Seneca on giving

To preclude the giver from always looking for a return-as-res, Seneca employs a famous paradox: the benefactor should immediately forget the gift; the beneficiary should always remember it (2.1o.4). At the end of the treatise, Seneca admits that this is somewhat hyperbolic language (7.22–25): what he is really targeting is the tendency of donors to keep harping on about their gifts and their desire to enhance their honor, to humiliate the recipient, or to prompt some material return. In the same vein, he criticizes any benefaction that is performed for the sake of utilitas: one should give for the goodness of giving alone (1.23), and for the benefit of the beneficiary, not for one’s own profit (4.1–15).—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 49