know when their service is not a benefit? When the question can be
asked, "What if he had refused to do it?" When he does that which
he might have refused to do, we must praise his good will. Benefits
and wrongs are opposites; a slave can bestow a benefit upon his
master, if he can receive a wrong from his master. Now an official
has been appointed to hear complaints of the wrongs done by masters
to their slaves, whose duty it is to restrain cruelty and lust, or
avarice in providing them with the necessaries of life. What
follows, then? Is it the master who receives a benefit from his
slave? nay, rather, it is one man who receives it from another.
Lastly, he did all that lay in his power; he bestowed a benefit
upon his master; it lies in your power to receive or not to receive
it from a slave. Yet who is so exalted, that fortune may not make
him need the aid even of the lowliest?

XXIII. I shall now quote a number of instances of benefits, not all
alike, some even contradictory. Some slaves have given their master
life, some death; have saved him when perishing, or, as if that
were not enough, have saved him by their own death; others have
helped their master to die, some have saved his life by stratagem.
Claudius Quadrigarius tells us in the eighteenth book of his
"Annals," that when Grumentum was being besieged, and had been
reduced to the greatest straits, two slaves deserted to the enemy,
and did valuable service. Afterwards, when the city was taken, and
the victors were rushing wildly in every direction, they ran before
every one else along the streets, which they well knew, to the
house in which they had been slaves, and drove their mistress
before them; when they were asked who she might be, they answered
that she was their mistress, and a most cruel one, and that they
were leading her away for punishment. They led her outside the