Miriam Griffin has a richly detailed discussion of Seneca’s de Beneficiis in a 2003 issue of The Journal of Roman Studies . The article discusses the appropriateness of “patronage system” as a description of Roman social relations, Seneca’s use of exaggeration for moral effect, the and similarities between Seneca and Cicero (who treats benefits in de Officiis ), and much else.
She poses two central questions concerning Seneca’s theory: First, two features of this social phenomenon stand out: Seneca is describing symmetrical rather than asymmetrical relations, and Seneca assumes that gifts create the relation he describes, as opposed to saying that gifts express a prior relationship. Given these features, Griffin asks what social phenomenon Seneca is describing.
Second, she asks how relevant Seneca’s work was to the society around him. He rarely gives concrete examples from Roman life, and the whole treatise is abstract. Did it touch Roman society at all? If so, where and how?
To the first question, Griffin argues that Seneca is describing gift-exchanges, and often in a way that dovetails with post-Maussian sociological discussions of gifts. This is evident, she says, in the strict distinction Seneca makes between gifts and loans: “Unlike an ordinary creditor, the benefactor should only receive bach what is voluntarily returned . . . ; unlike an investor, he should not think of repayment when he makes the gift . . . nor keep a record of it and demand repayment at a set time . . . ; he should be willing to give anonymously without witnesses . . . . A recipient should be more careful in choosing benefactors than creditor because a permanent relationship is created by the acceptance . . . ; the recipient should not repay too soon, like someone wanting to be clear of a debt . . . ; unlike a debt, it is enough to have sought to repay a benefit . . . , for the transaction is in our minds.” Crucially, Seneca sees no role for the law in benefaction; he argues against legal punishments for ingratitude.
Modern sociological theories of the gift place gift-exchange on a continuum between economic exchange on the one hand and primitive forms of exchange like the potlatch: “It is like economic exchange in that it normally involves individuals, not groups, and there is no obligation to give, only to return. It is unlike economic exchange in that the type of reciprocation is generalized: it is unspecified; indefinite as to time, quantity, and quality; and depends not so much on what gift the donor originally gave, but on what the original donor needs and when he needs it, and also on what the original recipient can afford to give and when.”
As for the question of whether Seneca’s treatise has a specific social location and focus, Griffin argues that he is systematizing traditional Republican rules of gift exchange among (more or less fictional) equals in the aristocracy, but doing so at the time when the Princeps is the new reality in politics and society. Seneca emphasizes that the Princeps should function by the same rules of gift and reciprocity as the other members of the aristocracy. That means that the Princeps, like everyone else, should give favors carefully; he should base promotions in his service not just on personal loyalty but on the character and competence of the recipient. The Princeps, like everyone else, should maintain the pretense of equality that characterized exchanges among the nobility.
And, he is not only a dispenser of favors but part of a reciprocal system; he should receive benefits from his amici ; as Seneca puts it, even the Princeps should give “with a look of humanity, or at any rate of gentleness and kindness,” as “by one who, although my superior” yet does not “exalt himself above me.” Griffin concludes, “Being involved in such horizontal exchanges enabled the Princeps to demonstrate his adherence to the aristocratic code in receiving benefactions, not just in giving them. The fact that his friends were reciprocating in kind was confirmed, as they no doubt anticipated, by his own will. For he was similarly generous, naming many friends, along with relatives, as heirs in the third degree, besides leaving legacies to many of his friends.”