Think about it — a rich person's house alone offers countless chances to help others. Who says generosity is only for citizens who wear togas? Nature tells me to help all people. What does it matter if they're slaves or free? What does it matter if they were born free or earned their freedom later? What does it matter how they got their freedom — through law or private agreement? Wherever you find a human being, you find a chance to help. You can be generous right in your own home. You can practice kindness there. We don't call it "free-handedness" because it's meant for free people. We call it that because it comes from a free spirit. A wise person never wastes this kindness on worthless people. And it never runs out. Whenever the wise person finds someone worthy, the kindness flows as if the supply were endless.
Why, what opportunities of conferring benefits the mere house of a rich man affords? for who considers generous behaviour due only to those who wear the toga? Nature bids me do good to mankind—what difference does it make whether they be slaves or freemen, free-born or emancipated, whether their freedom be legally acquired or betowed by arrangement among friends? Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a benefit: consequently, money may be distributed even within one's own threshold, and a field may be found there for the practice of freehandedness, which is not so called because it is our duty towards free men, but because it takes its rise in a free-born mind. In the case of the wise man, this never falls upon base and unworthy recipients, and never becomes so exhausted as not, whenever it finds a worthy object, to flow as if its store was undiminished.