Some raise the question whether a vice so odious as this ought to go unpunished, or whether this law, by which, as it operates in the schools,1 the ungrateful man becomes liable to prosecution, ought to be applied also in the state; for it seems to everybody to be a just one. “Why not?” they say, “since even cities bring charges against cities for services rendered, and force later generations to pay for what had been bestowed upon their forefathers.” But our forefathers, who were undoubtedly very great men, demanded restitution only from their enemies; benefactions they would bestow magnanimously, and lose them magnanimously. With the exception of the people of Macedonia,2 in no state has the ungrateful man become liable to prosecution. And ample proof that there ought not to have been any such liability is shown by the fact that we are in full accord in opposing all crime; the penalty for homicide, for poisoning, for parricide, and for the desecration of religion is different in different places, but they have some penalty everywhere, whereas this crime that is the commonest of all is nowhere punished, but is everywhere denounced. And yet we have not wholly acquitted it, but, because it is difficult to form an opinion of a thing so uncertain, we have only condemned it to hatred, and have left it among the sins that are referred to the gods for judgment.