1.1
Artaxerxes, the king of the Persians, O Trajan, Emperor Most High and Monarch Supreme, used to think that, as compared with giving large gifts, it was no less the mark of a king and a lover of his fellow-men to accept small gifts graciously and with a ready goodwill; and so, on a time when he was riding by, and a simple labourer, possessed of nothing else, took up water from the river in his two hands and offered it to the king, he accepted it pleasantly and with a cheerful smile, measuring the favour by the ready goodwill of the giver and not by the service rendered by the gift. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes, chap. v. (1013 B C), and Aelian, Varia Historia, i. 32.