Laelius on Friendship

SECTION 1Quintus Mucius the augur often used to recount, from memory and with great charm, many stories about his father-in-law, Gaius Laelius, and never hesitated in any conversation to call him a wise man. As for me, when I had assumed the toga of manhood, my father placed me under Scaevola’s care with the understanding that, so far as I could and was permitted, I should never leave the old man’s side. Accordingly, I committed to memory many arguments judiciously developed by him, as well as many sayings of his, brief and aptly expressed, and I strove to become wiser through his wisdom. After his death, I attached myself to Scaevola the pontiff, whom I venture to call the one man in our commonwealth most distinguished both for intellect and for justice. But of him another time; I now return to the augur.

SECTION 2Among the many occasions I remember, there was one when he was sitting at home, as was his custom, on the semicircular bench, with me and only a very few close friends present, and he happened upon a subject that was then on nearly everyone’s lips. You surely remember, Atticus—and all the more because you were closely associated with Publius Sulpicius—how great was the astonishment or indignation of the public when Sulpicius, as tribune of the plebs, became divided by a deadly hatred from Quintus Pompeius, who was then consul, though he had lived with him in the closest and most affectionate intimacy.

SECTION 3And so, when Scaevola happened to mention that very affair, he related to us a conversation on friendship held by Laelius with himself and with Laelius’s other son-in-law, Gaius Fannius, son of Marcus, a few days after the death of Africanus. I committed the substance of that discussion to memory and have set it forth in this book in my own fashion; for I have introduced the speakers as though they themselves were talking, so that “I said” and “he said” need not be inserted too often, and so that the conversation might seem to be taking place face-to-face, among persons actually present.

SECTION 4For since you often urged me to write something about friendship, the subject appeared to me worthy both of universal consideration and of our own intimacy; and so I willingly complied, that at your request I might benefit many. But just as in the Cato the Elder, which was written for you on old age, I introduced the aged Cato as the speaker, because no person seemed better suited to speak about that time of life than one who had remained an old man for so long and in old age itself had flourished beyond all others, so, since we had learned from our fathers that the friendship of Gaius Laelius and Publius Scipio was especially memorable, the person of Laelius seemed to me a fitting one to discuss friendship in the very terms that Scaevola remembered him using. Moreover, this form of discourse, resting on the authority of men of former times—and illustrious men at that—somehow seems to possess greater dignity. Thus, when I read my own work, I am sometimes so affected that I imagine Cato, not myself, is speaking.

SECTION 5But as I, then an old man, wrote to an old man about old age, so in this book, as a most devoted friend, I have written to a friend about friendship. Then it was Cato who spoke, a man than whom scarcely anyone in those days was older and no one wiser; now Laelius, both a wise man—for so he was regarded—and a man eminent for the glory of his friendship, will speak about friendship. I should like you to turn your attention away from me for a little while and imagine that Laelius himself is speaking. Gaius Fannius and Quintus Mucius come to their father-in-law after the death of Africanus; they begin the conversation, and Laelius replies. His entire discourse concerns friendship, which, as you read it, you will recognize for yourself.

SECTION 6FANNIUS. That is true, Laelius; for no man was better than Africanus, nor more illustrious. But you ought to realize that the eyes of everyone are fixed upon you alone: they both call you and consider you a wise man. This distinction used to be accorded to Marcus Cato; and we know that Lucius Acilius was called wise in our fathers’ time, though each was so called in a somewhat different sense: Acilius because he was considered learned in civil law, Cato because he possessed experience in many affairs, and because many instances were recounted of things that he had either prudently foreseen, resolutely carried out, or shrewdly answered, both in the Senate and in the Forum. For that reason, in his old age he already bore “the Wise” almost as a surname.

SECTION 7But you are considered wise in still another sense—not only by nature and character, but also through study and learning—and not as the common people use the word, but as educated men commonly apply the name “wise.” Such a man, we are told, existed nowhere else in Greece—for those who investigate these matters more precisely do not count the men called the Seven among the truly wise—but at Athens there was one, and he indeed was judged by Apollo’s oracle to be the wisest of men. They believe that your wisdom consists in regarding all that is yours as resting within yourself, and in considering the accidents of human life inferior to virtue. And so they ask me—and, I suppose, they likewise ask Scaevola here—how you bear the death of Africanus, especially because on the last Nones, when, as usual, we came to the gardens of Decimus Brutus the augur for the purpose of study, you were not present, although you had always been most scrupulous in observing that day and performing that duty.

SECTION 8SCAEVOLA. They do indeed ask me often, Gaius Laelius, as Fannius has said. But I answer according to what I have observed: that you bear with moderation the grief you have suffered through the death of a man who was at once most eminent and your dearest friend; that you could not have remained unmoved, nor would such insensibility have accorded with your humanity; but that the reason you were absent from our college on the Nones was ill health, not sorrow.LAELIUS. Your answer, Scaevola, is both correct and true. For no personal affliction should have kept me from that duty, which I always performed when my health permitted; nor do I think that any mischance can cause a steadfast man to leave a duty unperformed.

SECTION 9As for you, Fannius, when you say that people accord me a distinction I neither recognize nor claim for myself, you speak as a friend; but in my opinion you do not judge Cato rightly. Either no one was ever wise—which I am more inclined to believe—or, if anyone was, he was. How he bore his son’s death, to say nothing of everything else! I remembered Paulus; I had seen Gallus; but their sons were boys, while Cato’s was a mature and proven man.

SECTION 10Therefore take care not to rank above Cato even that very man whom Apollo, as you say, judged the wisest of all; for in Cato it is deeds that are praised, in the other only words.But as for myself, now that I am speaking to you both, let me tell you how matters stand. If I were to deny that I am moved by longing for Scipio, let wise men judge how rightly I should act—but I should certainly be lying. I am indeed moved, bereft as I am of such a friend as, in my judgment, no one will ever be, and, as I can confidently affirm, no one certainly ever was. Yet I need no medicine. I console myself, above all with the consolation that I am free from the error that commonly torments men when their friends die. I believe that no evil has befallen Scipio; it has befallen me, if it has befallen anyone. But to be deeply distressed by one’s own misfortunes is the mark not of a man who loves his friend, but of one who loves himself.

SECTION 11Who, indeed, can deny that all went splendidly with him? Unless he had wished for immortality—a thing he thought least of all desirable—what blessing that it was lawful for a human being to desire did he fail to attain? While still a young man, by his incredible valor, he at once surpassed the highest hopes that his fellow citizens had formed of him even in his boyhood. He never sought the consulship, yet was made consul twice: the first time before the legal age, the second at the proper time for himself, though almost too late for the commonwealth. By destroying two cities bitterly hostile to this empire, he put an end not only to wars then being waged, but also to wars yet to come. What need have I to speak of his most gracious manners, his devotion to his mother, his generosity toward his sisters, his kindness to his household, his justice toward all? These things are known to you. How dear he was to the state was shown by the mourning at his funeral. What benefit, then, could the addition of a few years have brought him? For though old age is not burdensome—as I remember Cato discussing with Scipio and me a year before his death—it nevertheless takes away that youthful vigor which Scipio retained even to the end.

SECTION 12Therefore, whether in fortune or in glory, his life was such that nothing could have been added to it; and the suddenness of his death spared him all sensation of dying. Of the manner of that death it is difficult to speak; you see what men suspect. Yet this may truthfully be said: of all the many days Publius Scipio saw in his life, days of the greatest distinction and happiness, the most glorious was that day when, after the Senate had adjourned, he was escorted home toward evening by the conscript fathers, the Roman people, the allies, and the Latins—the day before he departed from life—so that from so lofty a pinnacle of dignity he seems to have passed to the gods above rather than to those below.

