Ancient and modern | 12 March 2011

As the governor of the Bank of England wades into the fray, it does not seem too much to ask of bankers to make it clear they are spending a portion of their bonuses on the Big Society. Those who already are must overcome their modesty and let us know about it.

Euergesia — ‘benefaction, philanthropy’ — was a virtue of the well-born Greek. Many inscriptions and statues, erected by the euergetist to himself or by a grateful people, attest the practice. The culture spread to Rome. Over 11 years, Pliny the Younger spent two million sesterces on his home town in benefactions.

Discussion about the theory of giving was intense. In general, euergetism was personal and reciprocal: it served the interests of the giver — everything from patriotic display to political self-advancement — as well as that of the recipient. But in fifth-century bc Athens, radical democrats thought a lavish benefactor might be seeking political advantage. So they invented the leitourgia (our ‘liturgy’), under which the 300 richest citizens in any year were ordered to subsidise state activities. Greeks then started to argue that the generous man did not look for a return. But this meant that, if one was done a good turn, one should refuse on principle to respond. If so, did this make receiving the benefit a nuisance? Some argued it did.

To get out of this bind, the Roman Stoic Seneca defined a beneficium as ‘an action which gives pleasure and finds pleasure in so doing, from a natural and spontaneous inclination’. Seneca does agree that ‘everyone who serves another has thereby served his own advantage’ but goes on to insist that the advantage consists not in what one gets back, but from the fact that all virtue is its own reward.