[55]
One's purse, then, should not be closed so tightly
that a generous impulse cannot open it, nor yet so
loosely held as to be open to everybody. A limit
[p. 227]
should be observed and that limit should be determined by our means. We ought, in a word, to
remember the phrase, which, through being repeated
so very often by our countrymen, has come to be a
common proverb: “Bounty has no bottom.” For
indeed what limit can there be, when those who
have been accustomed to receive gifts claim what
they have been in the habit of getting, and those
who have not wish for the same bounty?
16. There are, in general, two classes of those1
who give largely: the one class is the lavish, the
other the generous. The lavish are those who
squander their money on public banquets, doles of
meat among the people, gladiatorial shows, magnificent games, and wild-beast fights—vanities of which
but a brief recollection will remain, or none at all.
1 Extravagant waste of the public games.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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