In the article “Forgiveness,” Berel Lang writes, “It is possible, of course, to imagine a world without forgiveness or any of its allied concepts. But that world would, it seems to me, either be more than human (that is, one in which no wrongs are committed or suffered) or less than human – one where resentment and vengeance would not only have their day, but would also continue to have it, day after day after day” (Lang 1994: 115; quoted in MacLachlan 2008: 2). This seems an extreme pair of alternatives: either godlike perfection or the perpetual cycle of the feud. The classical societies of Greece and Rome represent neither of these extremes, and yet, as I am about to argue, forgiveness in the modern sense was not a feature of their moral life – and it is the modern sense of the word that Lang intends in his article, when he affirms that, in forgiveness, “two agents are involved, both of whom recognize a failure by one of them in fulfilling an obligation to the other.