“If you are imitating the gods,” you say, “then bestow benefits also upon the ungrateful; for the sun rises also upon the wicked, and the sea lies open also to pirates.” This point raises the question whether a good man would bestow a benefit upon one who was ungrateful, knowing that he was ungrateful. Permit me here to put in a brief remark for fear that we may be trapped by the tricky 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 also a bad man21; because he is a bad man, he possesses every vice: therefore he is also ungrateful. Thus we say that all bad men are intemperate, greedy, voluptuous, and spiteful, not because every individual has all these vices in a great or marked degree, but because he is capable of having them; and he does have them even if they are not visible. Another man is ungrateful, and this is the common meaning of the term, because he has a natural tendency to this vice. To an ingrate of the first type, the man who possesses this fault for the reason that there is no fault that he does not possess, a good man will give his benefit; for, if he were to eliminate all such men, there would be no one to whom he could give. To the ingrate of the second type, the man who in the matter of benefits shows himself a cheat, and has a natural bent in this direction, he will no more give a benefit than he will lend money to a spendthrift, or entrust a deposit to a man whom many have already found false.