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 PRINTED IN U.S.A. 
 
3 1924 074 466 651 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924074466651 
 
In compliance with current 
 copyright law, Cornell University 
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 replacement volume on paper 
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 Z39.48-1984 to replace the 
 irreparably deteriorated original. 
 
 1994 
 
CICERO DE AMICITIA 
 
 (ON FRIENDSHIP) 
 
 AND 
 
 SCIPIO'S DEEAM. 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES. 
 
 By ANDREW P. PEABODY. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1884 
 

 
 Copyright, ISS4., 
 
 John Wilson and Sox, Camkidge. 
 
 / 
 
 Bt Akdeew p. Peaboet. / 
 
 y, 
 
SYNOPSIS. 
 
 DE AMICITIA. 
 
 § 1. Introduction. 
 
 2. Reputation of Laelius for wisdom. The curiosity to 
 
 know how he bore the death of Scipio. 
 
 3. His grounds of consolation in his bereavement. 
 
 4. He expresses his faith in immortality. Desires per- 
 
 petual memory in this world of the friendship be- 
 tween himself and Scipio. 
 
 5. True friendship can exist only among good men. 
 
 6. Friendship defined. 
 
 7. Benefits derived from fnendsHp. 
 
 8. Friendship founded not on need, but on nature. 
 
 9. The relation of utility to friendship. 
 
 10. Causes for the separation of friends. 
 
 11. How far love for friends may go. 
 
 12. Wrong never to be done at a friend's request. 
 
 13. Theories that degrade friendship. 
 
 14. How friendships are formed. 
 
 15. Friendlessness wretched. 
 
 16. The limits of friendship. 
 
 17. In what sense and to what degree friends are united. 
 
 How friends are to be chosen and tested. 
 
 18. The qualities to be sought in a friend. 
 19- Old friends not to be forsaken for new. 
 
 20. The duties of friendship between persons differing in 
 ability, rank, or position. 
 
iv Synopsis. 
 
 § 21. How friendships should be dissolved, and how to guard 
 against the necessity of dissolving them. 
 
 22. Um-easonable expectations of friends. Mutual respect 
 
 necessary in true friendship. 
 
 23. Friendship necessary for all meil. 
 
 24. Ti-uth-teUing, though it often gives offence, an essential 
 
 duty from friend to friend. 
 
 25. The power of truth. The arts of flattery. 
 
 26. Flattery availing only with the feeble-minded. 
 
 27. Virtue the soul of friendship. Laelias describes T.he 
 
 intimacy of the friendship between himself and 
 Scipio. 
 
 SCIPIO'S DEEAM. 
 
 § 1. Scipio's visit to Masinissa. Circumstances under which 
 the dream occurred. 
 
 2. Appearance of the elder Africanus, and of his own 
 
 father, to Scipio. Prophecy of Scipio's successes 
 and honors, with an intimation of his death by the 
 hands of his kindred. 
 
 3. Conditions on which heaven may be won. 
 
 4. The nine spheres that constitute the universe. 
 
 5. The music of the spheres. 
 
 6. The five zones of the earth. 
 
 7. Brevity and worthlessness of earthly fame. 
 
 8. All souls eternal. 
 
 9. The soul to be trained for immortality. The fate of 
 
 those who merge their souk in sense. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 DE AMICITIA. 
 
 The Be Amicitia, inscribed, like the De Scncciiitc, 
 to Atticus, was probably written early in the year 
 44 B. a, during Cicero's retirement, after the death 
 of Julius Caesar and before the conflict with Antony. 
 The subject had been a favorite one with Greek 
 philosophers, from whom Cicero always borrowed 
 largely, or rather, whose materials he made fairly 
 his own by the skill, richness, and beauty of his 
 elaboration. Some passages of this treatise were 
 evidently suggested by Plato ; and Aulus Gellius 
 says that Cicero made no little use of a now lost 
 essay of Theophrastus on Friendship. 
 
