Author Description

This is the first new critical edition of De beneficiis in almost 100 years, based on a fresh examination of the extant archetype (N) and on more extensive familiarity with the later medieval and humanist manuscripts than any previous edition. Each work in the edition is provided with a critical apparatus that is both informative and economical. The apparatus fontium et testium standing between the text and the critical apparatus on each page provides full references to the texts Seneca himself cites and extensive cross-references among the three works in the edition and between those works and Seneca's other prose writings, along with many parallel passages beyond the Senecan corpus. An appendix critica to De beneficiis contains much information on the text's documentary basis and critical history that future editors should find useful to have at hand even if it was not judged worthy of inclusion in this edition's critical apparatus.