s, how by the fall of sudden showers they soften the ground, renew
the dried-up springs 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 give up the property with which
they had entrusted him.

XXVII. We call some men timid because they are fools: in this they
are like the bad men who are steeped in all vices without distinction.
Strictly speaking, we call those persons timid who are alarmed even
at unmeaning noises. A fool possesses all vices, but he is not equally
inclined by nature to all; one is prone to avarice, another to luxury,
and another to insolence. Those persons, therefore, are mistaken