Seneca - How to Give

HOW TO GIVE

ANCIENT WISDOM FOR MODERN READERS

How to Give: An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving by Seneca

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How to Be a Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide to Truly Terrible Leaders by Suetonius

How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership by Plutarch

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How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management by Seneca

How to Think about War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy by Thucydides

How to Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life by Epictetus

How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship by Marcus Tullius Cicero

How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life by Seneca

How to Win an Argument: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Persuasion by Marcus Tullius Cicero

How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life by Marcus Tullius Cicero

How to Run a Country: An Ancient Guide for Modern Leaders by Marcus Tullius Cicero

HOW TO GIVE

An Ancient Guide to Giving and Receiving

Seneca

Selected, translated, and introduced
by James S. Romm

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2020 by Princeton University Press

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press.princeton.edu

The Latin texts for De Beneficiis are reprinted from The Latin Library, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/about.html. The Latin text for Epistle 81 is reprinted from Epistles 6692, translated by Richard M. Gummere, Loeb Classical Library #76, Harvard University Press, 1920.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, approximately 4 B.C.-65 A.D., author. | Romm, James S., translator.

Title: How to give : an ancient guide to giving and receiving / Seneca ; selected, translated, and introduced by James S. Romm.

Other titles: De beneficiis. Selections English | An ancient guide to giving and receiving

Description: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020007754 (print) | LCCN 2020007755 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691192093 (acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780691211367 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Conduct of lifeEarly works to 1800. | BenevolenceEarly works to 1800.

Classification: LCC BJ1550 .S4613 2020 (print) | LCC BJ1550 (ebook) | DDC 177/.7dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007754

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007755

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Rob Tempio and Matt Rohal

Production Editorial: Sara Lerner

Text and Jacket Design: Pamela L. Schnitter

Jacket Credit: Empress Livia Drusilla, wife of Augustus, as Ceres, 38 BC. Marble sculpture, Roman. Photo: Herv Lewandowski / Muse du Louvre. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

When was the last time you gave someone a gift? Perhaps it was on an occasion when gifts are expecteda birthday, or wedding, or graduation. Or perhaps you gave spontaneously, out of the goodness of your heart, as the expression goes. Perhaps you treated a date to a meal, or brought a bottle of wine to a dinner party, or wrote a check to a charity or cause. Probably you did not stop to consider the moral meaning of your action, or fully appreciate the fact that, in the eyes of the Roman writer Seneca, you were, in some small way, saving the world. Your ability to give, as Seneca discussed in his treatise De Beneficiis, or On Benefits, is an essential part of what makes you human, and if your giving is done in the right spirit, it can even bring you close to the divine.

As a thinker of the Stoic school, Seneca saw a divine plan behind all human activity, especially the giving of gifts and doing of favors. His philosophy had strong underpinnings in religious belief. He speaks of a Guiding Principle, from which things take their form (1.6, on p. 23), though he sometimes imagines this as composed of a plurality of beings, or equates it with Nature or with the stars and planets. In the end, he claims at one point (4.7, pp. 13537), its not important what name we give to the first cause of all things, whether we make it singular or plural, or whether we personify it, so long as we strive to follow the inner promptings it has instilled in us. The impulse toward generosity, he maintainsthe goodness of our heartsis foremost among these.

How does the human race survive, Seneca asks, lacking the speed, strength, and ferocity of other animals? Only through our two unique attributes (4.18): Reason and what Seneca calls societas, the social impulse, here rendered Fellowship for want of a better translation. Our ability to help one another, to pool our resources, to give, has elevated us above the wild creatures that otherwise outstrip us, and indeed has made us masters of creation. (Seneca was not well versed enough in the natural world to spot a similar social impulse in other animals, and he knew little of the apes and monkeys that share this trait with human beings.)

In Senecas eyes, we did not develop these abilities over time, as a modern evolutionary biologist might claim. Our impulse toward generosity was hard-wired from the start. We are meant to be generous beings, just as we are meant to be virtuous in other ways, to employ reason to guide our actions, and to prevent virulent emotionsanger in particular, as well as fear, especially fear of deathfrom throwing our minds off course. These are core principles of the Stoic school, explored by Seneca in the many prose treatises and open letters he published throughout his life. (My two other volumes in the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, How to Keep Your Cool and How to Die, present Senecas thinking on the problem of disruptive emotionsanger in the first case, fear of death in the second.)

In the treatise excerpted here, De Beneficiis, or On Benefits, Seneca sought to strengthen the giving impulse and heighten our awareness of how much we gain by following it, and how much we lose by ignoring or perverting it. Selfishness, timidity, egoism, greed, and a dozen other failings, in Senecas view, get in the way of our divine natures. We decline to give, or we give badly, lording our gift over those who receive it, seeking renown for having given, or expecting something in exchange, a return for our giftin that case a gift no longer, but something more like a loan, bribe, or business transaction. On the other side of the gifting relationship, we often also get badly, without the sense of gratefulness that makes us want to be givers ourselves. Our ingratitude makes others less willing to give, and the binding ties of societas begin to fray.

On Benefits is the longest of Senecas extant essays, an indication of the importance he gave to its theme. He may well have added to it over time, for the last three of its seven books have a very different tenor than the first four, and the seventh book contains some off-topic material that feels like a later accretion. Even after completing it, he still had more to say on the subject, for he devoted one of his