A benefit—beneficium in Latin—is literally a good deed. Seneca defines it in the first book as “a well-intentioned act that both gives joy, and takes joy in giving it, and is ready and voluntarily prepared for the gift.” The giving and receiving of benefits (in Greek, euergeteia) was a practice that had first become prominent in Hellenistic culture, with the development of large urban centers, in which the wealthiest members of society displayed and increased their status by donating part of their wealth to the community rather than to particular members of their family or close friends. In Rome, benefits became associated with the patron–client relationships, in which a rich and powerful man would have a group of men, usually of somewhat lesser social and economic status, whom he protected and enriched, in return for political support and other kinds of social help. The crucial fact about “benefits” in both Hellenistic and Roman societies was that they were favors distributed to people outside the donor’s kinship circle or close friends. Giving favors was thus an important tool for social cohesion in big urban societies.
Seneca draws on lost Hellenistic Stoic sources in his discussion of the topic,37 but he seems to have modified their approach to generosity and gratitude, in characteristic fashion. He focuses less on the theoretical ethical ideal of the wise man (who alone, so the Greek Stoics insisted, can give a true benefit, or be grateful for one received) and more on the practicalities of social behavior for real people in the contemporary city, who are not yet perfectly wise. He criticizes Chrysippus, the third Greek leader of the Stoic school and the most important thinker in creating Stoic doctrine, for being too abstruse in his account of gift-giving and generosity and for relying on Greek myth rather than practical examples: Chrysippus, he declares, was “a great man, no doubt, but a Greek” (1.4.1). Seneca’s Roman focus is more practical and more focused on the sociopoliticaclass="underline" “We must set down the method that most binds human society together.” For this purpose, fancy interpretations of Greek myth are of no use at all. The figure of the perfect Stoic sage is of interest to Seneca not as an abstraction but as a tool to enable his readers to behave better toward one another. The paradoxical theories of Stoicism are, he insists, entirely reconcilable with the normal intuitions of common sense. The word “benefit” has two meanings. We associate “doing right” by somebody with actually causing some kind of material improvement in his or her situation, and we associate repayment with making a material gift back, in kind. But on the other, we think of a “good deed” as involving an intention, on the part of the benefactor, to act benevolently—whether or not the recipient actually receives a material advantage, and a grateful attitude from the recipient is, in itself, a form of repayment. Seneca insists, in keeping with the standard Stoic view, that the second, internal and immaterial kinds of “benefit” and “repayment” are the really important ones. But he also insists that if one has the right attitude, the right gifts and the right social relationships will usually follow; the abstractions of Stoicism are thus entirely reconcilable with the needs of contemporary society.
But there are still tensions in Seneca’s account between ideal and reality, and between the needs of the donor and the needs of the recipient. These are, as Seneca acknowledges, significantly different. The recipient—especially if he is receiving a gift or a favor from a richer or more powerful person—wants to avoid feeling humiliated by his position of dependence. From this point of view, it is important for Seneca to insist that social relationships can rise above the merely materiaclass="underline" intentions matter more than base profit, such that the recipient, in feeling grateful, has already discharged his obligation. But in addressing the donor’s point of view, it is also important for Seneca to insist that one should continue to give in material ways, even to those who have no hope of paying one back materially, since one’s own virtuous action is its own kind of profit. One should think of these acts of generosity “not as investments, but gifts” (1.9). “A person who thinks of repayment when he gives, deserves to be deceived” (1.10).
Seneca’s essay insists that a wise man can go beyond the hierarchical relationships of power and patronage and exchange to an ideal social relationship in which neither party wants to profit by the other.38 But the language of debt, exchange, and profit keeps coming back: for example, Seneca compares the rich male patron to a high-class prostitute (a meretrix or courtesan, whose clients hope for intimacy as well as sex) who has to parcel out her favors in such a way that every client gets something and can “believe he is preferred to the rest” (De Ben. 1.14.4).39
Like Seneca’s other treatises, then, the De Beneficiis has many passages that are deeply resonant with the conditions of Seneca’s own life. Seneca’s arguments in the essay allow him to suggest positive interpretations of his own service to the Neronian court, even though he never actually draws the connection directly. For instance, his insistence that the most important benefits are not material at all allows him to offer an implicit answer to those, like Suillius, who complained at how rich he had become in the course of a few short years’ service at court. This might seem, as Suillius suggested, unfair and corrupt, but the unfairness dissipates if one accepts Seneca’s argument that tangible benefits are unimportant: “A benefit cannot be touched by the hand: it concerns the mind.” This is a wonderful way of having his cake and eating it too. Nobody need be jealous or critical of his own huge material benefits under Nero, because wealth and status are not real benefits; the real gift Nero has given him, if any, comes from the mind.
The treatise deals extensively with the issue of whether a person of lesser status or wealth must necessarily feel humiliated by gifts from a patron. Seneca must inevitably have been seen by others as dependent on the emperor, as in a material sense he certainly was, and he himself struggled with the problem of whether that put him in a degrading position or compromised his freedom. The notion that a real benefit is an immaterial thing, a function of the mind’s intentions, is some help in this psychological dilemma. From this point of view, Nero—and Claudius and Agrippina before him—gave Seneca no more than he gave to them, or perhaps rather less.
But there are several passages that suggest that Seneca is struggling with the question of whether he really ought to have put himself in the position of accepting the gifts of the court, and the related question of whether he even had a choice about it at all. He tells the story of Socrates’ encounter with Archelaus, ruler of Macedon, who invited him to come and visit and receive “benefits” from him. Socrates replied that he would not go, because he could not pay back the favors, since he was a poor man (De Ben. 5.6.2–5.6.7). On Seneca’s reading, Socrates was being disingenuous, or characteristically ironic. Of course he was able to give the king far more than the king could give him, but he wanted to avoid putting himself in a situation where “he might be forced to accept gifts that he didn’t want: forced to accept something unworthy of Socrates” (5.6.6). He was declining a position of “voluntary servitude” (voluntaria servitudo). This story about Socrates is paired with another, early on in the essay, in which we are reminded of Aeschines, who could offer Socrates nothing for his teaching—except himself, which was (of course) the most valuable thing of alclass="underline" “By this gift Aeschines surpassed Alcibiades.” Seneca suggests, in this pair of anecdotes, a yearning for the freedom of Socrates. He works hard to dispel any suggestion (by, again, the likes of Suillius) that he might be serving Nero for mercenary reasons. But he was clearly anxious that he might be trapped, having made the choice to work not with a poor Aeschines, but a rich Archilaus, as his student and patron.