 In this work I am especially impressed by Cice- 
 ro's dramatic power. But for the mediocrity of his 
 poetic genius, he might have won pre-eminent honor 
 from the Muse of Tragedy. He here so thoroughly 
 enters into the feelings of Laelius with reference to 
 Seipio's death, that as we read we forget that it is 
 not Laelius himself who is speaking. "We find our- 
 selves in close sympathy with him, as if he were tell- 
 ing us the story of his bereavement, giving utterance 
 
vi Introduction. 
 
 to Ms manly fortitude and resignation, and portray- 
 ing Ms friend's virtues from the unfading image 
 phototyped on Ms own loving memory. In other 
 matters, too, Cicero goes back to the time of Laelius, 
 and assumes his point of view, assigning to him just 
 the degree of foresiglit which he probably possessed, 
 and making not the slightest reference to the very 
 different aspect in which he himself had learned to 
 regard and was wont to represent the personages and 
 events of that earlier period. Thus, while Cicero 
 traced the downfall of the republic to changes in the 
 body politic that had taken place or were imminent 
 and inevitable when Scipio died, he makes Laelius 
 perceive only a slight though threatening deflection 
 from what had been in the earlier time.^ So too, 
 though Cicero was annoyed more than by almost 
 any other characteristic of his age by the prevalence 
 of the Epicurean pMlosophy, and ascribed to it in a 
 very large degree the demoralization of men in pub- 
 lic life, with Laelius the doctrines of this school are 
 represented, as they must have been in fact, as new 
 and unfamiliar. In fine, Laelius is here made to 
 say not a word which he, being the man that he 
 was, and at the date assumed for this dialogue, 
 might not have said himself; and it may be doubted 
 whether a report of one of his actual conversations 
 would have seemed more truly genuine. 
 
 This is a rare gift, often sought indeed, yet sought 
 in vain, not only by dramatists, who have very 
 ' Scflexit jam aliquantulum. 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 seldom attained it, but by authors of a very great 
 diversity of type and culture. One who undertakes 
 to personate a character belonging to an age not 
 Lis own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. 
 The author finds it utterly impossible to fit the an- 
 tique mask so closely as not now and then to show 
 through its chinks his own more modern features; 
 while this form of internal evidence never fails to be- 
 tray an intended forgery, however skilfully wrought. 
 On the other hand, there is no surer proof of the 
 genuineness of a work purporting to be of an 
 earlier, but alleged to be of a later origin, than the 
 absence of all tokens of a time subsequent to the 
 earliest date claimed for it.^ 
 
 In connection with this work it should be borne in 
 mind that the special duties of friendship constituted 
 an essential department of ethics in the ancient 
 world, and that the relation of friend to friend was 
 regarded as on the same plane with that of brother 
 to brother. No treatise on morals would have been 
 thought complete, had this subject been omitted. 
 Not a few modern writers have attempted the for- 
 mal treatment of friendship : but while the relation 
 
 1 Thus among tlie many proofs of the genuineness of our canon- 
 ical Gospels, perhaps none is more conclusive than the fact that, 
 though evidently written by unskilled men, they contain not a 
 trace or token of certain opinions known to have heen life even 
 before the close of the first Christian century ; while the (so-called) 
 apocryphal Gospels bear, throughout, such vestiges of their later 
 origin as would neutralize the strongest testimony imaginable in 
 behalf of their primitive antiquity. 
 
viii Introduction. 
 
 of kindred minds and souls has lost none of its 
 sacredness and value, the establishment of a code 
 of rules for it ignores, on the one hand, the sponta- 
 neity of this relation, and, on the other hand, its 
 entire amenableness to the laws and principles that 
 should restrict and govern all human intercourse and 
 conduct. 
 
 Shaftesbury, in his " Characteristics," in his exqui- 
 site vein of irony, sneers at Christianity for taking 
 no cognizance of friendship either in its precepts or 
 in its promises. Jeremy Taylor, however, speaks of 
 this feature of Christianity as among the manifest 
 tokens of its divine origin; and Soame Jenyns takes 
 the same ground in a treatise expressly designed to 
 meet the objections and cavils of Shaftesbury and 
 other deistical writers of his time. These authors 
 are all in the right, and all in the wrong, as to the 
 matter of fact. There is no reason why Christianity 
 should prescribe friendship, which is a privilege, not 
 a duty, or should essay to regulate it ; for its only 
 ethical rule of strict obligation is the negative rule, 
 which would lay out for it a track that shall never 
 interfere with any positive duty selfward, manward, 
 or God ward. But in the life of the Founder of 
 Christiauity, who teaches, most of all, by example, 
 friendship has its apogee, — its supreme pre-emi- 
 nence and honor. He treats his apostles, and speaks 
 of and to them, not as mere disciples, but as inti- 
 mate and dearly beloved friends ; among these there 
 are three with whom he stands in peculiarly near 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 relations ; and one of the three was singled out by 
 him in dying for the most sacred charge that he left 
 on the earth ; while at the same time that disciple 
 shows in his Gospel that he had obtained an inside 
 view, so to speak, of his Master's spiritual life and of 
 the profounder sense of his teachings, which is dis- 
 tinguished by contrast rather than by comparison 
 from the more superficial narratives of the other 
 evangelists. 
 
