Horace on Gratitude

Epicurus wrote an essay, now lost, on gifts and graces ( peri doron kai charitos ), and Norman DeWitt calls Horace’s epistle 1.7 to Maecenas a “sermon” on the theme of Epicurus’ essay. He commends the generosity of Maecenas, contrasting him with a proverbial “Calabrian host” who urged a guest to take as many pears as he pleased. “I’m as grateful as if I’d been sent away weighed down,” says the recipient, to which the hose replies, “As you wish: you’re leaving them for the pigs to guzzle.”

Hardly a gift that inspires gratitude. Horace comments that “Lavish fools make gifts of what they despise and dislike,” and observes that the benefactor’s attitude toward his gift can only provoke ingratitude from the recipient: “They yield, and will forever yield, a crop of ingratitude.” Giving must be generous, but it must also be wise, and wisdom in giving manifests itself in two ways: The wise and good must be “ready to help the worthy,” and they must also know “how real and false coins differ.” This latter point is not entirely clear: Horace apparently believes that givers must know the real value of their gifts, neither overestimating nor underestimating their value. And they must also be careful to give gifts that are desirable – not pears destined for the pig sty. Presumably too the wise man will be careful to distinguish between true and false worthiness in the recipient.

Horace continues his letter with a parable about a slim fox who snuck into a barn, ate the vermin, and then got stuck trying to get out the way he had come. A weasel advised him to go away, slim down, and then fit through the entrance. Horace jokingly says, “If I’m reproached with this tale, I’ll renounce all I have.” Though he enjoys the fineries of his friend’s house, he confesses that he “wouldn’t lose freedom and peace for Arabia’s wealth.” If he has received anything unfittingly, he is willing to return it: “Try me, and see if I could cheerfully return your gifts.”

He cites the example of Telemachus as one who rightly returned gifts instead of receiving them with gratitude. He refused Agamemnon’s gift of horses since “Ithaca’s no fit place for horses, it hasn’t the wide, flat plains, it isn’t rich in grasses.” Agamemnon’s horses are “fitter” for Agamemnon, and so Telemachus returned them. Wisdom in receiving gifts, for Horace as for Seneca, includes humility and an honest assessment of whether one is capable of caring well for the gift received.

The letter ends with a story about a famous lawyer named Philippus, who spies an auctioneer, Volteius Mena, idling in town and invites him to a meal. Volteius had been making a living “selling cheap goods to working folk,” but after dinner with Philippus, he becomes attached to the wealthier patron: “After that he was often seen to race like a fish to the baited hook, a dawn attendant, a constant guest, so was summoned to visit the country estate when the Latin games were called. Pulled by the ponies he never stops praising the Sabine soil and skies. Philippus watches and smiles, and seeking light relief and laughter from any source, gives him seven thousand sesterces , offers a loan of seven more, and persuades him to buy a small farm. He buys it. Not to bore you with an over-long, rambling tale, the city-dweller turns rustic, rattling on about furrows, and vineyards, stringing his elm-trees, killing himself with zeal, aged by his passion for yields.” The farm fails, and Volteius angrily confronts Philippus: “I beg you, implore you, by your guardian spirit, your own right hand, your household gods, give me back the life I once had!”

Gifts can become chains, reciprocity a form of slavery. As Horace says, “When a man sees by how much that he’s left surpasses what he sought, he should swiftly return to what he lost.” Here Horace reflects the Epicurean caution about ambition: Had Volteius remained fully grateful for his present circumstances, he would not have been tempted by the “more” that Philippus offered. Or, carpe diem.