SECTION 13For I do not agree with those who have lately begun to maintain that souls perish together with bodies and that death destroys everything. With me the authority of the ancients carries greater weight: either that of our own ancestors, who accorded such sacred rites to the dead—which they certainly would not have done had they thought those rites in no way concerned them—or that of those who once lived in this land and, by their institutions and teachings, educated Magna Graecia, which now indeed has been destroyed but then was flourishing; or else the authority of that man whom Apollo’s oracle judged the wisest of all. He did not say one thing at one time and another at another, as most men do, but always maintained the same doctrine: that the souls of human beings are divine; that when they have departed from the body, the return to heaven lies open to them; and that the path is swiftest for every soul that is best and most just.

SECTION 14Scipio held this same belief. Indeed, as though he had a presentiment, a very few days before his death, when Philus and Manilius and several others were present, and you too, Scaevola, had come with me, he discoursed for three days on the commonwealth; and almost the final subject of that discussion was the immortality of souls, a doctrine that he said he had heard from Africanus in a dream. If it is true that at death the soul of every good man most readily flies forth, as from the prison and fetters of the body, whose journey to the gods can we suppose to have been easier than Scipio’s? Therefore I fear that to mourn his fate would be the part of one who envies him rather than of one who loves him. But if the other view is nearer the truth, and souls and bodies suffer the same destruction and no consciousness remains, then, just as there is nothing good in death, there is surely nothing evil. For when sensation is lost, a man becomes just as though he had never been born at all; and yet we rejoice that Scipio was born, and this state, for as long as it endures, will rejoice in it.

SECTION 15Therefore, as I said above, all went exceedingly well with him, but less happily with me, since it would have been more fitting that, as I entered life before him, so I should have departed from it before him. Yet I take such pleasure in the recollection of our friendship that I seem to have lived a blessed life because I lived with Scipio. With him I shared concern for public and private affairs; with him I shared both home and military service; and between us there existed that in which the whole power of friendship lies: the most complete harmony of purposes, pursuits, and opinions. And so I take less pleasure in that reputation for wisdom which Fannius mentioned a moment ago—especially since it is undeserved—than in the hope that the memory of our friendship will be everlasting. This is all the dearer to me because, through all the ages, scarcely three or four pairs of friends are named; and among them, I seem justified in hoping that the friendship of Scipio and Laelius will be known to posterity.

SECTION 16FANNIUS. That must surely be so, Laelius. But since you have mentioned friendship and we have leisure, you would do me a very great kindness—and, I hope, Scaevola as well—if, just as you are accustomed to discuss other subjects when questions are put to you, you would now discuss friendship: what you think of it, what you judge its nature to be, and what precepts you would give concerning it.SCAEVOLA. It would indeed give me pleasure; and just as I was about to make that very request of you, Fannius anticipated me. Therefore you would do us both a very great kindness.

SECTION 17LAELIUS. I should certainly not be reluctant, if I had confidence in my own ability; for the subject is noble, and, as Fannius has said, we have leisure. But who am I, and what ability have I? It is the custom of learned men—and especially of the Greeks—to have a subject proposed to them on which they may discourse, however suddenly. That is a great undertaking and requires no little practice. Therefore I think you should seek whatever can be formally argued about friendship from those who profess such arts. I can only exhort you to place friendship above all other human things; for nothing is so well suited to nature, nothing so fitting alike in prosperity and adversity.

SECTION 18But this is my first conviction: friendship can exist only among good men. I do not press the definition to the quick, as those do who discuss these matters more subtly—perhaps with truth, but with too little regard for common usefulness. For they deny that anyone is a good man unless he is wise. Let that be so. But by wisdom they mean a perfection that no mortal has yet attained. We, however, must look to what is found in practice and in ordinary life, not to what is imagined or wished for. I shall never say that Gaius Fabricius, Manius Curius, and Tiberius Coruncanius, whom our ancestors judged to be wise, were wise according to the standard of those philosophers. Let them therefore keep for themselves that title of wisdom, invidious and obscure as it is, but let them concede that these men were good. Yet they will not do even that; they will deny that goodness can be conceded to anyone but the wise man.

SECTION 19Let us proceed, then, with what they call plain common sense. Men who conduct themselves and live in such a way that their good faith, integrity, fairness, and generosity are approved, who are free from all greed, lust, and recklessness, and who possess great steadfastness—as did those whom I named just now—should, I think, be called good men, just as they have been regarded as good, because, so far as human beings can, they follow nature, the best guide to a good life.For this, I believe, is plainly to be seen: we were born in such a way that there is a certain fellowship among all human beings, but a closer one in proportion as each person stands nearer to us. Thus fellow citizens are dearer than foreigners, and relatives than strangers; for with them nature herself has engendered friendship, though that friendship does not possess sufficient strength. Friendship, indeed, has this advantage over kinship: goodwill may be removed from kinship, but not from friendship; for if goodwill is removed, the name of friendship is removed, while the name of kinship remains.

SECTION 20How great the power of friendship is may best be understood from this: out of the boundless fellowship of the human race, which nature herself has brought into being, the relationship has been so contracted and narrowed that every bond of affection is joined either between two persons or among only a few.Friendship is nothing other than complete harmony in all things, divine and human, joined with goodwill and affection; and with the possible exception of wisdom, I hardly know whether anything better than friendship has been given to man by the immortal gods. Some prefer riches, others good health, others power, others public honors, and many even pleasures. This last is the aim of beasts; the former are fleeting and uncertain, resting not so much on our own judgment as on the caprice of fortune. Those, however, who place the highest good in virtue are indeed right to do so; but it is this very virtue that both engenders and sustains friendship, nor can friendship exist in any way without virtue.

SECTION 21Now let us interpret virtue according to the practice of our own lives and the usage of our own speech, and not measure it, as certain learned men do, by grandiloquent definitions. Let us count as good men those who are commonly so regarded—the Pauli, the Catos, the Galli, the Scipios, the Phili. Ordinary life is content with such men; let us leave aside those who are nowhere to be found at all.

SECTION 22Friendship between men of this kind, then, contains advantages so great that I can scarcely express them. To begin with, how can life be “a life worth living,” as Ennius says, if it does not find repose in the mutual goodwill of a friend? What is sweeter than having someone with whom you dare to speak of everything as freely as with yourself? What great enjoyment would there be in prosperity if you had no one to rejoice in it as much as you yourself? And adversity would be difficult to bear without someone who bore it even more heavily than you. Finally, all the other things that people seek are each useful for almost one purpose alone: riches, that you may use them; influence, that you may be courted; public honors, that you may be praised; pleasures, that you may rejoice; health, that you may be free from pain and perform the functions of the body. Friendship embraces the greatest number of purposes. Wherever you turn, it is at hand; it is excluded from no place; it is never untimely, never burdensome. Thus, as the saying goes, we do not use water or fire on more occasions than we use friendship. And I am not now speaking of the ordinary or commonplace kind of friendship, which nevertheless gives both pleasure and benefit, but of friendship true and perfect, such as belonged to those few whose friendships are renowned. For friendship makes prosperity more splendid and adversity lighter by sharing and dividing it.

SECTION 23Although friendship embraces advantages of the greatest number and magnitude, this one unquestionably surpasses them all: it shines before us with bright hope for the future and does not allow our spirits to grow weak or fall. Indeed, he who looks upon a true friend looks, as it were, upon an image of himself. Therefore the absent are present, the needy have abundance, the weak are strong, and—what is harder to say—the dead live: so great are the honor, remembrance, and longing of their friends that attend them. From this, the death of the departed seems blessed, while the life of those who remain is worthy of praise. But if you remove from the universe the bond of goodwill, no household and no city will be able to stand; not even the cultivation of the fields will endure. If it is not sufficiently understood how great the power of friendship and concord is, that power may be perceived from dissension and discord. For what household is so stable, what state so secure, that it cannot be utterly overthrown by hatred and division?From this one may judge how much good there is in friendship.

