page_title: Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX
section_title: Ingratitude
hierarchical_section_title: Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX / Subjects / Ingratitude
caption_attribution_description: Português: Caio Graco presidindo o concílio plebeu. English: Gaius Gracchus, tribune of the people, presiding over the Plebeian Council
context_page_description: Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri IX by Valerius Maximus was written around CE 30 or 31. It is a collection of approximately a thousand short stories that Valerius wrote during the reign of Tiberius. The stories are a variety of anecdotes illustrating how the ancient Romans lived. While the majority of the stories are of Roman life, he does have some foreign stories at the end of some chapters. Most of these are of Greek life and most of those are about Greek philosophers or famous kings.
  Several of the stories relate to moral subjects that parallel those in the Old Testament and New Testament. Valerius refers to his moral stories as "examples" that were to be used as moral guidance. Valerius' work on the preservation of moral values of the Roman Republic of the past was widely popular through the Age of Enlightenment, a literary life-span of some 1,700 years. People read Valerius' work for practical guidance in their everyday tasks for living a moral life. This work was especially used as a reference by writers and professional orators.
  It is estimated that Valerius's work on these nine books took over a decade.
context_section_description: Valerius gives as the theme "ingratitude" in Book 4 Chapter 3. Valerius writes that Scipio Aemilianus, grandson of famous general Scipio Africanus, had destroyed two major cities, Numantia and Carthage, that were major threats to Rome. However, in Rome later, he met his death in mysterious circumstances in 129 BCE. There was never anyone in the Roman Forum that avenged his death.
  Valerius writes of another example on ingratitude being the circumstances around Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio. Nasica had led a group of conservative senators of the Roman Senate to kill the populist tribune of the plebs Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE. He soon afterward had to withdraw from public life because the people of Rome had judged his merits unfairly. Nasica, a Pontifex Maximus, went to Pergamum ostensibly as a diplomat and never returned. He died there, but never missed his country because the Roman people were so ungrateful for what he considered a great deed he had done for them.
caption: The rostra at the Roman Forum
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