16.
[43]
This is wonderful praise, which is not celebrated by the verses of poets, nor
by the records of annals, but is estimated by the judgments of wise men. He
took up the cause of a Roman knight, his own ancient friend, one zealous
for, attached and devoted to himself, who was getting involved in
difficulties; not through licentiousness, nor through any discreditable
expense and waste to gratify his passions, but through an honest endeavour
to increase his fortune; he would not allow him to fall; he propped him up
and supported him with his estate, his fortune, and his good faith, and he
supports him to this day. Nor will he allow his friend, trembling in the
balance as he is, to fall; nor does the splendour of his own reputation at
all dazzle his eyes, nor does the height of his own position and of his own
renown at all obscure the piercing vision of his mind.
[44]
Grant that those achievements of his are great things,
as in truth they are; every one else may agree with my opinion or not, as he
pleases, for I, amid all his power and all his good-fortune, prefer this
liberality of his towards his friends, and his recollection of old
friendship, to all the rest of his virtues. And you, O judges, ought not
only not to despise or to regret this goodness of so novel a kind, so
unusual in illustrious and preeminently powerful men, but even to embrace
and increase it and so much the more, because you see that these days have
been taken for the purpose of, as it were, undermining his
dignity; from which nothing can be taken which be will not either bravely
bear, or easily replace. But if he hears that his dearest friend has been
stripped of his honourable position, that he will not endure without just
indignation; and yet he will not have lost what he can have no possible hope
of ever recovering.
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