SECTION 24They say that a certain learned man of Acragas proclaimed in Greek verse that, among all the things which stand firm or move in nature and throughout the universe, friendship draws them together and discord scatters them. All mortals both understand this and confirm it by their conduct. Thus, whenever a friend has performed some duty by facing dangers or sharing them, who does not exalt that deed with the highest praise? What cries of applause rang through the entire theater not long ago at the new play of my guest-friend and friend Marcus Pacuvius, when, the king not knowing which of the two was Orestes, Pylades declared himself to be Orestes so that he might be killed in his place, while Orestes, as he truly was Orestes, persisted in declaring that he was! The audience stood and applauded a fictitious deed; what do we suppose they would have done at a real one? Nature herself readily revealed her power when men judged that something was rightly done by another which they could not have done themselves.Thus far, I think I have been able to tell you what I myself believe about friendship. If there are further questions—and I believe there are many—ask them, if you please, of those who make such matters the subject of formal debate.

SECTION 25FANNIUS. No, we would rather ask you. Though I have often questioned those men too, and have heard them with no reluctance, to be sure; but the thread of your discourse is of a different kind.SCAEVOLA. You would say so all the more, Fannius, if you had recently been present in Scipio’s gardens when the commonwealth was under discussion. What a champion of justice he proved himself then against Philus’s carefully prepared speech!FANNIUS. It was easy, certainly, for the most just of men to defend justice.SCAEVOLA. Well, then? Is it not easy for him to defend friendship, when he has won the greatest glory by preserving it with the utmost fidelity, steadfastness, and justice?

SECTION 26LAELIUS. This is force indeed. For what difference does it make how you compel me? You certainly do compel me. To resist the earnest wishes of my sons-in-law, especially in a good cause, is not only difficult but unfair.Whenever, then, I reflect upon friendship, this question generally seems to me the one that most deserves consideration: whether friendship has been sought because of weakness and need, so that by giving and receiving services each person might obtain from another whatever he could not accomplish by himself, and repay the favor in turn; or whether this is indeed a property of friendship, while another cause, more ancient, more beautiful, and more directly arising from nature herself, lies beneath it. For love, from which friendship takes its name, is the chief force in binding goodwill together. Advantages, indeed, are often obtained even from men who are cultivated and treated with deference under a pretense of friendship to suit the needs of the moment; but in friendship nothing is false, nothing feigned, and whatever exists in it is genuine and voluntary.

SECTION 27Therefore friendship seems to me to have arisen from nature rather than from need, through an inclination of the soul joined with a certain feeling of love, rather than through calculation of how much advantage the relationship would bring. The character of this feeling may be observed even in certain animals: for a time they so love the offspring born from them, and are so loved in return, that their feelings are readily apparent. In human beings this is far more evident: first, from the affection that exists between children and parents, which cannot be severed except by some abominable crime; and then, when a similar feeling of love arises, if we have found someone whose character and nature accord with our own, because we seem to discern in him something like a light of goodness and virtue.

SECTION 28For nothing is more lovable than virtue, nothing more powerfully attracts us to affection, since it is because of virtue and goodness that we feel in some measure affection even for men whom we have never seen. Who can mention Gaius Fabricius or Manius Curius, though he never saw them, without some benevolent affection for their memory? And who does not hate Tarquinius Superbus, Spurius Cassius, and Spurius Maelius? Against two commanders, Pyrrhus and Hannibal, we fought for supremacy in Italy. Toward the former, because of his uprightness, we bear no great hostility; the latter, because of his cruelty, this state will always hate.

SECTION 29But if the power of goodness is so great that we love it even in those whom we have never seen and, what is more, even in an enemy, what wonder is it if the hearts of men are moved when they seem to discern virtue and goodness in those with whom they may be joined by familiar association? Yet love is strengthened by a kindness received, by devotion clearly perceived, and by the addition of habitual companionship. When these are added to that first impulse of the heart and of love, an astonishing greatness of goodwill blazes forth.If there are those who think this goodwill arises from weakness, so that each person may have someone through whom he can obtain what he desires, they assign to friendship a thoroughly low and, so to speak, ignoble origin, since they would have it born of poverty and need. If that were so, the less a man believed he possessed within himself, the better fitted he would be for friendship. But the truth is far otherwise.

SECTION 30For the more confidence a man has in himself, and the more thoroughly he is fortified by virtue and wisdom, so that he needs no one and judges all his resources to lie within himself, the more he excels in seeking and cultivating friendships. What, then? Was Africanus in need of me? Not in the least, by Hercules! Nor was I in need of him. But I loved him from a certain admiration for his virtue, and he in turn loved me perhaps because of some opinion he had formed of my character; close companionship increased our goodwill. Yet although many great advantages followed, the causes of our affection did not arise from the hope of obtaining them.

SECTION 31For just as we are kindly and generous not in order to exact gratitude—for we do not put a kindness out at interest, but are inclined by nature toward generosity—so we believe that friendship should be sought not because we are led by the hope of reward, but because the whole fruit of friendship lies in love itself.

SECTION 32We differ widely from those who, in the manner of cattle, refer everything to pleasure; and no wonder. Men who have cast down all their thoughts upon a thing so low and contemptible can look up to nothing lofty, nothing magnificent or divine. Let us therefore remove such men from this discussion, and let us ourselves understand that the feeling of love and the affection of goodwill are engendered by nature when goodness has given some sign of itself. Those who are drawn to goodness attach themselves to it and move nearer, so that they may enjoy the companionship and character of the person whom they have begun to love; so that they may be equal and evenly matched in affection, and more inclined to confer benefits than to demand repayment; and so that this honorable rivalry may exist between them. In this way the greatest advantages will be obtained from friendship, and its origin in nature rather than in weakness will be nobler and truer. For if advantage were what cemented friendships, then a change in that advantage would dissolve them; but because nature cannot be changed, true friendships are therefore everlasting.You now see the origin of friendship, unless perhaps you wish to say something in reply.FANNIUS. No, do go on, Laelius! For in behalf of Scaevola here, who is younger than I, I answer by my senior’s right.

SECTION 33SCAEVOLA. Quite right. Let us therefore listen.LAELIUS. Then listen, excellent friends, to the things most frequently discussed between Scipio and me concerning friendship. He used to say, however, that nothing was more difficult than for a friendship to endure until the final day of life: for it often happened either that the same course ceased to be advantageous to both, or that they no longer held the same views about the commonwealth. He also said that men’s characters often changed, sometimes through adversity, sometimes under the increasing burden of age. He drew an example of these changes from the likeness of early youth, because the strongest affections among boys were often laid aside together with the bordered toga;

SECTION 34and even if those affections continued into young manhood, they were nevertheless sometimes severed by rivalry over a marriage match or over some advantage that both could not obtain. And if some men advanced still farther in friendship, their bond was nevertheless often shaken if they became rivals for public office. For no plague, he said, was more destructive to friendships than greed for money in most men, and, in the very best, competition for office and glory—a source from which the bitterest enmities had often arisen between the closest of friends.

SECTION 35Serious and generally just divisions also arose when something dishonorable was demanded of friends—for example, that they become agents of another’s lust or accomplices in wrongdoing. Those who refused, however honorably they acted, were nevertheless accused of abandoning the obligations of friendship by the men whose wishes they would not obey; while those who dared to demand anything whatever from a friend professed by the very demand that they themselves would do everything for a friend’s sake. Their long-standing grievance commonly destroyed not only intimacy but also engendered everlasting hatred. So many dangers, he said, hung over friendships like so many decrees of fate that to escape them all seemed to him a matter not merely of wisdom but also of good fortune.

