On Benefits

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE 65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and advisor to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.On Benefits, written between 56 and 64 CE, is a treatise addressed to Seneca s close friend Aebutius Liberalis. The longest of Seneca s works dealing with a single subject how to give and receive benefits and how to express gratitude appropriately On Benefits is the only complete work on what we now call gift exchange to survive from antiquity. Benefits were of great personal significance to Seneca, who remarked in one of his later letters that philosophy teaches, above all else, to owe and repay benefits well.