 But Christianity has done even more than this 
 for friendship. It has superseded its name by ful- 
 filling its- offices to a degree of perfectness which 
 had never entered into the ante-Christian mind. 
 Man shrinks from solitude. He feels inadequate 
 to bear the burdens, meet the trials, and wage the 
 conflicts of this mortal life, alone. Orestes always 
 needed and craved a Pylades, but often failed to 
 find one. This inevitable yearning, when it met 
 no human response, found still less to satisfy it in 
 the objects of worship. Its gods, though in great 
 part deified men, could not be relied on for sym- 
 pathy, support, or help. The stronger spirits did 
 not believe in them; the feebler looked upon them 
 only with awe and dread. But Christianity, in its 
 anthropomorphism, which is its strongest hold on 
 faith and trust, insures for the individual man in 
 a Divine Humanity precisely what friends might 
 essay to do, yet could do but imperfectly, for him. 
 It proffers the tender sympathy and helpfulness of 
 Him who bears the griefs and carries the sorrows of 
 
X Introduction. 
 
 eacli and all ; while the near view that it presents 
 of the life beyond death inspires the sense of un- 
 broken union with friends in heaven, and of the 
 fellow-feeling of "a cloud of witnesses" beside. 
 Thus while friendship in ordinary life is never to 
 be spurned when it may be had without sacrifice 
 of principle, it is lefes a necessity than wlien man s 
 relations with the unseen world gave no promise 
 of strength, aid, or comfort. 
 
 Experience has deepened my conviction that 
 what is called a free translation is the only fit ren- 
 dering of Latin into English ; that is, the only way 
 of giving to the English reader the actual sense of 
 the Latin writer. This last has been my endeavor. 
 The comparison is, indeed, exaggerated ; but it often 
 seems to me, in iinroUing a compact Latin sentence, 
 as if I were writing out in words the meaning of 
 an algebraic formula. A single word often requires 
 three or four as its English equivalent. Yet the lan- 
 guage is not made obscure by compression. On the 
 contrary, there is no other language in which it is 
 so hard to bury thought or to conceal its absence by 
 superfluous verbiage. 
 
 I have used Beier's edition of the Be Amicitia, 
 adhering to it in the very few cases in which other 
 good editions have a different reading. There are 
 no instances in which the various readings involve 
 any considerable diversity of meaning. 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 LAELIUS. 
 
 Caius Laelius Sapiens, the son of Caius Laelius, 
 who was the life-long friend of Scipio Africanus 
 the Elder, was born B. c. 186, a little earlier in the 
 same year with his friend Africanus the Younger. 
 He was not undistinguished as a military comman- 
 der, as was proved by his successful campaign 
 against Viriathus, the Lusitanian chieftain, who had 
 long held the Eoman armies at bay, and had re- 
 peatedly gained signal advantages over them. He 
 was known in the State, at first as leaning, though 
 moderately and guardedly, to the popular side, but 
 after the disturbances created by the Gracchi, as a 
 strong conservative. He was a learned and accom- 
 plished man, was an elegant writer, — though while 
 the Latin tongue retained no little of its archaic 
 rudeness, — and was possessed of some reputation 
 as an orator. Though bearing his part in public 
 affairs, holding at intervals the offices of Tribune, 
 Praetor, and Consul, and in his latter years attend- 
 ing with exemplary fidelity to such duties as belonged 
 to him as a member of the college of Augurs, he yet 
 loved retirement, and cultivated, so far as he was 
 able, studious and contemplative habits. He was 
 noted for his wise economy of time. To an idle 
 
^[ Introduction. 
 
 man who said to him, "I have sixty years "^ (that 
 is, I am sixty years old), he replied, "Do you mean 
 the sixty years which you have not ? " His private 
 life was worthy of all praise for the virtues that 
 enriched and adorned it; and its memory was so 
 fresh after the lapse of more than two centuries, 
 that Seneca, who well knew the better Avay which 
 he had not always strength to tread, advises his 
 young friend Lucilius to " live with Laelius ; " ^ that 
 is, to take his Ufe as a model. 
 
