the help of others: they are very seldom to be
found in attendance upon those to whom they owe their lives and their
fortunes, and thus, while avoiding the imputation of servility, they
incur that of ingratitude.

XXIV. Some men speak in the most offensive terms of those to whom they
owe most. There are men whom it is safer to affront than to serve,
for their dislike leads them to assume the airs of persons who are not
indebted to us: although nothing more is expected of them than that they
should remember what they o