In book 3 of De beneficiis, Seneca the Younger notes the common use of a law punishing ingratitude in rhetorical training and debates the merits of introducing a comparable law into Roman civil law. Ultimately, he dismisses the need for such a law outside of the school setting (Ben. 3.6–17.3). Scholars have been quick to point out that Seneca is not exactly correct: legal cases were brought for certain instances of ingratitude. I would like to consider one such instance, the fate of the liberti legally rendered ingrati. The penalties for ingratitude varied as the forms of ingratitude did, but I will focus on the extreme penalty of re-enslavement. This chapter takes as its premise the debate in Tacitus’ Annales (13.26–27) on allowing re-enslavement to become a standard penalty for a freed person’s ingratitude. The re-enslavement supporters fail to win over Nero, but the emperor allows that individual cases for re-enslavement could be heard. I will argue that this lack of statutory regulation for this penalty paradoxically reveals the precarity of the freed person, their citizenship, and their freedom. This precarity is emphasized using the language of social relations rather than the law to describe the situation of the freed person and their former owner. This chapter will contribute to the study of the nature of Roman freedom by considering the following questions: did freed persons share in the same liberty as freeborn citizens? And if that liberty is different, to what extent can a freed person be integrated into the “free” population?

Emmons explores how a virtue ethics account of gratitude may address ways in which people experience negative effects of gratitude. On the one hand, virtue ethics would question whether harmful expressions of gratitude should be considered gratitude in the first place. But on the other hand, aligning gratitude indiscriminately with the good strips it of meaning and power. To resolve this dilemma, Emmons argues a more careful understanding of gratitude is needed.

Vette traces the anti-Semitic image of the ‘ungrateful Jew’ through its usage in early Christian literature to its origin in the imperial rhetoric of the first-century ce. Vette describes how imperial rhetoric employs racial stereotypes to demarcate dominator and dominated, thereby inscribing hierarchy and difference. Then, as now, gratitude can become weaponized in the service of Empire; but as the first-century Jewish author ce Josephus explains, gratitude can also disrupt imperial discourse.

Rowlands responds to the volume’s focus on the politics of (in)gratitude, showing how refugee regimes have weaponized gratitude to maintain inequality and injustice, but also how gratitude – as recounted by refugees themselves – has been a powerful vehicle for hope through acts of remembrance.

This chapter focuses on the emotional virtue of gratitude in society and education. First, it explores major understandings of gratitude prevalent in philosophy and psychology that elaborate what gratitude is, and why it is called for. The practices encouraged for cultivating feelings of gratitude by psychologists and educators will also be discussed. Then the chapter will turn to critical views of gratitude that question its moral value, its psychological utility, and its place in education. While teaching feelings of gratitude in the classroom may not necessarily be harmful, there are risks and challenges that should not be overlooked by educators interested in the moral and social development of their students.