of fountains, and call them into new life by unseen supplies of
water. All this they do without reward, without any advantage
accruing to themselves. Let our line of conduct, if it would not
depart from its model, preserve this direction, and let us not act
honourably because we are hired to do so. We ought to feel ashamed
that any benefit should have a price: we pay nothing for the gods.

XXVI. "If," our adversary may say, "you wish to imitate the gods,
then bestow benefits upon the ungrateful as well as the grateful;
for the sun rises upon the wicked as well as the good, the seas are
open even to pirates." By this question he really asks whether a
good man would bestow a benefit upon an ungrateful person, knowing
him to be ungrateful. Allow me here to introduce a short
explanation, that we may not be taken in by a deceitful question.
Understand that according to the system of the Stoics there are two
classes of ungrateful persons. One man is ungrateful because he is
a fool; a fool is a bad man; a man who is bad possesses every vice:
therefore he is ungrateful. In the same way we speak of all bad men
as dissolute, avaricious, luxurious, and spiteful, not because each
man has all these vices in any great or remarkable degree, but
because he might have them; they are in him, even though they be
not seen. The second form of ungrateful person is he who is
commonly meant by the term, one who is inclined by nature to this
vice. In the case of him who has the vice of ingratitude just as he
has every other, a wise man will bestow a benefit, because if he
sets aside all such men there will be no one left for him to bestow
it on. As for the ungrateful man who habitually misapplies benefits
and acts so by choice, he will no more bestow a benefit upon him
than he would lend money to a spendthrift, or place a deposit in
the hands of one who had already often refused to many persons to