SECTION 36Therefore let us first consider, if you please, how far affection ought to advance in friendship. If Coriolanus had friends, should they have borne arms with Coriolanus against their country? Should the friends of Vecellinus have aided him when he sought to make himself king, or those of Maelius have aided him?

SECTION 37We saw Tiberius Gracchus, when he was convulsing the republic, abandoned by Quintus Tubero and the friends of his own age. But Gaius Blossius of Cumae, a guest-friend of your family, Scaevola, came to me to plead for pardon—for I sat on the council of the consuls Laenas and Rupilius—and offered this as his excuse: that he had valued Tiberius Gracchus so highly that he thought himself bound to do whatever Gracchus wished. Then I said, “Even if he had wished you to carry torches against the Capitol?” “He would never have wished that,” he replied; “but if he had, I should have obeyed.” You see what an impious declaration that was. And, by Hercules, he acted accordingly—or even went beyond what he had said; for he did not merely obey the recklessness of Tiberius Gracchus, but took command of it, presenting himself not as the companion of his madness but as its leader. And so, in consequence of this frenzy, terrified by the special inquiry, he fled to Asia, joined the enemies of Rome, and paid to the republic the heavy and just penalty he owed.

There is therefore no excuse for wrongdoing if you have done wrong for a friend’s sake; for since an esteem for virtue has been the bond that first creates friendship, friendship can scarcely endure if you forsake virtue.

SECTION 38Now if we were to establish as right the principle that we should grant our friends whatever they wish, and obtain from them whatever we ourselves wish, the matter would indeed contain no fault—provided that we possessed perfect wisdom. But we are speaking of those friends who stand before our eyes, whom we see, or of whom tradition has given us knowledge, men known to ordinary life. From their number we must take our examples, and especially from those who approach most nearly to wisdom.

SECTION 39We know that Papus Aemilius was an intimate friend of Gaius Luscinus—for so we have learned from our fathers—and that they were twice consuls together and colleagues in the censorship. Tradition also records that Manius Curius and Tiberius Coruncanius were most closely united both with them and with each other. We cannot, therefore, even suspect that any one of these men ever demanded from a friend anything contrary to good faith, contrary to his oath, or contrary to the republic. Indeed, what need is there to say of such men that, had one made such a demand, he would not have obtained it, when they were men of the most scrupulous integrity, and when it is equally impious either to do such a thing when asked or to ask it? Tiberius Gracchus, however, was followed by Gaius Carbo and Gaius Cato—and, least of all at that time, by his brother Gaius, who is now his most ardent partisan.

SECTION 40Let this law, then, be established in friendship: that we neither ask for dishonorable things nor do them when asked. For it is a shameful excuse, and one that must by no means be accepted in any wrongdoing, least of all when a man admits that for a friend’s sake he has acted against the republic. For we, Fannius and Scaevola, have been placed in such a position that we are bound to look far ahead to the future dangers of the republic. The practice of our ancestors has already swerved somewhat from its proper course and track.

SECTION 41Tiberius Gracchus attempted to seize royal power—or rather, he actually reigned for a few months. Had the Roman people ever heard or seen anything like it? What his friends and kinsmen, continuing his course even after his death, did to Publius Scipio I cannot tell without tears. As for Carbo, we tolerated him as best we could because the punishment of Tiberius Gracchus was still fresh. But what I anticipate from the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus I do not care to prophesy. The evil then creeps onward, and once it has begun, it glides down the slope toward destruction. You see how great a corruption has already been caused by the ballot tablet: first through the Gabinian law, and two years later through the Cassian. I already seem to see the people estranged from the Senate and the gravest matters conducted at the caprice of the multitude. For more men will learn how such things are done than how they may be resisted.

SECTION 42To what end do I say this? Because no one attempts any such thing without accomplices. Good men must therefore be warned that, if through ignorance or some accident they fall into friendships of that kind, they must not think themselves so bound that they cannot withdraw from friends who are committing some grave offense against the republic. The wicked, moreover, must be assigned their punishment, and those who follow another should be punished no less severely than those who themselves have been the leaders in impiety. Who in Greece was more illustrious than Themistocles, who more powerful? Yet after, as commander in the Persian War, he had freed Greece from slavery, and had then been driven into exile through envy, he did not endure the injustice of his ungrateful country, though he ought to have endured it. He did the same thing that Coriolanus had done among us twenty years before. Neither man found anyone to assist him against his country; and so each took his own life.

SECTION 43Such a conspiracy among wicked men, therefore, must not merely be denied the shelter of friendship as an excuse; rather, it must be punished with every penalty, so that no one may suppose himself permitted to follow a friend who makes war upon his country. And indeed, considering the course events have begun to take, I am not sure that this may not happen someday. For my concern about what the republic will be after my death is no less than my concern about what it is today.

SECTION 44Let this, then, be established as the first law of friendship: that we ask honorable things of our friends and do honorable things for their sake; that we do not even wait until we are asked; that eagerness should always be present and hesitation absent; that we dare freely to give honest counsel; that in friendship the authority of friends who offer sound advice should have the greatest weight; that such authority should be employed in admonition, not only openly but even sternly if the occasion demands; and that, once employed, it should be obeyed.

SECTION 45For certain men whom I hear were regarded as wise in Greece seem to me to have adopted some astonishing opinions—though there is nothing they will not pursue with their subtle arguments. Some held that excessively close friendships should be avoided, lest one man be forced to bear anxiety for many; that each man has enough and more than enough to do with his own concerns; that it is troublesome to become too deeply entangled in those of others; and that the most convenient course is to keep the reins of friendship as loose as possible, so that one may draw them tight or slacken them whenever one wishes. For, they say, the chief requirement for a happy life is freedom from care, which the mind cannot enjoy if one man is, as it were, in labor for many.

SECTION 46Others, they say, speak even more inhumanly, touching upon a point I briefly mentioned a little while ago: that friendships should be sought for the sake of protection and assistance, not from goodwill or affection. Therefore, the less firmness and strength a man possessed, the more eagerly he sought friendships. From this it followed, they said, that weak women seek the protection of friendships more than men do, the poor more than the rich, and the unfortunate more than those who are thought prosperous.

SECTION 47What glorious wisdom! For those who remove friendship from life seem to remove the sun from the world; and from the immortal gods we possess nothing better than friendship, nothing more delightful. For what is this freedom from care? In appearance, indeed, it is alluring, but in reality it must be rejected in many circumstances. It is not reasonable to refuse to undertake any honorable affair or action, or to abandon it once undertaken, merely to avoid anxiety. If we flee from care, we must flee from virtue, for virtue must necessarily reject and hate, with some degree of concern, those things that are opposed to it: goodness, for example, hates malice; temperance, sensuality; and courage, cowardice. Thus you may observe that just men are most distressed by injustice, brave men by cowardice, and modest men by disgraceful conduct. It is therefore the mark of a rightly ordered mind both to rejoice in good things and to grieve at their opposites.

SECTION 48Therefore, if sorrow of mind falls upon the wise man—and assuredly it does, unless we suppose that all humanity has been torn from his soul—what reason is there for removing friendship utterly from life, merely to avoid taking upon ourselves some troubles on its account? For if all emotion is taken away, what difference remains—not merely between a beast and a human being, but between a human being and a tree trunk, a stone, or anything else of that kind? Nor should we listen to those who would have virtue be something hard and almost ironlike. In many matters, and especially in friendship, virtue is tender and responsive, so that it expands, as it were, at a friend’s good fortune and contracts at his misfortunes. Therefore, the anguish that must often be borne for a friend is not powerful enough to abolish friendship from life, any more than the cares and troubles brought by the virtues are sufficient reason for rejecting the virtues themselves.

