L. Annaeus Seneca on Benefits
a better man than when I received you." By this present Aeschines outdid
Alcibiades, whose mind was as great as his Wealth, and all the splendour
of the most wealthy youths of Athens.
IX. You see how the mind even in the straitest circumstances finds the
means of generosity. Aeschines seems to me to have said, "Fortune, it
is in vain that you have made me poor; in spite of this I will find a
worthy present for this man. Since I can give him nothing of yours, I
will give him something of my own." Nor need you suppose that he held
himself cheap; he made himself his own price. By a stroke of genius this
youth discovered a means of presenting Socrates to himself. We must not
consider how great presents are, but in what spirit they are given.
A rich man is well spoken of if he is clever enough to render himself
easy of access to men of immoderate ambition, and although he intends to
do nothing to help them, yet encourages their unconscionable hopes; but
he is thought the worse of if he be sharp of tongue, sour in appearance,
and displays his wealth in an invidious fashion. For men respect and
yet loathe a fortunate man, and hate him for doing what, if they had the
chance, they would do themselves.
* * * * * * *
Men nowadays no longer secretly, but openly outrage the wives of others,
and allow to others access to their own wives. A match is thought
countrified, uncivilized, in bad style, and to be protested against by
all matrons, if the husband should forbid his wife to appear in
public in a litter, and to be carried about exposed to the gaze of all
observers. If a man has not made himself notorious by a LIAISON with
some mistress, if he does not pay an annuity to some one else's wife,
married women speak of him as a poor-spirited creature, a man given
to low vice, a lover of servant girls. Soon adultery becomes the most
respectable form of marriage, and widowhood and celibacy are commonly
practised. No one takes a wife unless he takes her away from some one
else. Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and
in collecting together what they have wasted with the keenest avarice;
they become utterly reckless, scorn poverty in others, fear personal
injury more than anything else, break the peace by their riots, and by
violence and terror domineer over those who are weaker than themselves.
No wonder that they plunder provinces and offer the seat of judgment for
sale, knocking it down after an auction to the highest bidder, since it
is the law of nations that you may sell what you have bought.
X. However, my enthusiasm has carried me further than I intended, the
subject being an inviting one. Let me, then, end by pointing out that
the disgrace of these crimes does not belong especially to our own time.
Our ancestors before us have lamented, and our children after us will
lament, as we do, the ruin, of morality, the prevalence of vice, and
the gradual deterioration of mankind; yet these things are really
stationary, only moved slightly to and fro like the waves which at
one time a rising tide washes further over the land, and at another an
ebbing one restrains within a lower water mark. At one time the chief
vice will be adultery, and licentiousness will exceed all bounds; at
another time a rage for feasting will be in vogue, and men will waste
their inheritance in the most shameful of all ways, by the kitchen; at
another, excessive care for the body, and a devotion to personal beauty
which implies ugliness of mind; at another time, injudiciously granted
liberty will show itself in wanton recklessness and defiance of
authority; sometimes there will be a reign of cruelty both in public
and private, and the madness of the civil wars will come upon us, which
destroy all that is holy and inviolable. Sometimes even drunkenness will
be held in honour, and it will be a virtue to swallow most wine. Vices
do not lie in wait for us in one place alone, but hover around us in
changeful forms, sometimes even at variance one with another, so that
in turn they win and lose the field; yet we shall always be obliged to
pronounce the same verdict upon ourselves, that we are and always were
evil, and, I unwillingly add, that we always shall be. There always will
be homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious,
traitors: worse than all these is the ungrateful man, except we consider
that all these crimes flow from ingratitude, without which hardly any
great wickedness has ever grown to full stature. Be sure that you guard
against this as the greatest of crimes in yourself, but pardon it as the
least of crimes in another. For all the injury which you suffer is this:
you have lost the subject-matter of a benefit, not the benefit itself,
for you possess unimpaired the best part of it, in that you have given
it. Though we ought to be careful to bestow our benefits by preference
upon those who are likely to show us gratitude for them, yet we must
sometimes do what we have little hope will turn out well, and bestow
benefits upon those who we not only think will prove ungrateful, but who
we know have been so. For instance, if I should be able to save a
man's children from a great danger with no risk to myself, I should not
hesitate to do so. If a man be worthy I would defend him even with my
blood, and would share his perils; if he be unworthy, and yet by
merely crying for help I can rescue him from robbers, I would without
reluctance raise the shout which would save a fellow-creature.
