to make our friends sharers and partners in it with ourselves.
For instance, if their parents are in humble circumstances, if their
relations are powerful neither in intellect nor means, we should supply
their deficiencies and promote their rank and dignity. You know the
legends of children brought up as servants in ignorance of their
parentage and family. When they are recognized and discovered to be
the sons of gods or kings, they still retain their affection for the
shepherds whom they have for many years looked upon as their parents.
Much more ought this to be so in the case of real and undoubted parents.
For the advantages of genius and virtue, and in short, of every kind of
superiority, are never realized to their fullest extent until they are
bestowed upon our nearest and dearest.

20. But the converse must also be observed. For in friendship and
relationship, just as those who possess any superiority must put
themselves on an equal footing with those who are less fortunate, so
these latter must not be annoyed at being surpassed in genius, fortune,
or rank. But most people of that sort are forever either grumbling at
something, or harping on their claims; and especially if they consider
that they have services of their own to allege involving zeal and
friendship and some trouble to themselves. People who are always
bringing up their services are a nuisance. The recipient ought to
remember them; the performer should never mention them. In the case of
friends, then, as the superior are bound to descend, so are they bound
in a certain sense to raise those below them. For there are people who
make their friendship disagreeable by imagining themselves undervalued.
This generally happens only to those who think that they deserve to
be so; and they ought to be shewn by deeds as well as by words the
groundlessness of their opinion. Now the measure of your benefits should
be in the first place your own power to bestow, and in the second place
the capacity to bear them on the part of him on whom you are bestowing
affection and help. For, however great your personal prestige may be,
you cannot raise all your friends to the highest offices of the State.
For instance, Scipio was able to make Publius Rupilius consul, but not
his brother Lucius. But granting that you can give anyone anything you
choose, you must have a care that it does not prove to be beyond his
powers. As a general rule, we must wait to make up our mind about