(with thanks to Carole Straw) 

If he suffers as he has done, straight justice will be achieved.

--Lost epic quoted by Claudius, 1st c. C.E. 

We men are wretched things, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives. You know that Zeus the Thunderer, has two jars standing on the floor of his palace, in which he keeps his gifts, the evils in one and the blessings in the others. People who receive from him a mixture of the two have varying fortunes, sometimes good and sometimes bad, though when Zeus serves a man from the jar of evil only, he makes him an outcast, who is chased by the gadfly of despair over the face of the earthy and goes his way damned by gods and men alike.

-- Homer, Iliad, 24:500 ff. 

Of all creatures that breathe and creep about on Mother Earth, there is none so helpless as a man. As long as heaven leaves him in prosperity and health, he never thinks hard times are on their way. Yet when the blessed gods have brought misfortune on his head, he simply has to steel himself and bear it. In fact our outlook upon life here on earth depends entirely on the way in which Providence is treating us at the moment. Look at myself. There was a time when I was marked out to be one of the lucky ones, yet what must I do but let my own strength run away with me and take to a life of lawless violence under the delusion that my father and my brothers would stand by me? Let that be a lesson to every man never to disregard the laws of god but quietly to enjoy whatever blessing providence may afford.

-- Homer, Odyssey 13:141 ff. 

Now may neither I nor my son be just any more among men; for it is a bad thing to be just if the unjust man is to come off better.

-- Hesiod, Works, 270 

Whatever men acquire from hubris, comes not from the order of things, but is dragged against will and forced by unjust deeds.

So comes Zeus's retribution: not at each stroke, as moral man, turns he quick to anger; yet ever steadily he sees him who conceals a heart of guilt, and this surely is revealed in the end. Some pay at once, some later. If they themselves escape and the gods' doom meets them not in its pursuit, it for sure will return a second time: the innocent children will pay for their deeds or the distant progeny.

-- Solon, poem fragments. 

Justice plants her anvil, Fate forges keen the brazen knife. Murder will propagate murder; life must fall for life. So the avenging Fiends, renowned for long resolve and guilt profound, now the wheel has turned with time, and pays in blood the ancient crime.

-Aes. Choe. 650 ff.