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Book II Chapter 46

Chapter 46

On Ingratitude.¹⁵⁰⁷

Menander

Let no ungrateful person be considered a friend; nor let one who is wicked occupy a good man’s place.¹⁵⁰⁸

Sophocles, Oedipus the King

For I say that casting out a good friend is the same as casting out the life one holds most dear.¹⁵⁰⁹

Sophocles, Ajax

For kindness is what always gives birth to kindness. But the man from whom memory of kindness received drains away could no longer be a noble man.¹⁵¹⁰

⟨From the same author⟩

Gratitude drains away and is caught in treachery.¹⁵¹¹

Anaxandrides

It is not with many that favor begets favor.¹⁵¹²

Sophocles

For gratitude perishes in a forgetful man.¹⁵¹³

Theocritus

One ⟨might⟩ rear wolf-cubs, rear dogs, for them to eat him.¹⁵¹⁴

Menander

Each person does not have the same mind when asking and after receiving.¹⁵¹⁵

From the same author

Yet the one who has been saved is always ungrateful by nature.¹⁵¹⁶

From the same author

No sooner has he been pitied than gratitude is dead, which, when in need, he said he would keep immortal.¹⁵¹⁷

Euripides, Daughters of Pelias

In danger, what friends they are to their friends! But when they fare well, they thrust gratitude aside, thinking their success is their own doing.¹⁵¹⁸

Philemon

When one of us has an untroubled life, he does not call Fortune blessed; but when he falls into grief and troubles, he immediately lays the blame on Fortune.¹⁵¹⁹

Theognis

Two evils attend one who benefits the base: loss of his own possessions, and no gratitude.¹⁵²⁰

When Diogenes was asked what grows old fastest among people, he said, “Gratitude.”¹⁵²¹

Aelian

Themistocles, son of Neocles, compared himself to oak trees. He said that people take shelter beneath them too and need them when it rains, seeking the shelter of their branches; but when they pass by in fair weather, they strip them and break off branches.¹⁵²² He said that he himself suffered the same treatment from the people.¹⁵²³

From the Letter on Friendship

Indeed, just as doing good is noble, so one must repay it.¹⁵²⁴ ...¹⁵²⁵ lest one incur a charge not only of ingratitude but also of damaging the common interest of those who would receive benefits, by holding others back from benefiting them.¹⁵²⁶

Iamblichus to Sopater

So ingratitude is to be avoided for what it is in itself. One might resent it with still greater justification because it prevents the good from advancing and coming to light, entirely overthrows their sphere,¹⁵²⁷ and in some way shuts within narrow limits the outwardly manifest activities of noble things. It also deprives the community of all divine assistance; that is why it is utterly dreadful.¹⁵²⁸ ⟨And⟩ I urge every man, first, to retain a right understanding of benefactions in a spirit of friendship;¹⁵²⁹ second, to receive benefits gratefully and to invite greater acts of goodness through gratitude.¹⁵³⁰

When certain men were slandering Themistocles at an assembly, he saw the majority listening with pleasure and said, “Men of Athens, you seem to me to be weary of receiving benefits.” For weariness is, in truth, surfeit with benefits, through which people come to desire novelty.¹⁵³¹

From Hypsaeus’s Counsels on Doing Good

You will hate no one for being ungrateful if you truly do someone a kindness.¹⁵³²

Let others call ungrateful those who make no return for whatever benefits they receive from you; you call them foolish, because they do not understand the finest of good things.¹⁵³³

Lawgivers reasonably prescribe no penalties for ingratitude alone, because the person who does good has received his greatest reward in the very good he happens to have done.¹⁵³⁴ The ungrateful person, meanwhile, pays the penalty he deserves in being held fast, without realizing it, by the greatest evil—ingratitude.¹⁵³⁵

1507.Ἀχαριστία is ingratitude. The excerpts draw on several senses of χάρις: a favor, gratitude and a favor returned. Parenthetical D. numbers printed beside the selections are companion cross-references, not a replacement for Wachsmuth’s main numbering, which is retained here, including 9a.

1508.Wachsmuth cites Com. IV, p. 325, unassigned fragment 470. The two prohibitions concern who deserves the standing of a friend or a good person. The heading names Menander without identifying a play or speaker.

1509.Oedipus the King 611-612. The comparison makes rejecting a good friend equivalent to casting away one’s own cherished life. The printed παρ’ αὐτῷ refers to the life one has, rather than supplying a separate benefit or sum of money.

1510.Ajax 522-524. The repeated χάρις links a benefit with a responding benefit or gratitude. Memory of having been treated well is the test in the following lines. Εὐγενής can mean well-born; here the rebuke connects nobility with remembering kindness.

1511.Wachsmuth supplies the same-author attribution and identifies Ajax 1267. Χάρις is personified: it drains or slips away, and the feminine προδοῦσα presents it as betraying, not as being betrayed.

