Alexander — madman that he was, and incapable of conceiving any plan that was not grandiose — once presented somebody with a whole city. When the man to whom he was presenting it had taken his own measure, and shrank from incurring the jealousy that so great a gift would arouse, Alexander’s reply was: “I am concerned, not in what is becoming for you to receive, but in what is becoming for me to give.” This seems a spirited and regal speech, but in reality it is most stupid. No, nothing, in itself, makes a becoming gift for any man; it all depends upon who gives it and who receives it — the when, wherefore, and where of the gift, and all the other items without which there can be no true reckoning of the value of the deed. You puffed-up creature! If it is not becoming fox the man to accept the gift, neither is it becoming for you to give it; the relation of the two in point of character and rank is taken into account, and, since virtue is everywhere a mean,6 excess and defect are equally an error. Granted that you have such power, and that Fortune has lifted you to such a height that you can fling whole cities as largesses (but how much more magnanimous it would have been not to take, than to squander, them!), yet it is possible that there is someone who is too small to put a whole city in his pocket!