{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "seneca.de_beneficiis",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/seneca/de-beneficiis/livre-2/passage-19/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "On Benefits",
    "author": "Seneca",
    "date": "c. 56-64 CE",
    "summary": "Seneca examines the art of giving, receiving, and returning a benefit in a society structured by obligation. Intention, gratitude, debt, and freedom distinguish moral exchange from commercial calculation and humiliating power.",
    "learning": "Distinguish benefit from the object given, analyze intention and gratitude, and examine how a free relationship can arise within systems of dependence.",
    "long_summary": "The books analyze choice of recipient, manner and timing of giving, recognition of intention, and conduct toward ingratitude. A benefit is not the object transferred; it lies in benevolent will, which return should continue without a fixed price.\n\nGenerosity claims to create a bond among moral equals but operates within Roman patronage and hierarchy. Seneca confronts that tension through cases, objections, and revisions rather than a simple code of reciprocity.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "Roman world, 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood.",
        "science": "Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory.",
        "medicine": "Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist.",
        "transport": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky.",
        "agriculture": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour.",
        "communication": "Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand.",
        "clothing": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood. Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory. Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky. Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "stoicism",
        "label": "Stoicism"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "ancient",
        "label": "Antiquity"
    },
    "languages": [
        "lat",
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "annotation_file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-beneficiis/annotations/lat-perseus-editorial-notes.ndjson",
            "annotation_records": 91,
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-beneficiis/representations/lat-perseus-lat2.ndjson",
            "language": "lat",
            "records": 228,
            "role": "original",
            "source_id": "perseus.seneca.de_beneficiis.perseus_lat2"
        },
        {
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-beneficiis/representations/en-stewart.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 228,
            "source_id": "project-gutenberg.seneca.aubrey-stewart-de-beneficiis-1887",
            "translator": "Aubrey Stewart"
        },
        {
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/seneca/de-beneficiis/representations/fr-baillard.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "records": 228,
            "source_id": "baillard-1914-wikisource-fr",
            "translator": "Joseph Baillard"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "beneficence",
            "label": "Beneficence"
        },
        {
            "id": "duty",
            "label": "Duty"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "justice",
            "label": "Justice"
        },
        {
            "id": "roles",
            "label": "Roles and relationships"
        },
        {
            "id": "salvation",
            "label": "Salvation"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "seneca.de_beneficiis"
    ],
    "passages": 228,
    "word_count": 81267,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 81267,
        "fr": 68574,
        "lat": 45461
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "seneca_treatise_book_chapter_v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "book",
                "label_fr": "Livre",
                "label_en": "Book"
            },
            {
                "key": "chapter",
                "label_fr": "Chapitre",
                "label_en": "Chapter"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Chapitre",
        "leaf_en": "Chapter"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:seneca.de_beneficiis:2.19",
    "canonical_ref": "2.19",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "lat",
            "text": "Vides non esse magnum in ipsa re momentum, quoniam non videtur dedisse beneficium, qui a malo animo profuit ; casus enim beneficium est, hominis iniuria. Leonem in amphitheatro spectavimus, qui unum e bestiariis agnitum, cum quondam eius fuisset magister, protexit ab impetu bestiarum. Num ergo beneficium est ferae auxilium ? Minime, quia nec voluit facere nec faciendi animo fecit. Quo loco feram posui, tyrannum pone ; et hic vitam dedit et illa, nec hic nec illa beneficium. Quia non est beneficium accipere cogi, non est beneficium debere, cui nolis. Ante des oportet mihi arbitrium mei, deinde beneficium.",
            "edition": "Perseus canonical Latin TEI",
            "source_id": "perseus.seneca.de_beneficiis.perseus_lat2",
            "translation_type": "original"
        },
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "You see that the actual thing itself is not of much importance, because it is not regarded as a benefit at all, if you do good when you intended to do evil; in such a case the benefit is done by chance, the man did harm. I have seen a lion in the amphitheatre, who recognized one of the men who fought with wild beasts, who once had been his keeper, and protected him against the attacks of the other animals. Are we, then, to say that this assistance of the brute was a benefit? By no means, because it did not intend to do it, and did not do it with kindly intentions. You may class the lion and your tyrant together: each of them saved a man's life, yet neither conferred a benefit. Because it is not a benefit to be forced to receive one, neither is it a benefit to be under an obligation to a man to whom we do not wish to be indebted. You must first give me personal freedom of decision, and then your benefit.",
            "translator": "Aubrey Stewart",
            "edition": "On Benefits (1887)",
            "source_id": "project-gutenberg.seneca.aubrey-stewart-de-beneficiis-1887",
            "translation_type": "historical_human_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Un tyran avait un abcès qui fût percé par le poignard d’un homme venu pour l’égorger. Ce tyran dut-il le remercier de ce qu’un mal, devant lequel l’art des médecins avait reculé, se trouvait guéri par l’assassinat ? Tu vois que le résultat importe assez peu, car je ne puis regarder comme bienfaiteur quiconque, voulant me nuire, m’aura servi. Au hasard appartient le bienfait, à l’homme l’offense. Nous avons vu dans l’amphithéâtre un lion qui, reconnaissant son ancien maître dans une des victimes qu’on livrait aux bêtes, le protégea contre toute attaque . Est-ce un bienfait que le secours de ce lion ? Non : il n’a ni voulu faire ni fait un acte réfléchi de bienfaisance. Au lieu d’une bête féroce, mets un tyran. Il m’aura sauvé la vie comme elle ; mais ni elle ni lui ne sont des bienfaiteurs. Il n’y a pas bienfait, si j’ai reçu forcément ; il n’y a pas bienfait, si je dois à qui je ne voudrais pas devoir. Avant tout laisse-moi mon libre arbitre : tu donneras après.",
            "translator": "Joseph Baillard",
            "edition": "Œuvres complètes de Sénèque le Philosophe (1914)",
            "source_id": "baillard-1914-wikisource-fr",
            "translation_type": "historical_human_translation"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "fa4e91304def34e71f3469b3199509b1b2109ad92a2a88a67ee8febfaf8e4b21"
}