incurs any obligation by receiving what it was not in his power to
refuse; if you want to know whether I wish to take it, arrange
matters so that I have the power of saying 'No.' "Yet suppose he
gave you your life." It does not matter what the gift was, unless
it be given and received with good will: you are not my preserver
because you have saved my life. Poison sometimes acts as a
medicine, yet it is not on that account regarded as wholesome. Some
things benefit us but put us under no obligation: for instance a
man who intended to kill a tyrant, cut with his sword a tumour from
which he suffered: yet the tyrant did not show him gratitude
because by wounding him he had healed a disease which surgeons had
feared to meddle with.

XIX. You see that the actual thing itself is not of much
importance, because it is not regarded as a benefit at all, if you
do good when you intended to do evil; in such a case the benefit is
done by chance, the man did harm. I have seen a lion in the
amphitheatre, who recognized one of the men who fought with wild
beasts, who once had been his keeper, and protected him against the
attacks of the other animals. Are we, then, to say that this
assistance of the brute was a benefit? By no means, because it did
not intend to do it, and did not do it with kindly intentions. You
may class the lion and your tyrant together: each of them saved a
man's life, yet neither conferred a benefit. Because it is not a
benefit to be forced to receive one, neither is it a benefit to be
under an obligation to a man to whom we do not wish to be indebted.
You must first give me personal freedom of decision, and then your
benefit.

XX. The question has been raised, whether Marcus Brutus ought to