Kitap 6
3.94
It is a pleasant form of jest to reproach a person with less than would be possible, as Afer did when, in answer to a candidate who said, I have always shown my respect for your family, he replied, although he might easily have denied the statement, You are right, it is quite true. Sometimes it may be a good joke to speak of oneself, while one may often raise a laugh by reproaching a person to his face with things that it would have been merely bad-mannered to bring up against him behind his back.
3.95
Of this kind was the remark made by Augustus, when a soldier was making some unreasonable request and Marcianus, whom he suspected of intending to make some no less unfair request, turned up at the same moment: I will no more grant your request, comrade, than I will that which Marcianus is just going to make.
