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L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ON BENEFITS

By Seneca

Edited by Aubrey Stewart




PREFACE

Seneca, the favourite classic of the early fathers of the church and
of the Middle Ages, whom Jerome, Tertullian, and Augustine speak of as
"Seneca noster," who was believed to have corresponded with St. Paul,
and upon whom [Footnote: On the "De Clementia," an odd subject for the
man who burned Servetus alive for differing with him.] Calvin wrote a
commentary, seems almost forgotten in modern times. Perhaps some of his
popularity may have been due to his being supposed to be the author
of those tragedies which the world has long ceased to read, but which
delighted a period that preferred Euripides to Aeschylus: while casuists
must have found congenial matter in an author whose fantastic cases of
conscience are often worthy of Sanchez or Escobar. Yet Seneca's morality
is always pure, and from him we gain, albeit at second hand, an
insight into the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, Zeno, Epicurus,
Chrysippus, &c., whose precepts and system of religious thought had in
cultivated Roman society taken the place of the old worship of Jupiter
and Quirinus.

Since Lodge's edition (fol. 1614), no complete translation of Seneca has
been published in England, though Sir Roger L'Estrange wrote paraphrases
of several Dialogues, which seem to have been enormously popular,
running through more than sixteen editions. I think we may conjecture
that Shakespeare had seen Lodge's translation, from several allusions to
philosophy, to that impossible conception "the wise man," and especially
from a passage in "All's Well that ends Well," which seems to breathe
the very spirit of "De Beneficiis."

  "'Tis pity--
   That wishing well had not a body in it
   Which might be felt: that we, the poorer born,
   Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
   Might with effects of them follow our friends
   And show what we alone must think; which never
   Returns us thanks."

   "All's Well that ends Well," Act i. sc. 1.

Though, if this will not fit the supposed date of that play, he may
have taken the idea from "The Woorke of Lucius Annaeus Seneca concerning
Benefyting, that is too say, the dooing, receyving, and requyting of
good turnes, translated out of Latin by A. Golding. J. Day, London,
1578." And even during the Restoration, Pepys's ideal of virtuous and
lettered seclusion is a country house in whose garden he might sit on
summer afternoons with his friend, Sir W. Coventry, "it maybe, to read a
chapter of Seneca." In sharp contrast to this is Vahlen's preface to the
minor Dialogues, which he edited after the death of his friend Koch, who
had begun that work, in which he remarks that "he has read much of this
writer, in order to perfect his knowledge of Latin, for otherwise he
neither admires his artificial subtleties of thought, nor his childish
mannerisms of style" (Vahlen, preface, p. v., ed. 1879, Jena).

Yet by the student of the history of Rome under the Caesars, Seneca is
not to be neglected, because, whatever may be thought of the intrinsic
merit of his speculations, he represents, more perhaps even than
Tacitus, the intellectual characteristics of his age, and the tone of
society in Rome--nor could we well spare the gossiping stories which we
find imbedded in his graver dissertations. The following extract from
Dean Merivale's "History of the Romans under the Empire" will show the
estimate of him which has been formed by that accomplished writer:--

"At Rome, we, have no reason, to suppose that Christianity was only the
refuge of the afflicted and miserable; rather, if we may lay any stress
on the documents above referred to, it was first embraced by persons in
a certain grade of comfort and respectability; by persons approaching
to what we should call the MIDDLE CLASSES in their condition, their
education, and their moral views. Of this class Seneca himself was the
idol, the oracle; he was, so to speak, the favourite preacher of the
more intelligent and humane disciples of nature and virtue. Now the
writings of Seneca show, in their way, a real anxiety among this class
to raise the