'The good are rewarded fairly and the bad are punished fairly.' How far do you think this is true in the works of Ovid, Virgil and Plautus you have studied?

The statement may be argued both in favour of and against. In Ovid, the common fate of being punished in classical mythology for doubting the gods is dominant and Niobe is a representative example. However,there is a question whether she deserves to lose her children and her husband for her arrogance, or whether her family should be punished because Niobe offended the gods. In Virgil, the description of the pleasant afterlife could be seen to be a just reward in the afterlife for the good. In Plautus, there is a critique of the double standards of male and female behavior and this may be used to show how treatment of the two genders is not fair and is not always in line with whether someone is “good” or “bad”.