What similitude is there between them?
If kings neglect anything, want of knowledge may be pleaded in their defence; but ignorance cannot be brought as an excuse for the Gods.
XXXVIII.

Your manner of justifying them is somewhat extraordinary, when you say that if a wicked man dies without suffering for his crimes, the Gods inflict a punishment on his children, his children's children, and all his posterity.

O wonderful equity of the Gods! What city would endure the maker of a law which should condemn a son or a grandson for a crime committed by the father or the grandfather?
Shall Tantalus' unhappy offspring know No end, no close, of this long scene of woe?
When will the dire reward of guilt be o'er, And Myrtilus demand revenge no more ?[288] Whether the poets have corrupted the Stoics, or the Stoics given authority to the poets, I cannot easily determine.

Both alike are to be condemned.

If those persons whose names have been branded in the satires of Hipponax or Archilochus[289] were driven to despair, it did not proceed from the Gods, but had its origin in their own minds.