But since friendship is formed, as I said above, when some indication of virtue shines forth and a kindred spirit draws near and attaches itself to it, then, whenever that occurs, love must necessarily arise.

SECTION 49For what could be more absurd than to delight greatly in many empty things—honor, fame, buildings, clothing, and bodily adornment—and yet take little delight in a living being endowed with virtue, one who can love or, so to speak, return love? For nothing is more delightful than goodwill repaid, nothing more pleasing than the mutual exchange of devotion and service.

SECTION 50And what if we also add—and rightly may it be added—that there is nothing which so entices and draws one thing to another as likeness draws men into friendship? It will surely be granted as true that good men love other good men and attach them to themselves as though united by kinship and nature. For nothing is more eager or more grasping in its pursuit of what resembles itself than nature. Therefore, Fannius and Scaevola, this much, I think, must be accepted as certain: among good men there exists an almost necessary goodwill toward other good men, and this goodwill is the fountain of friendship established by nature. But the same goodness also extends to the multitude. For virtue is not inhuman, selfish, or arrogant; it is accustomed to protect whole nations and to consult their welfare in the best possible way, which it certainly would not do if it shrank from affection for the common people.

SECTION 51Indeed, those who invent friendships for the sake of advantage seem to me to destroy the most lovable bond of friendship. For it is not so much the advantage obtained through a friend that gives us pleasure as the friend’s love itself; and what comes from a friend becomes delightful only if it has sprung from devotion. So far are friendships from being cultivated because of need that those who, by reason of wealth, resources, and above all virtue—in which lies the greatest protection—have the least need of another are the most generous and beneficent. Indeed, I am inclined to think that it is not even desirable for friends never to lack anything at all. For when would my devotion have had the opportunity to exert itself if Scipio had never needed my advice or assistance, either at home or in war? Friendship, therefore, did not follow advantage; rather, advantage followed friendship.

SECTION 52We should not, therefore, listen to men dissolved in luxury if they ever discourse upon friendship, which they know neither from experience nor from reason. For who is there, in the name of gods and men, who would choose to overflow with every resource and live amid an abundance of all things, on the condition that he love no one and himself be loved by no one? Such, of course, is the life of tyrants, in which there can be no good faith, no affection, no settled confidence in goodwill: everything is always suspicious and anxious, and there is no place for friendship.

SECTION 53For who can love a man whom he fears, or one by whom he believes himself to be feared? Yet tyrants are courted in pretense, at least for a time. But if they happen to fall, as generally happens, it is then understood how destitute of friends they were. Thus Tarquinius is said to have declared in exile that only then did he understand which of his friends had been faithful and which unfaithful, when he was no longer able to repay either kind.

SECTION 54And yet, considering his arrogance and brutality, I wonder whether he could ever have had any friend at all. Just as the character of the man I have mentioned made it impossible for him to acquire true friends, so the wealth of many men of overwhelming power excludes faithful friendships. For not only is Fortune herself blind, but she also generally makes blind those whom she embraces. Consequently, they are commonly carried away by disdain and insolence; and nothing can be more intolerable than a fortunate fool. Indeed, one may observe that men whose characters were formerly agreeable are changed by command, power, and prosperity: old friendships are scorned by them, while new ones are indulged.

SECTION 55What, moreover, could be more foolish than for men who possess the greatest abundance of resources, means, and wealth to procure everything else that money can procure—horses, servants, splendid clothing, costly vessels—yet fail to procure friends, the best and fairest furniture, so to speak, of life? For when they acquire those other things, they do not know for whom they are acquiring them or for whose sake they labor; since each of those possessions belongs to whoever proves strongest, while every man’s possession of his friendships remains stable and secure. Thus, even if those things which are, as it were, the gifts of Fortune should remain, life, if uncultivated and bereft of friends, still could not be pleasant. But enough on this point.

SECTION 56We must now determine what the bounds of friendship are, and what may be called the limits of affection. On this subject I see three opinions advanced, none of which I approve: first, that we should feel toward a friend exactly as we feel toward ourselves; second, that our goodwill toward our friends should correspond precisely and equally to their goodwill toward us; and third, that a man should be valued by his friends at exactly the value he sets upon himself.

SECTION 57I assent to none of these three opinions at all. For the first is not true—that a man should feel toward his friend just as he feels toward himself. How many things we do for our friends that we would never do for our own sake! We make requests of an unworthy man, we resort to entreaty, we assail someone more bitterly and pursue him more vehemently—acts that would be hardly honorable in our own affairs, but become entirely honorable when done for our friends. And there are many circumstances in which good men surrender, and allow to be taken from them, much of their own advantage, so that their friends rather than they themselves may enjoy it.

SECTION 58The second opinion defines friendship as an equal exchange of services and goodwill. But this is to reduce friendship to far too narrow and meager an accounting, insisting that the balance of receipts and payments must be even. True friendship seems to me richer and more abundant, and it does not keep a strict watch lest it give back more than it has received. For there is no reason to fear that something will spill over, or run to waste upon the ground, or that more than is fair will be heaped into friendship.

SECTION 59The third limit, however, is the worst of all: that a man should be valued by his friends exactly as highly as he values himself. For often in some men the spirit is too downcast, or their hope of improving their fortunes too broken. It is therefore not the part of a friend to feel toward such a man as he feels toward himself, but rather to strive to raise his friend’s prostrate spirit and lead him to better hopes and thoughts. Some other limit must therefore be established for true friendship, after I have first related what saying Scipio was accustomed above all to condemn. He maintained that no utterance more hostile to friendship could possibly have been devised than that of the man who said that one ought to love as if one were someday going to hate. Nor could he be persuaded to believe, as was commonly supposed, that Bias had said this—Bias, who was counted one of the Seven Sages. It was the maxim, he thought, of some impure or ambitious man, or of one who made everything serve his own power. For how can anyone be a friend to a man whom he believes he may someday be able to hate? Indeed, he will necessarily wish and hope that his friend may do wrong as often as possible, so as to give him, as it were, more handles for reproach; and conversely, he will necessarily be distressed, grieved, and envious at his friends’ right actions and successes.

SECTION 60Therefore this precept, whoever its author may be, serves only to destroy friendship. The rule that ought rather to have been given is that we should exercise such care in forming friendships that we never begin to love a man whom we might someday come to hate. Indeed, even if we had been less fortunate in our choice, Scipio thought that this should be endured rather than that we should look ahead to a time of enmity.

SECTION 61These, then, are the limits that I believe should be observed: when the characters of friends are morally sound, there should be between them, without any exception, a complete community of interests, purposes, and desires. Even if by some chance it should happen that we must assist desires of our friends that are not altogether just, in cases where their life or reputation is at stake, we may have to depart from the straight path, provided that utter disgrace does not follow; for there is a certain point up to which friendship may be granted indulgence. Yet reputation must not be neglected, nor should we regard the goodwill of our fellow citizens as an insignificant weapon in the conduct of affairs. To gather it by flattery and servile assent is shameful; but virtue, which is followed by affection, must by no means be rejected.

SECTION 62But—for I often return to Scipio, whose entire conversation was about friendship—he used to complain that men were more careful in every other matter: each could say how many goats and sheep he owned, but could not say how many friends he had. They exercised care in acquiring the former, yet were negligent in choosing friends, and possessed no marks or signs, as it were, by which to judge who was fit for friendship. We must therefore choose men who are firm, steady, and constant, a kind of which there is a great scarcity. Yet it is certainly difficult to judge a man without testing him, and the test must be made within friendship itself. Thus friendship outruns judgment and takes away the opportunity for testing.

