The day will fail me to enumerate those whose ingratitude resulted in the ruin of their country. Equally endless will be the task if I attempt a survey of how ungrateful the commonwealth herself has been to its best and most devoted servants, and how it has sinned not less often than it has been sinned against.
Camillus it sent into exile, Scipio went with its consent; it exiled Cicero, even after the conspiracy of Catiline, destroyed his home, plundered his property, did everything that a victorious Catiline would have done; Rutilius23 found his blamelessness rewarded with a hiding-place in Asia; to Cato the Roman people refused the praetorship, and persisted in refusing the consulship.
We are universally ungrateful. Let each one question himself — everyone will find someone to complain of for being ungrateful. But it is impossible that all men should complain, unless all men gave cause for complaint — all men, therefore, are ungrateful. Are they ungrateful only? They are also covetous and spiteful and cowardly — especially those who appear to be bold. Besides, all are self-seeking, all are ungodly. But you have no need to be angry with them; pardon them — they are all mad.
To refer you to uncertain instances is not my desire, so I say: “See how ungrateful is youth! What young man does not long for his father’s last day though his hands are clean? Does not look forward to it though he curbs his desire? Does not ponder it though he is dutiful? How few there are who dread so much the death of their best of wives that they do not even calculate the probabilities? What litigant, I ask you, after he has been defended, retains the memory of so great a benefit beyond the hour it happened?”
And all agree in asking who dies without complaint! Who on his last day ventures to say:
I’ve lived; my destined course I now have run24?
Who does not shrink from departure? Who does not mourn it? Yet not to be satisfied with the time one has had is to be ungrateful. Your days will always seem few if you stop to count them. Reflect that your greatest blessing does not lie in mere length of time; make the best of it however short it may be. Though the day of your death should be postponed, your happiness is in no whit enhanced, since life becomes, not more blissful, but merely longer, by the delay. How much better it is to be grateful for the pleasures that have been enjoyed, not to reckon up the years of others, but to set a generous value on one’s own, and to score them down as gain! “God deemed me worthy of this, this is enough; he might have given more, but even this is a benefit.” Let us be grateful to the gods, grateful to mankind, grateful to those who have bestowed anything, upon ourselves, grateful also to those who have bestowed anything upon our dear ones.