 The friendship of Laelius and the younger Scipio 
 Africanus well deserves the commemoration which 
 it has in this dialogue of Cicero. It began in their 
 boyhood, and continued without inteiTuption till 
 Scipio's death. Laelius served in Africa, mainly 
 that he might not be separated from his friend. 
 To each the other's home was as his own. They 
 were of one mind as to public men and measures, 
 and in all probability the more pliant nature of 
 Laelius yielded in great measure to the stern and 
 uncompromising adherence of Scipio to the cause of 
 the aristocracy. A^Hiile they were united in grave 
 pursuits and weighty interests, we have the most 
 charming pictures of their rural and seaside life to- 
 gether, even of their gathering shells on the shore, 
 and of fireside frolics in which they forgot the cares 
 of the republic, ceased to be stately old Eomans, 
 and played like children in vacation-time. 
 
 1 Sexaginta annos haieo. 
 ^ Vive aim Laelio. 
 
Introdv£tion. 
 
 FANNIUS. 
 
 Caius Fannius Strabo in early life served with 
 high reputation in Africa, under the younger Afri- 
 canus, and afterward in Spain, in the war with 
 Viriathus. Like his father-in-law, he was versed in 
 the philosophy of the Stoic school, under the tuition 
 of Panaetius. He was an orator, as were almost all 
 the Eomans who aimed at distinction ; but we have 
 no reason to suppose that he in this respect rose 
 above mediocrity. He wrote a history, of which 
 Cicero speaks well, and which Sallust commends for 
 its accuracy ; but it is entirely lost, and we have 
 no direct information even as to the ground which 
 it covered. It seems probable, however, that it was 
 a history either of the tliird of the Punic wars, or 
 of all of them ; for Plutarch quotes from him — 
 probably from his History — the statement that 
 he, Fannius, and Tiberius Gracchus were the first 
 to mount the walls of Carthage when the city was 
 taken. 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 SCIPIO'S DEEAM. 
 
 Palimpsests 1 — tlie name and the thing — are 
 at least as old as Cicero. In one of his letters he 
 banters his friend Trebatius for writing to him on 
 a palLmpsest,^ and marvels what there could have 
 been on the parchment which he wanted to erase. 
 This was a device probably resorted to in that age 
 only in the way in which rigid economists of our 
 day sometimes utilize envelopes and handbills. But 
 in the dark ages, when classical literature was under 
 a cloud and a ban, and when the scanty demand for 
 writing materials made the supply both scanty and 
 precarious, such manuscripts of profane authors as 
 fell into the hands of ecclesiastical copyists were 
 not unusually employed for transcribing the works 
 of the Christian Fathers or the lives of saints. In 
 such cases the erasion was so clumsily performed as 
 often to leave distinct traces of the previous letters. 
 The possibility of recovering lost writings from these 
 palimpsests was first suggested by Montfaucon in 
 the seventeenth century ; but the earliest successful 
 
 1 Rubbed again, — tlie parcliment, or papyrus, having been 
 first polished for use, and then ruhhed as clean as possihle, to be 
 used a second time. 
 
 ^ In palimpsesto. 
 
Introduction. xvii 
 
 experiment of the kind was made by Bruns, a Ger- 
 man scholar, in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century. The most distinguished laborer in this 
 field has been Angelo Mai, who commenced his 
 work in 1814 on manuscripts in the Amhrosian 
 Library at Milan, of which he was then custodian. 
 Transferred to the Vatican Library at Eome, he 
 discovered there, in 1821, a considerable portion of 
 Cicero's Be BepuUica, which had been obliterated, 
 and replaced by Saint Augustine's Commentary on 
 the Psalms. This latter being removed by appro- 
 priate chemical applications, large portions of the 
 original writing remained legible, and were promptly 
 given to the public. 
 
 This treatise Cicero evidently considered, and not 
 without reason, as his master- work. It was written 
 in the prime of his mental vigor, in the fifty-fourth 
 year of his age, after ample experience in the affairs 
 of State, and while he stiU hoped more than lie 
 feared for the future of Eome. His object was to 
 discuss in detail the principles and forms of civil 
 government, to define the grounds of preference for 
 a republic like that of Eome in its best days, and 
 to describe the duties and responsibilities of a good 
 citizen, whether in public office or in private life. 
 He regarded this treatise, in its ethics, as his own 
 directory in the government of his province of 
 Cilicia, and as binding him, by the law of self-con- 
 sistency, to unswerving uprightness and faithfulness. 
 He refers to these six books on the Eepublic as so 
 
xviii Introduction. 
 
 many hostages ^ for liis uncorrupt integrity and un- 
 tarnished honor, and makes them his ai^ology to 
 Atticus for declining to urge an extortionate demand 
 on the city of Salamis. 
 