1512.Wachsmuth cites Com. III, p. 200, unassigned fragment 15. The line echoes the reciprocity expressed in II.46.3 while limiting its realization: not many return one favor with another.

1513.Fragment 735 in Nauck’s numbering; no play is named. Ἀμνήμων describes someone who does not remember, tying the loss of χάρις to the failure of memory already emphasized in II.46.3.

1514.Idyll 5.38. The English takes θρέψαι as a third-person aorist optative with the supplied Doric modal ⟨κα⟩, reflected by ⟨might⟩. The local third-person ἑ is him; φάγωντι retains the Doric form. The grim outcome pictures beneficiaries turning on the person who raised them.

1515.Wachsmuth cites Com. IV, p. 325, unassigned fragment 471. Διάνοια is the attitude or state of mind that changes between requesting something and having received it; the object requested is not specified.

1516.The same-author heading continues Menander; Wachsmuth cites unassigned fragment 472, verse 1. Ἀεί, always, and φύσει, by nature, preserve the saying’s sweeping formulation. Being saved is the benefit whose recipient is accused of ingratitude.

1517.Wachsmuth separates 9a from 9 while citing these as verses 2-3 of the same unassigned fragment 472. The simultaneous receipt of pity and death of gratitude contradict the earlier promise to keep gratitude immortal. The local σχήσειν, would keep, is retained.

1518.Daughters of Pelias, fragment 611 in Nauck. The first line is an exclamation with no expressed verb. The contrast is between professed friendship in danger and the claim of self-sufficient success afterward; δι’ αὑτούς attributes prosperity to themselves.

1519.The printed heading names Philemon, but Wachsmuth also cites an attribution to Menander, Com. IV, p. 239, unassigned fragment 20. The local εὐδαίμονα is an adjective agreeing with Fortune, retained as blessed, rather than the alternative participle describing the fortunate person. The contrast with assigning blame makes the withheld acknowledgment clear.

1520.Theognis 955-956. The printed δύω, two, is retained, as is χήρωσις, a noun meaning loss or deprivation, rather than a different verbal reading. The two costs are giving up one’s own possessions and receiving no gratitude.

1521.The author’s name is part of the anecdote, not a separate heading. Χάρις is rendered gratitude in this chapter’s context: the answer treats gratitude as something that quickly ages or loses its force.

1522.The trees are needed for shelter in bad weather but damaged when that need has passed. The comparison makes usefulness followed by mistreatment the point of the anecdote.

1523.Wachsmuth cites Aelian, Various History IX.18. The parenthetical D.24 printed beside this excerpt is a companion numbering cross-reference; the D. numbers do not add further source sections to this chapter.

1524.The Greek heading names a Letter on Friendship. Wachsmuth’s parenthetical reference cites Plutarch, fragment XVIII.16 in Dübner; this reference does not supply an additional author name in the Greek heading. The verb ἀμειπτέον calls for repayment without an expressed object.

1525.The printed dots mark a lacuna before ἵνα, lest. They are retained without inserting the connective wording proposed in the apparatus.

1526.The construction around κοινοῦ τῶν εὖ πεισομένων εἰς αὐτούς is compressed and difficult. The English takes it as the common interest of future beneficiaries, injured when others are held back from beneficence toward them; it does not silently substitute the apparatus’s proposed repairs.

1527.Χώρα is a sphere or field of operation. The plural αὐτῶν, their, follows the singular τἀγαθόν, the good; the English preserves this loose reference rather than replacing the printed wording with an apparatus proposal.

1528.Τὰς ἔξω διαφαινομένας τῶν καλῶν ἐνεργείας describes the activities of noble things as manifested outwardly. The claim then extends beyond human reciprocity to the community’s loss of divine assistance.

1529.Meineke’s supplied ⟨δ’⟩ is expressed as ⟨And⟩. Λόγον ὀρθόν is a right understanding or account; μετὰ φιλίας adds friendship to the attitude with which benefactions are understood.

1530.The Greek qualifies the benefits as εὐχαρίστους; English expresses the required attitude by receive benefits gratefully. The conclusion connects receiving gratefully with encouraging further beneficence.

1531.The explanation follows the reported reply and links κόπος, weariness, with κόρος, surfeit. The printed καινότης means novelty; the desire is for something new after repeated benefits, rather than for a common interest.

1532.The heading identifies counsels or instructions on doing good. The condition if you truly do someone a kindness is essential: the saying links genuine beneficence with freedom from hatred of the recipient.

1533.Wachsmuth marks this as a separate excerpt, 18a, without adding a new attribution. Its contrast is between calling someone ungrateful and regarding him as lacking understanding. The finest of good things is not further named in this sentence.

1534.The argument places the benefactor’s reward in the good deed itself, rather than making it depend on repayment by the recipient.

1535.Λανθάνει retains the ungrateful person’s lack of awareness of his own condition. The passage treats ingratitude itself as a penalty; II.46.22, by contrast, introduces judicial punishment. The anthology preserves both accounts.