L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits | Page 6

satiric poem on his death--"The Vision of Judgment," Merivale calls it, after Lord Byron--his position as Nero's tutor, and his death, worthy at once of a Roman and a Stoic, by the orders of that tyrant, may be read of in "The History of the Romans under the Empire," or in the article "Seneca" in the "Dictionary of Classical Biography," and need not be reproduced here: but I cannot resist pointing out how entirely Grote's view of the "Sophists" as a sort of established clergy, and Seneca's account of the various sects of philosophers as representing the religious thought of the time, is illustrated by his anecdote of Julia Augusta, the mother of Tiberius, better known to English readers as Livia the wife of Augustus, who in her first agony of grief at the loss of her first husband applied to his Greek philosopher, Areus, as to a kind of domestic chaplain, for spiritual consolation. ("Ad Marciam de Consolatione," ch. iv.)
I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to the Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, for his kindness in finding time among his many and important literary labours for reading and correcting the proofs of this work.
The text which I have followed for De Beneficiis is that of Gertz, Berlin (1876.).
AUBREY STEWART
London, March, 1887.

CONTENTS
BOOK I. The prevalence of ingratitude--How a benefit ought to be bestowed--The three Graces--Benefits are the chief bond of human society--What we owe in return for a benefit received--A benefit consists not of a thing but of the wish to do good--Socrates and Aeschines--What kinds of benefits should be bestowed, and in what manner--Alexander and the franchise of Corinth.
BOOK II. Many men give through weakness of character--We ought to give before our friends ask--Many benefits are spoiled by the manner of the giver--Marius Nepos and Tiberius--Some benefits should be given secretly--We must not give what would harm the receiver--Alexander's gift of a city--Interchange of benefits like a game of ball--From whom ought one to receive a benefit?-- Examples--How to receive a benefit--Ingratitude caused by self- love, by greed, or by jealousy--Gratitude and repayment not the same thing--Phidias and the statue
BOOK III. Ingratitude--Is it worse to be ungrateful for kindness or not even to remember it?--Should ingratitude be punished by law?-- Can a slave bestow a benefit?--Can a son bestow a benefit upon his father?--Examples
BOOK IV. Whether the bestowal of benefits and the return of gratitude for them are desirable objects in themselves? Does God bestow benefits?--How to choose the man to be benefited--We ought not to look for any return--True gratitude--Of keeping one's promise--Philip and the soldier--Zeno
BOOK V. Of being worsted in a contest of benefits--Socrates and Archelaus--Whether a man can be grateful to himself, or can bestow a benefit upon himself--Examples of ingratitude--Dialogue on ingratitude--Whether one should remind one's friends of what one has done for them--Caesar and the soldier--Tiberius.
BOOK VI. Whether a benefit can be taken from one by force-- Benefits depend upon thought--We are not grateful for the advantages which we receive from inanimate Nature, or from dumb animals--In order to lay me under an obligation you must benefit me intentionally--Cleanthes's story of the two slaves--Of benefits given in a mercenary spirit--Physicians and teachers bestow enormous benefits, yet are sufficiently paid by a moderate fee-- Plato and the ferryman--Are we under an obligation to the sun and moon?--Ought we to wish that evil may befall our benefactors, in order that we may show our gratitude by helping them?
BOOK VII. The cynic Demetrius--his rules of conduct--Of the truly wise man--Whether one who has done everything in his power to return a benefit has returned it--Ought one to return a benefit to a bad man?--The Pythagorean, and the shoemaker--How one ought to bear with the ungrateful.

L. A. SENECA
ON BENEFITS.
DEDICATED TO
AEBUTIUS LIBERALIS.

BOOK I.
I.
Among the numerous faults of those who pass their lives recklessly and without due reflexion, my good friend Liberalis, I should say that there is hardly any one so hurtful to society as this, that we neither know how to bestow or how to receive a benefit. It follows from this that benefits are badly invested, and become bad debts: in these cases it is too late to complain of their not being returned, for they were thrown away when we bestowed them. Nor need we wonder that while the greatest vices are common, none is more common than ingratitude: for this I see is brought about by various causes. The first of these is, that we do not choose worthy persons upon whom to bestow our bounty, but although when we are about to lend money we first make a careful enquiry into the means and habits of life of our debtor, and avoid sowing seed in a worn-out or unfruitful soil, yet without any discrimination