Miscellanies 2.14.60

The involuntary, at any rate, is not judged (and it is twofold: what happens with ignorance, and what happens by necessity). For how could you judge those said to sin in involuntary ways? For either someone was ignorant of himself, like Cleomenes and Athamas, who went mad; or of the act he does, as Aeschylus, who divulged the mysteries on the stage, was tried on the Areopagus and acquitted when he showed that he had not been initiated; or one might be ignorant of the one toward whom it is done, like the man who let fly at his opponent and killed a kinsman instead of the enemy; or of the thing with which it is done, like the man exercising with spears tipped with buttons who killed someone when the spear shed its button; or of the manner, like the man who killed his competitor in the stadium (for he was contending not for death but for victory); or of the purpose for which it is done, as when a physician gave a healthful remedy and killed, but gave it not for this purpose but to save.