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L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits by 4 BC-65 Lucius Annaeus Seneca
page 145 of 249 (58%)
promise to be, but unequal in fortune. And if fortune prevents any
one from repaying a kindness, he need not, therefore, blush, as
though he were vanquished; there is no disgrace in failing to reach
your object, provided you attempt to reach it. It often is
necessary, that before making any return for the benefits which we
have received, we should ask for new ones; yet, if so, we shall not
refrain from asking for them, nor shall we do so as though
disgraced by so doing, because, even if we do not repay the debt,
we shall owe it; because, even if something from without befalls us
to prevent our repaying it, it will not be our fault if we are not
grateful. We can neither be conquered in intention, nor can we be
disgraced by yielding to what is beyond our strength to contend
with.

VI. Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, used to boast that he
had never been worsted by anybody in a contest of benefits. If so,
it was no reason why, in the fulness of his pride, he should
despise the Macedonians, Greeks, Carians, Persians, and other
tribes of whom his army was composed, nor need he imagine that it
was this that gave him an empire reaching from a corner of Thrace
to the shore of the unknown sea. Socrates could make the same
boast, and so could Diogenes, by whom Alexander was certainly
surpassed; for was he not surpassed on the day when, swelling as he
was beyond the limits of merely human pride, he beheld one to whom
he could give nothing, from whom he could take nothing? King
Archelaus invited Socrates to come to him. Socrates is reported to
have answered that he should be sorry to go to one who would bestow
benefits upon him, since he should not be able to make him an
adequate return for them. In the first place, Socrates was at
liberty not to receive them; next, Socrates himself would have been
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