To this eloquent account of Seneca's position and of the tendency of his writings I have nothing to add. The main particulars of his life, his Spanish extraction (like that of Lacan and Martial), his father's treatises on Rhetoric, his mother Helvia, his brothers, his wealth, his exile in Corsica, his outrageous flattery of Claudius and his satiric poem on his death--"The Vision of Judgment," Merivale calls it, after Lord Byron--his position as Nero's tutor, and his death, worthy at once of a Roman and a Stoic, by the orders of that tyrant, may be read of in "The History of the Romans under the Empire," or in the article "Seneca" in the "Dictionary of Classical Biography," and need not be reproduced here: but I cannot resist pointing out how entirely Grote's view of the "Sophists" as a sort of established clergy, and Seneca's account of the various sects of philosophers as representing the religious thought of the time, is illustrated by his anecdote of Julia Augusta, the mother of Tiberius, better known to English readers as Livia the wife of Augustus, who in her first agony of grief at the loss of her first husband applied to his Greek philosopher, Areus, as to a kind of domestic chaplain, for spiritual consolation. ("Ad Marciam de Consolatione," ch. iv.) I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to the Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge, for his kindness in finding time among his many and important literary labours for reading and correcting the proofs of this work. The text which I have followed for De Beneficiis is that of Gertz, Berlin (1876.). AUBREY STEWART London, March, 1887. CONTENTS BOOK I. The prevalence of ingratitude--How a benefit ought to be bestowed--The three Graces--Benefits are the chief bond of human society--What we owe in return for a benefit received--A benefit consists not of a thing but of the wish to do good--Socrates and Aeschines--What kinds of benefits should be bestowed, and in what manner--Alexander and the franchise of Corinth. BOOK II. Many men give through weakness of character--We ought to give before our friends ask--Many benefits are spoiled by the manner of the giver--Marius Nepos and Tiberius--Some benefits should be given secretly--We must not give what would harm the receiver--Alexander's gift of a city--Interchange of benefits like a game of ball--From whom ought one to receive a benefit?--Examples--How to receive a benefit--Ingratitude caused by self-love, by greed, or by jealousy--Gratitude and repayment not the same thing--Phidias and the statue. BOOK III. Ingratitude--Is it worse to be ungrateful for kindness or not even to remember it?--Should ingratitude be punished by law?--Can a slave bestow a benefit?--Can a son bestow a benefit upon his father?--Examples