On Benefits by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (review)

This volume is a welcome addition to the series The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. It contains an introductory essay to the series, the translators’ introduction, and their translation of the full seven books of On Benefits. It closes with two sets of notes, a short list of suggested further readings, and an index.

As the series introduction states, the translations “are designed to be faithful to the Latin while reading idiomatically in English.” Focusing on “high standards of accuracy, clarity, and style … the translations are intended to provide a basis for interpretative work.” For those unable to read Latin, this rendition of On Benefits more than meets the objectives of the series. The up-to-date English of Miriam Griffin and Brad Inwood is true to the Latin. Terminology is consistently translated into its English equivalents. The translators preserve Seneca’s sentence length and syntax, for both the short, pointed sentences and the lengthy ones containing several subordinate clauses. They capture the “feel” of Seneca’s Latin, its flow, tone, and capability to communicate. When the Latin is opaque, so too is the English. The translation is elegant and eminently readable.

While some might find the introductions too skeletal, the amount of information given can also be read as meshing well with the series’s goal of offering “a basis for interpretative work.” The introduction by Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha Nussbaum to Seneca’s life, Stoicism, Seneca’s Stoicism, and his tragedies establishes basic, broad, and interwoven essentials for studying On Benefits. Although not written specifically for this text, the series introduction privileges specific overview topics and thereby asserts that the historical context of the treatise’s production is worthy of study, as is its development of and relationship to Hellenistic Greek Stoicism, and the connection between it and Seneca’s tragedies. This essay opens up avenues of pursuit that range from biography to social history and Stoicism as a theory and as a lived school. In discussing Seneca’s history, philosophy, and tragedies, the authors make no attempt to smooth out inconsistencies found in comparing Seneca’s life and literary output. It is a rich, and current, approach.

The translators’ introduction to On Benefits is equally good. Like the translation itself and the series introduction, it is simultaneously basic and expansive. Griffin and Inwood introduce On Benefits as belonging to a lengthy philosophical tradition treating the topic of “benefits.” Griffin and Inwood explain why benefits, in addition to playing a part in moral philosophy and political theory, were so frequently a literary or philosophical topic: “The central importance of benefits in ancient society rested on their crucial function in promoting and maintaining social cohesion within social groups and across them.” While they present the text as engaging and developing past theory and practice, Griffin and Inwood state explicitly that Seneca’s On Benefits is deeply embedded “in Roman social realities (material, ideological and political) of the first century CE.” Having established this as a starting point, Griffin and Inwood then provide a brief overview of the treatise and a more developed summary of each of the seven books. Each book summary helps the reader focus on the lessons being taught, and on the progression of Seneca’s treatment of benefits.

I think this is an excellent volume. With the translation tightly tied to the Latin, it is well suited for use in a senior undergraduate or junior graduate student class. Equally, it is an excellent volume for general readers interested in the school of ancient Stoicism and its transmission and reception, Seneca, ancient gift exchange, or the workings of the Julio-Claudian elite. The set of textual notes even directs the reader to the Latin. For both the student and the general reader, the notes expand the possibilities of interpretation. It gives just enough background information for the avoidance of big mistakes, enough direction for finding vast resources, and sufficient silence for the development of ideas and...