SECTION 63It is therefore the part of a prudent man to check the rush of goodwill, as he would check a runner’s course, so that we may enter upon friendship only after putting our friends’ characters to the test in some degree, just as we use horses only after testing them. Some men are often revealed in a small matter of money, showing how unstable they are; while others, whom a small sum could not move, are exposed when a great sum is involved. But even if some are found who consider it sordid to prefer money to friendship, where shall we find men who do not place honors, magistracies, military commands, civil authority, and power above friendship—men who, when these things are offered on one side and the claims of friendship on the other, will not greatly prefer the former? For human nature is too weak to despise power; and even if men attain it by disregarding friendship, they suppose that their conduct will be obscured because friendship cannot have been disregarded without some weighty cause.

SECTION 64Thus true friendships are especially difficult to find among those engaged in the pursuit of public office and affairs of state. For where will you find the man who prefers his friend’s advancement to his own? And, to pass over this point, how burdensome and how difficult most men find it to share in another’s misfortunes! It is not easy to find one who will descend into them. Although Ennius rightly says, “A sure friend is discerned in an unsure hour,” still these two circumstances convict most men of fickleness and weakness: either they scorn their friends in prosperity or desert them in adversity. The man, therefore, who in both conditions has shown himself serious, constant, and steadfast in friendship must be judged to belong to a supremely rare and almost divine class of men.

SECTION 65The foundation of that stability and constancy which we seek in friendship is good faith, for nothing that is faithless can be stable. We should also choose a man who is frank, sociable, and sympathetic—that is, one who is moved by the same things as ourselves; and all these qualities belong to fidelity. For a devious and tortuous nature cannot be faithful; nor can a man who is not moved by the same things and is not congenial in nature be either faithful or steadfast. To this must be added that he should neither delight in bringing accusations nor believe them when they are brought to him; and all these qualities belong to that constancy which I have been discussing for some time. Thus the statement I made at the beginning proves true: friendship can exist only among good men.For it is the mark of a good man, whom we may equally call a wise man, to observe these two principles in friendship: first, that there be nothing false or feigned in it, since it is more honorable even to hate openly than to hide one’s opinion behind one’s countenance; and second, not merely to reject accusations brought by another, but also to refrain from being suspicious himself, forever imagining that his friend has somehow wronged him.

SECTION 66To these qualities there should be added a certain sweetness of speech and manners, by no means an insignificant seasoning of friendship. Gloom and unrelenting sternness do indeed possess a certain dignity, but friendship should be more relaxed, more free, and more agreeable, and more readily inclined toward every form of courtesy and affability.

SECTION 67At this point, however, there arises a somewhat difficult question: whether new friends who are worthy of friendship should ever be preferred to old ones, just as we are accustomed to prefer young horses to aged ones. The doubt is unworthy of a human being. For there should be no satiety in friendships, as there is in other things. The oldest friendships, like wines that bear aging, should be the sweetest; and the saying is true that many bushels of salt must be eaten together before the full duty of friendship has been discharged.

SECTION 68New friendships, however, if they offer hope that fruit will appear, as it does on plants that do not disappoint us, are certainly not to be rejected; yet old friendship must be preserved in its proper place, for the power of age and habit is very great. Indeed, in the case of the very horse I mentioned just now, if nothing stands in the way, everyone would rather use the one to which he is accustomed than one that is untrained and new. Nor does habit exert its force only upon this, which is a living creature, but also upon inanimate things, since we take delight in the very places—even mountainous and wooded places—in which we have long resided.

SECTION 69But the most important thing in friendship is that the superior should make himself equal to the inferior. For there are often certain distinctions of eminence, such as Scipio possessed within our little circle, so to speak. Yet he never placed himself above Philus, or Rupilius, or Mummius, or any of his friends of lower rank. His brother Quintus Maximus, indeed, an altogether excellent man but by no means his equal, Scipio treated as his superior because he was older; and he wished all his friends to become more distinguished through his support.

SECTION 70This is what all men should do and imitate: if they have attained any excellence of character, intellect, or fortune, they should share it with their own people and impart it to those nearest them. Thus, if they were born of humble parents, or if they have relatives weaker either in spirit or in fortune, they should increase their resources and bring them honor and dignity. So in the stories, those who for some time lived in servitude because their stock and lineage were unknown, when they are recognized and discovered to be the sons of gods or kings, nevertheless retain their affection for the shepherds whom for many years they regarded as their fathers. Surely this ought to be done far more in the case of real and acknowledged fathers. For the greatest fruit of intellect, virtue, and every kind of excellence is reaped when it is bestowed upon each of those nearest to us.

SECTION 71Therefore, just as those who hold the higher place in the bonds of friendship and close association ought to put themselves on an equal footing with those below them, so the latter ought not to resent being surpassed by their friends in intellect, fortune, or rank. Yet most of them are forever complaining about something, or even making reproaches, especially if they think they can claim to have performed some act dutifully, affectionately, and with effort on their part. A truly odious breed of men are those who reproach others with their services—services which the recipient ought to remember, but which the giver ought not to mention.

SECTION 72Therefore, just as those who are superior ought to lower themselves in friendship, so they ought in a certain sense to raise up those who are inferior. For some men make friendships burdensome because they imagine that they are being despised—something that generally happens only to those who think themselves deserving of contempt. Such men must be relieved of this belief not only by words, but also by deeds.

SECTION 73Moreover, each person should be granted only so much as, first, you yourself are able to accomplish, and, second, the person whom you love and assist is able to bear. For however eminent you may be, you cannot advance all your friends to the highest offices. Scipio, for example, was able to make Publius Rupilius consul, but he could not do the same for Rupilius’s brother Lucius. Even if you could bestow anything whatever upon another, you must still consider what he is capable of bearing.

SECTION 74As a general rule, friendships should be judged only after both character and age have grown settled and mature. If some men in early youth shared a passion for hunting or ball-playing, they need not therefore regard as intimate friends all those whom they loved at the time because they shared the same enthusiasm. On that principle, nurses and tutors would, by right of long acquaintance, claim the greatest share of our affection. They should not, indeed, be neglected, but they must be valued in a different way; otherwise stable friendships cannot endure. For unlike characters lead to unlike pursuits, and this dissimilarity severs friendships. Nor is there any other reason why good men cannot be friends with the wicked, or the wicked with the good, except that the distance between their characters and pursuits is as great as it can possibly be.

SECTION 75It may also rightly be laid down as a rule in friendship that an unrestrained affection must not, as very often happens, obstruct a friend’s great opportunities. To return to the legends, Neoptolemus could not have captured Troy if he had chosen to heed Lycomedes, at whose court he had been reared, when with many tears the king tried to prevent his departure. And important occasions often arise when one must part from friends. Whoever seeks to prevent this because he cannot easily endure the longing is weak and soft by nature, and for that very reason is less than just in friendship.

SECTION 76In every matter, therefore, one must consider both what one asks of a friend and what one allows a friend to obtain from oneself.

There is also a certain misfortune sometimes unavoidable in dissolving friendships—for now our discourse is descending from the intimate relations of the wise to ordinary friendships. The faults of friends often burst forth, sometimes against their friends themselves, sometimes against strangers, though the resulting disgrace spills over upon their friends. Friendships of this kind should therefore be effaced by gradually relaxing the intimacy and, as I heard Cato say, should be unstitched rather than torn apart—unless some utterly intolerable wrong has blazed forth, making it neither right nor honorable, nor indeed possible, to avoid an immediate estrangement and separation.

