courtesy, one of the ambassadors said, "We have never enrolled any
stranger among our citizens except Hercules and yourself."
Alexander willingly accepted the proffered honour, invited the
ambassadors to his table, and showed them other courtesies. He did
not think of who offered the citizenship, but to whom they had
granted it; and being altogether the slave of glory, though he knew
neither its true nature or its limits, had followed in the
footsteps of Hercules and Bacchus, and had not even stayed his
march where they ceased; so that he glanced aside from the givers
of this honour to him with whom he shared it, and fancied that the
heaven to which his vanity aspired was indeed opening before him
when he was made equal to Hercules. In what indeed did that frantic
youth, whose only merit was his lucky audacity, resemble Hercules?
Hercules conquered nothing for himself; he travelled throughout the
world, not coveting for himself but liberating the countries which
he conquered, an enemy to bad men, a defender of the good, a
peacemaker both by sea and land; whereas the other was from his
boyhood a brigand and desolator of nations, a pest to his friends
and enemies alike, whose greatest joy was to be the terror of all
mankind, forgetting that men fear not only the fiercest but also
the most cowardly animals, because of their evil and venomous
nature.

XIV. Let us now return to our subject. He who bestows a benefit
without discrimination, gives what pleases no one; no one considers
himself to be under any obligation to the landlord of a tavern, or
to be the guest of any one with whom he dines in such company as to
be able to say, "What civility has he shown to me? no more than he
has shown to that man, whom he scarcely knows, or to that other,
who is both his personal enemy and a man of infamous character. Do