To refuse them admission into his presence, to show them his distrust, would be, he considered, a declaration of war.

[48] But there was one method, he felt, worth all the rest, an honourable method and one that would secure his safety absolutely; to win their friendship if he could, and make them more devoted to himself than to each other.

I will now endeavour to set forth the methods, so far as I conceive them, by which he gained their love.
[C.2] In the first place he never lost an opportunity of showing kindliness wherever he could, convinced that just as it is not easy to love those who hate us, so it is scarcely possible to feel enmity for those who love us and wish us well.

[2] So long as he had lacked the power to confer benefits by wealth, all he could do then was to show his personal care for his comrades and his soldiers, to labour in their behalf, manifest his joy in their good fortune and his sympathy in their sorrows, and try to win them in that way.

But when the time came for the gifts of wealth, he realised that of all the kindnesses between man and man none come with a more natural grace than the gifts of meat and drink.