SECTION 77But if, as commonly happens, some change has taken place either in character or in pursuits, or if disagreement has arisen over political allegiance—I am speaking now, as I said a little earlier, not of friendships among the wise but of ordinary friendships—care must be taken that it not appear that friendship has merely been laid aside and hostility taken up in its place. For nothing is more shameful than to wage war against a man with whom one has lived on intimate terms. Scipio, as you know, had withdrawn from friendship with Quintus Pompeius on my account; and because of the political disagreement between them, he became estranged from our colleague Metellus. In both cases he acted with dignity and restraint, and without bitter resentment.

SECTION 78For this reason, our first care must be to prevent any breach between friends; but if such a thing does occur, we should make it seem that the friendship has died out rather than been violently destroyed. We must also take care that friendships do not turn into bitter enmities, from which quarrels, abuse, and insults arise. Yet if these are bearable, they must be endured, and this honor must be paid to the old friendship: the blame for the wrong should rest upon the man who commits it, not upon the man who suffers it.

In general, there is one safeguard and one precaution against all these faults and troubles: people must not begin to love too quickly, nor love those who are unworthy.

SECTION 79Those, however, are worthy of friendship who possess within themselves the reason why they should be loved. A rare breed! Yet all excellent things are rare, and nothing is more difficult than to find something wholly perfect of its kind in every respect. But most men recognize no good in human affairs except what is profitable, and they prize as friends, much as they do livestock, those from whom they hope to reap the greatest gain.

SECTION 80Thus they are deprived of that loveliest and most natural friendship, sought for its own sake and because of itself; nor do they take themselves as an example from which to learn the nature and magnitude of friendship’s power. For every man loves himself, not because he demands some payment from himself in return for his affection, but because each man is dear to himself for his own sake. Unless this same principle is carried over into friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is, as it were, a second self.

SECTION 81If this is evident among animals—birds, creatures of the water, beasts of the field, tame and wild—first, that they love themselves, for this instinct is born alike in every living creature; and then, that they seek and desire other animals of their own kind to which they may attach themselves, doing so with longing and with something resembling human love—how much more naturally does this happen in man, who both loves himself and seeks another whose soul he may so mingle with his own as to make almost one soul out of two!

SECTION 82Yet most men perversely—not to say shamelessly—wish to have the sort of friend they themselves are incapable of being, and they demand from their friends what they do not give to them. It is only fair that a man should first be good himself and then seek another like himself. Among such men the stability in friendship that we have long been discussing can be made secure: united by mutual affection, they will first master the desires to which other men are enslaved; then they will delight in fairness and justice, each will undertake everything for the other, and neither will ever ask of the other anything that is not honorable and right. Nor will they merely respect and love each other; they will also stand in awe of one another. For whoever removes a sense of shame from friendship strips it of its greatest adornment.

SECTION 83Therefore, those who believe that friendship gives free license to every passion and every sin are dangerously mistaken. Friendship was given us by nature as the helper of virtue, not as the companion of vice, so that virtue, since it could not reach the highest goals in isolation, might reach them when joined and allied with another. If such a partnership exists between any men, or has existed, or ever will exist, theirs must be considered the best and happiest companionship on the journey toward nature’s highest good.

SECTION 84This, I say, is the partnership that contains everything men deem desirable—honor, glory, tranquility of mind, and delight—so that when these are present life is happy, and without them it cannot be happy.

Since this is the best and greatest end, if we wish to attain it we must devote ourselves to virtue, without which we can obtain neither friendship nor anything else worth desiring. Those who neglect virtue yet imagine that they have friends discover at last that they were mistaken when some grave misfortune compels them to put those friends to the test.

SECTION 85For this reason—for it must be said again and again—you ought to love after you have judged, not judge after you have loved. But though we are punished for carelessness in many matters, we are punished most of all for carelessness in choosing and cherishing our friends. For we reverse the proper order of deliberation and try to undo what is already done, though an ancient proverb forbids it. After we have become entangled with one another through long association or even through mutual services, we suddenly break off our friendships in midcourse when some offense arises.

SECTION 86All the more blameworthy, therefore, is such great carelessness in a matter of the greatest necessity. For friendship is the one thing in human affairs whose usefulness everyone affirms with one voice. Virtue itself, indeed, is despised by many, who call it a kind of advertising and display. Many men scorn riches and, content with little, take pleasure in modest food and a simple manner of life. As for public honors, which set some men ablaze with desire, how many despise them so utterly that they regard nothing as emptier or more frivolous! Likewise, many men count as worthless the other things that seem marvelous to some. But about friendship everyone, without exception, thinks alike: those who have devoted themselves to public affairs, those who delight in the knowledge and study of the world, those who attend to their own business in a life of leisure, and, finally, those who have surrendered themselves wholly to pleasure—all agree that without friendship life is no life at all, provided they wish to live in some measure as free and cultivated men.

SECTION 87For friendship somehow winds its way through every human life and permits no manner of passing one’s days to remain wholly without it.

Indeed, even if a man were so harsh and savage by nature that he shunned and hated all contact with mankind—such a man as we are told that a certain Timon was at Athens—even he could not endure without seeking someone into whose presence he might spew the venom of his bitterness. This truth would be most clearly tested if something of the following sort could happen: suppose some god were to remove us from this crowded world of men and set us somewhere in complete solitude, supplying us there with abundance and plenty of everything nature desires, yet depriving us utterly of the power to see another human being. Who would be so hard as to endure such a life? From whom would solitude not rob every pleasure of its fruit?

SECTION 88True, then, is that saying which, as I recall, our elders used to attribute to Archytas of Tarentum, having heard it from elders of their own: if a man ascended into heaven and beheld the structure of the universe and the beauty of the stars, his wonder would give him no delight, though it would have been supremely delightful if he had had someone to whom he could tell of it. Thus nature loves nothing solitary and always leans upon something as though upon a supporting prop; and the sweetest support is found in one’s closest friend.

Yet although nature makes clear by so many signs what she wills, seeks, and desires, somehow we grow deaf and do not hear her warnings. For the practice of friendship is varied and complex, and many occasions for suspicion and offense arise; it is the part of a wise man sometimes to avoid them, sometimes to lessen them, and sometimes to endure them. One kind of offense alone must be risked if usefulness and loyalty are to be preserved in friendship: friends must often be admonished and rebuked, and such admonitions, when kindly meant, must be received in a friendly spirit.

SECTION 89But somehow it is true, as my friend says in The Woman of Andros:

“Complaisance wins friends; truth breeds hatred.”

Truth is troublesome if hatred, the poison of friendship, springs from it; but complaisance is much more troublesome, since by indulging his faults it allows a friend to rush headlong to ruin. The greatest blame, however, belongs to the man who both rejects the truth and is driven into deception by complaisance.

In this whole matter, therefore, judgment and care must be exercised: first, admonition must be free of bitterness; second, rebuke must be free of insult. In complaisance—since we are glad to use Terence’s word—let courtesy be present, but let flattery, the accomplice of vice, be banished far away; for flattery is unworthy not merely of a friend but even of a free man. One lives with a tyrant in one manner, with a friend in another.

SECTION 90But if a man’s ears are closed to the truth so that he cannot bear to hear it from a friend, his salvation must be despaired of. For that saying of Cato’s, like many of his sayings, is shrewd: bitter enemies serve some men better than friends who seem agreeable; the former often speak the truth, the latter never. And it is absurd that those who are admonished do not feel the distress they ought to feel, but do feel the distress from which they ought to be free. They are not anguished because they have done wrong; they resent being rebuked. Yet the reverse would be proper: they should grieve at the offense and rejoice at the correction.

