give up the property with which they had entrusted him.

XXVII. We call some men timid because they are fools: in this they
are like the bad men who are steeped in all vices without
distinction. Strictly speaking, we call those persons timid who are
alarmed even at unmeaning noises. A fool possesses all vices, but
he is not equally inclined by nature to all; one is prone to
avarice, another to luxury, and another to insolence. Those
persons, therefore, are mistaken, who ask the Stoics, "What do you
say, then? is Achilles timid? Aristides, who received a name for
justice, is he unjust? Fabius, who 'by delays retrieved the day,'
is he rash? Does Decius fear death? Is Mucius a traitor? Camillus a
betrayer?" We do not mean that all vices are inherent in all men in
the same way in which some especial ones are noticeable in certain
men, but we declare that the bad man and the fool possess all
vices; we do not even acquit them of fear when they are rash, or of
avarice when they are extravagant. Just as a man has all his
senses, yet all men have not on that account as keen a sight as
Lynceus, so a man that is a fool has not all vices in so active and
vigorous a form as some persons have spine of them, yet he has them
all. All vices exist in all of them, yet all are not prominent in
each individual. One man is naturally prone to avarice, another is
the slave of wine, a third of lust; or, if not yet enslaved by
these passions, he is so fashioned by nature that this is the
direction in which his character would probably lead him.
Therefore, to return to my original proposition, every bad man is
ungrateful, because he has the seeds of every villainy in him; but
he alone is rightly so called who is naturally inclined to this
vice. Upon such a person as this, therefore, I shall not bestow a
benefit. One who betrothed his daughter to an ill-tempered man from