XI. The next point to be defined is, what kind of benefits are to be
given, and in what manner. First let us give what is necessary, next
what is useful, and then what is pleasant, provided that they be
lasting. We must begin with what is necessary, for those things which
support life affect the mind very differently from, those which adorn
and improve it. A man may be nice, and hard to please, in things which
he can easily do without, of which he can say, "Take them back; I do not
want them, I am satisfied with what I have." Sometimes, we wish not
only to, return what we have received, but even to throw it away. Of
necessary things, the first class consists of things without which we
cannot live; the second, of things without which we ought not to live;
and the third, of things without which we should not care to live. The
first class are, to be saved from the hands of the enemy, from the anger
of tyrants, from proscription, and the various other perils which
beset human life. By averting any one of these, we shall earn gratitude
proportionate to the greatness of the danger, for when men think of
the greatness of the misery from which they have been saved, the terror
which they have gone through enhances the value of our services. Yet we
ought not to delay rescuing any one longer than we are obliged, solely
in order to make his fears add weight to our services. Next come those
things without which we can indeed live, but in such a manner that it
would be better to die, such as liberty, chastity, or a good conscience.
After these are what we have come to hold dear by connexion and
relationship and long use and custom, such as our wives and children,
our household gods, and so on, to which the mind so firmly attaches
itself that separation from them seems worse than death.
After these come useful things, which form a very wide and varied
class; in which will be money, not in excess, but enough for living in
a moderate style; public office, and, for the ambitious, due advancement
to higher posts; for nothing can be more useful to a man than to be
placed in a position in which he can benefit himself. All benefits
beyond these are superfluous, and are likely to spoil those who receive
them. In giving these we must be careful to make them acceptable by
giving them at the appropriate time, or by giving things which are not
common, but such as few people possess, or at any rate few possess in
our times; or again, by giving things in such a manner, that though not
naturally valuable, they become so by the time and place at which they
are given. We must reflect what present will produce the most pleasure,
what will most frequently come under the notice of the possessor of it,
so that whenever he is with it he may be with us also; and in all cases
we must be careful not to send useless presents, such as hunting weapons
to a woman or old man, or books to a rustic, or nets to catch wild
animals to a quiet literary man. On the other hand, we ought to be
careful, while we wish to send what will please, that we do not send
what will insultingly remind our friends of their failings, as, for
example, if we send wine to a hard drinker or drugs to an invalid, for a
present which contains an allusion to the shortcomings of the receiver,
becomes an outrage.
XII. If we have a free choice as to what to give, we should above all
choose lasting presents, in order that our gift may endure as long
as possible; for few are so grateful as to think of what they have
received, even when they do not see it. Even the ungrateful remember
us by our gifts, when they are always in their sight and do not allow
themselves to be forgotten, but constantly obtrude and stamp upon the
mind the memory of the giver. As we never ought to remind men of what we
have given them, we ought all the more to choose presents that will be
permanent; for the things themselves will prevent the remembrance of the
giver from fading away. I would more willingly give a present of plate
than of coined money, and would more willingly give statues than clothes
or other things which are soon worn out. Few remain grateful after the
present is gone: many more remember their presents only while they make
use of them. If possible, I should like my present not to be consumed;
let it remain in existence, let it stick to my friend and share his
life. No one is so foolish as to need to be told not to send gladiators
or wild beasts to one who has just given a public show, or not to send
summer clothing in winter time, or winter clothing in summer. Common
sense must guide our benefits; we must consider the time and the place,
and the character of the receiver, which are the weights in the
scale, which cause our gifts to be well or ill received. How far more
acceptable a present is, if we give a man what he has not, than if we
give him what he has plenty of! if we give him what he has long been
searching for in vain, rather than what he sees everywhere! Let us make
presents of things which are rare and scarce rather than costly, things
which even a rich man will be glad of, just as common fruits, such as
we tire of after a few days, please us if they have ripened before the
usual season. People will also esteem things which no one else has given
to them, or which we have given to no one else.
XIII. When the conquest of the East had flattered Alexander of Macedon
into believing himself to be more than man, the people of Corinth sent
an embassy to congratulate him, and presented him with the franchise of
their city. When Alexander smiled at this form of courtesy, one of
the ambassadors said, "We have never enrolled any stranger among our
citizens except Hercules and yourself." Alexander willingly accepted the
proffered honour, invited the ambassadors to his table, and showed them
other courtesies. He did not think of who offered the citizenship, but
to whom they had granted it; and being altogether the slave of glory,
though he knew neither its true nature or its limits, had followed in
the footsteps of Hercules and Bacchus, and had not even stayed his march
where they ceased; so that he glanced aside from the givers of this
honour to him with whom he shared it, and fancied that the heaven to