SECTION 91Just as it is the mark of true friendship both to admonish and to be admonished—the one to be done frankly, though not harshly, and the other to be received patiently, without resentment—so we must hold that no plague in friendship is greater than flattery, cajolery, and servile assent. For, however many names one gives it, this vice belongs to shallow and deceitful men, who say everything to please and nothing for the sake of truth.

SECTION 92Now, while pretense is vicious in every matter, because it destroys and corrupts our judgment of what is true, it is most of all opposed to friendship; for it abolishes truth, without which the very name of friendship can have no force. For since the power of friendship consists in this, that a single mind is formed, as it were, from several, how can that come to pass if even within each person there is not one and the same mind at all times, but one that is shifting, changeable, and manifold?

SECTION 93What, indeed, can be so pliant, so wayward, as the mind of a man who adjusts himself not merely to another’s feelings and wishes, but even to his expression and his nod? “He says no; I say no. He says yes; I say yes. In short, I have ordered myself to assent to everything,” as the same Terence says—but he puts the words into the mouth of Gnatho. To admit such a sort of man as a friend is sheer folly.

SECTION 94Yet there are many men like Gnatho who surpass others in rank, fortune, and reputation; and their assent becomes especially offensive when authority is added to their vanity.

SECTION 95But with due care a flattering friend can be distinguished and discerned from a true one, just as everything painted and counterfeit can be distinguished from what is genuine and true. Even a public assembly, though composed of the most inexperienced men, is usually able to judge the difference between a demagogue—that is, a flattering and frivolous citizen—and one who is steadfast, sincere, and serious.

SECTION 96With what flatteries Gaius Papirius lately flooded the ears of the assembly when he proposed his law permitting tribunes of the plebs to be reelected! We spoke against it; but I shall say nothing of myself—I would rather speak of Scipio. Immortal gods, what dignity he possessed, what majesty in his speech! You could readily have called him the leader of the Roman people, not their follower. But you were present, and the speech is in everyone’s hands. And so a popular law was rejected by the votes of the people.

And, to return to myself, you remember, when Quintus Maximus, Scipio’s brother, and Lucius Mancinus were consuls, how popular Gaius Licinius Crassus’s law concerning the priesthoods appeared to be; for the right of filling vacancies in the colleges was being transferred to the favor of the people. He, incidentally, was the first to establish the practice of addressing the people while facing toward the Forum. Yet, when I spoke in defense of it, reverence for the immortal gods easily overcame his marketable oratory. This occurred while I was praetor, five years before I was elected consul. Thus that cause was defended more by its own merits than by the highest personal authority.

SECTION 97But if truth prevails even upon the stage—that is, in a public assembly, where there is ample scope for fiction and mere semblance—provided only that the truth is laid bare and brought into the light, what ought to happen in friendship, which is measured wholly by truth? Unless in friendship, as the saying goes, you see an open heart and reveal your own, you can have nothing trustworthy, nothing certain—not even the assurance that you love or are loved, since you do not know how genuine that love is. And yet this flattery, pernicious though it may be, can harm no one except the man who welcomes it and takes pleasure in it. Thus it happens that the man who most readily opens his ears to flatterers is the one who flatters himself and takes the greatest delight in himself.

SECTION 98Virtue, to be sure, loves itself; for it knows itself perfectly and understands how lovable it is. But I am not now speaking of virtue, but of the reputation for virtue. For many wish not so much to possess virtue itself as to appear to possess it. Such men delight in flattery; when a feigned speech is fashioned to suit their wishes, they take that hollow language as testimony to their own praises. There is no friendship, then, when one man is unwilling to hear the truth and the other is prepared to lie. Nor would the flattery of parasites in comedies seem witty to us if there were no swaggering soldiers.

“Does Thais truly offer me great thanks?”

It would have been enough to answer, “Great thanks.”

“No—enormous thanks,” he says.

The flatterer always magnifies whatever the man whose wishes he is serving wants to be considered great.

SECTION 99Therefore, although this flattering falsehood has its power chiefly over those who themselves entice and invite it, even men of greater seriousness and constancy must be warned to take care lest they be caught by cunning flattery.

For no one fails to recognize open adulation unless he is utterly witless; but great care must be taken that the subtle and secret flatterer does not insinuate himself. He is not at all easy to recognize, since he often flatters even while opposing us, cajoles us while pretending to quarrel, and at last surrenders and allows himself to be defeated, so that the man who has been made a fool of may seem to have shown the greater insight. But what is more shameful than to be made a fool of? All the more care must be taken that this does not happen:

“How splendidly today you have handled and fooled me,More than all the foolish old men of comedy!”

SECTION 100For even in plays the most foolish character is that of the shortsighted and credulous old man.

But somehow my discourse has drifted away from the friendships of perfect men—that is, of the wise, by which I mean the kind of wisdom that seems attainable by a human being—and descended to the friendships of frivolous men. Let us therefore return to those first principles and at last bring them to a conclusion.

Virtue, I say, Gaius Fannius and you, Quintus Mucius, both creates friendships and preserves them. In virtue there is harmony, in virtue stability, in virtue constancy. When virtue has raised itself up and displayed its light, and has beheld and recognized that same light in another, it draws near to it and in turn receives what is present in the other. From this either love or friendship bursts into flame—for both words are derived from loving. And to love is nothing other than to cherish the very person whom one loves, without any need to be supplied or any advantage to be sought. Yet advantage itself blossoms from friendship, even if you have made little effort to pursue it.

SECTION 101With this affection, when we were young, we loved those old men Lucius Paulus, Marcus Cato, Gaius Gallus, Publius Nasica, and Tiberius Gracchus, the father-in-law of our Scipio. Such affection shines still more brightly among contemporaries, as it did between Scipio and me, Lucius Furius, Publius Rupilius, and Spurius Mummius. In turn, we old men find repose in the affection of the young, as I do in yours and in that of Quintus Tubero. Indeed, I take pleasure even in the close friendship of the very young Publius Rutilius and Aulus Verginius. And since the course of our life and nature is so ordered that one generation succeeds another, the greatest blessing of all is surely to be able to reach the finish line, as the saying goes, together with the contemporaries with whom one was released from the starting barriers.

SECTION 102But since human affairs are frail and fleeting, we must always seek out people whom we may love and by whom we may be loved; for if affection and goodwill are taken away, all delight is taken out of life. To me, indeed, Scipio, though he was suddenly snatched away, still lives and always will live; for I loved the virtue of that man, and that virtue has not been extinguished. It stands not only before my eyes, who always had it close at hand, but will also remain bright and illustrious to generations yet to come. No one will ever undertake great deeds in spirit or in hope without believing that Scipio’s memory and image should be set before him.

SECTION 103Of all the gifts that fortune or nature has bestowed upon me, I have nothing that I can compare with Scipio’s friendship. In it I found agreement concerning the republic; in it counsel concerning my private affairs; in it, too, repose filled with delight. Never, so far as I was aware, did I offend him even in the smallest matter, and never did I myself hear from him anything I did not wish to hear. We shared one house, the same way of life, and a common table; and not only military service, but journeys abroad and stays in the country as well, were shared between us.

SECTION 104And what am I to say of our eager pursuit of always learning and discovering something new, upon which, far from the eyes of the people, we spent all our leisure? If the recollection and memory of those pursuits had died together with him, I could in no way endure my longing for a man so closely bound to me and so deeply loving. But those memories have not been extinguished; rather, they are nourished and increased by my reflection and remembrance. And even if I had been wholly bereft of them, my age itself would nevertheless bring me great consolation; for I cannot now remain much longer in this state of longing, and everything brief ought to be endurable, even if it is severe.

This is what I had to say about friendship. But I urge you to assign virtue such a place that, apart from virtue itself—without which friendship cannot exist—you consider nothing more excellent than friendship.