Seneca · c. 4 BCE – 65 CE
On Benefits 6.3 ¶1–2 — Seneca
Translation by Aubrey Stewart (1887)
Seneca, On Benefits 6.3 ¶1–2
I think that a fine passage in Rabirius’s poem, where M. Antonius, seeing his fortune deserting him, nothing left him except the privilege of dying, and even that only on condition that he used it promptly, exclaims, “What I have given, that I now possess!”
Cite this passage
Seneca, On Benefits 6.3 ¶1–2, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1887)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-benefits/6.3.1
Seneca, Dialogues, tr. Aubrey Stewart (1887–1889). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesQuotes a line from a poem in which a ruined Mark Antony, with only the option of dying left, declares that what he gave away is what he now truly possesses. It illustrates that generosity is a possession which fortune cannot confiscate.
Themes and situations
- Gratitude
- Wealth and poverty
- Death and mortality
- Kindness and forgiveness
- Change and impermanence