L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits | Page 9

to our
subject, as to why the Graces are three in number, why they are sisters,
why hand in hand, and why they are smiling and young, with a loose
and transparent dress. Some writers think that there is one who bestows
a benefit, one who receives it, and a third who returns it; others say that
they represent the three sorts of benefactors, those who bestow, those
who repay, and those who both receive and repay them. But take
whichever you please to be true; what will this knowledge profit us?
What is the meaning of this dance of sisters in a circle, hand in hand? It
means that the course of a benefit is from hand to hand, back to the
giver; that the beauty of the whole chain is lost if a single link fails, and
that it is fairest when it proceeds in unbroken regular order. In the
dance there is one. esteemed beyond the others, who represents the
givers of benefits. Their faces are cheerful, as those of men who give or
receive benefits are wont to be. They are young, because the memory
of benefits ought not to grow old. They are virgins, because benefits are
pure and untainted, and held holy by all; in benefits there should be no
strict or binding conditions, therefore the Graces wear loose flowing
tunics, which are transparent, because benefits love to be seen. People

who are not under the influence of Greek literature may say that all this
is a matter of course; but there can be no one who would think that the
names which Hesiod has given them bear upon our subject. He named
the eldest Aglaia, the middle one Euphrosyne, the third Thalia. Every
one, according to his own ideas, twists the meaning of these names,
trying to reconcile them with some system, though Hesiod merely gave
his maidens their names from his own fancy. So Homer altered the
name of one of them, naming her Pasithea, and betrothed her to a
husband, in order that you may know that they are not vestal virgins.
[Footnote: i.e. not vowed to chastity.]
I could find another poet, in whose writings they are girded, and wear
thick or embroidered Phrygian robes. Mercury stands with them for the
same reason, not because argument or eloquence commends benefits,
but because the painter chose to do so. Also Chrysippus, that man of
piercing intellect who saw to the very bottom of truth, who speaks only
to the point, and makes use of no more words than are necessary to
express his meaning, fills his whole treatise with these puerilities,
insomuch that he says but very little about the duties of giving,
receiving, and returning a benefit, and has not so much inserted fables
among these subjects, as he has inserted these subjects among a mass
of fables. For, not to mention what Hecaton borrows from him,
Chrysippus tells us that the three Graces are the daughters of Jupiter
and Eurynome, that they are younger than the Hours, and rather more
beautiful, and that on that account they are assigned as companions to
Venus. He also thinks that the name of their mother bears upon the
subject, and that she is named Eurynome because to distribute benefits
requires a wide inheritance; as if the mother usually received her name
after her daughters, or as if the names given by poets were true. In truth,
just as with a 'nomenclator' audacity supplies the place of memory, and
he invents a name for every one whose name he cannot recollect, so the
poets think that it is of no importance to speak the truth, but are either
forced by the exigencies of metre, or attracted by sweetness of sound,
into calling every one by whatever name runs neatly into verse. Nor do
they suffer for it if they introduce another name into the list, for the
next poet makes them bear what name he pleases. That you may know
that this is so, for instance Thalia, our present subject of discourse, is
one of the Graces in Hesiod's poems, while in those of Homer she is

one of the Muses.
IV. But lest I should do the very thing which I am blaming, I will pass
over all these matters, which are so far from the subject that they are
not even connected with it. Only do you protect me, if any one attacks
me for putting down Chrysippus, who, by Hercules, was a great man,
but yet a Greek, whose intellect, too sharply pointed, is often bent and
turned back upon itself; even when it seems to be in earnest it only
pricks, but does not pierce. Here, however, what occasion is there for
subtlety? We are to speak of benefits, and to