 The work is in the form of Dialogues, in which, 
 with several interlocutors beside, the younger Afri- 
 canus and Laelius are the chief speakers ; and it is 
 characterized by the same traits of dramatic genius 
 to which I have referred in connection with tlie De 
 Amicitia. 
 
 The De Bepuhlica was probably under interdict 
 during the reigns of the Augustan dynasty; men 
 did not dare to copy it, or to have it known that 
 they possessed it ; and when it might have safely 
 reappeared, the republic had faded even from regret- 
 ful memory, and there was no desire to perpetuate 
 a work devoted to its service and honor. Thus the 
 world had lost the very one of all Cicero's writings 
 for which he most craved immortality. The por- 
 tions of it which Mai has brought to light fully 
 confirm Cicero's own estimate of its value, and feed 
 the earnest — it is to be feared the vain — desire 
 for the recovery of the entire work. 
 
 Scipio's Dream, which is nearly all that remains 
 of the Sixth Book of the De Bepuhlica, had survived 
 during the interval for which the rest of the treatise 
 was lost to the world. Macrobius, a grammarian 
 of the fifth century, made it the text of a commen- 
 tary of little present interest or value, but much 
 
 1 Praedibus. 
 
Introduction. xix 
 
 prized and read in the Middle Ages. The Dream, 
 independently of the commentary, has in more 
 recent times passed through unnumbered editions, 
 sometimes by itself, sometimes with Cicero's ethi- 
 cal writings, sometimes with the other fragments 
 of the De BejmUica. 
 
 In the closing Dialogue of the De Bepuhlica the 
 younger Africanus says : " Although to the wise the 
 consciousness of noble deeds is a most ample reward 
 of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed 
 statues that need lead to hold them to their pedes- 
 tals, nor yet triumphs graced by withering laurels, 
 but rewards of firmer structure and more enduring 
 green." " What are these ? " says Laelius. Scipio 
 replies by telling his dream. The time of the 
 vision was near the beginning of the Third Punic 
 War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was 
 just entering upon the career in which he gained 
 pre-eminent fame, thenceforward to know neither 
 shadow nor decline. 
 
 I have used for Scipio's Dream, Creuzer and 
 Moser's edition of the Be Bepiiblica. 
 
CICEEO DE AMICITIA. 
 
 1. QuiNTUS Mucius, the Augur, used to repeat 
 from memory, and in the most pleasant way, many 
 of the sayings of his father-iu-law, Caius Laelius, 
 never hesitating to apply to him in all that he said 
 his surname of The Wise. When I first put on the 
 robe of manhood,^ my father took me to Scaevola, 
 and so commended me to his kind offices, that 
 thenceforward, so far as was possible and fitting, I 
 kept my place at the old man's side.^ I thus laid 
 
 1 In the earliest time a boy put on the toga virilis when he 
 had completed his sixteenth year ; in Cicero's time pupilage 
 ceased a year earlier ; and by Justinian's code the period at 
 which it legally ceased was the commencement of the fifteenth 
 year. The Scaevola to whom Cicero was thus taken was Quintus 
 Mucius (Scaevola), the Augur, already named. 
 
 2 It was customary for youth in training for honorable posi- 
 tions in the State to attach themselves especially to men of 
 established character and reputation, to attend them to public 
 places, and to remain near them whenever anything was to be 
 learned from their conversation, their legal opinions, their public 
 harangues, or their pleas before the courts. Distinguished citi- 
 zens deemed themselves honored by a retinue of such attendants. 
 Cicero, in the De Offidis, says that a young man may best com- 
 mend himself to the early esteem and confidence of the community 
 by such an intimacy'. 
 
 1 
 
2 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 up in my memory many of his elaborate discus- 
 sions of important subjects, as well as many of his 
 utterances that had both brevity and point, and my 
 endeavor was to grow more learned by his wisdom. 
 After his death I stood in a similar relation to the 
 high-priest Scaevola/ whom I venture to call the 
 foremost man of our city both in ability and in 
 uprightness. But of him I will speak elsewhere. 
 I return to the Augur. n\'Tiile I recall many simi- 
 lar occasions, I remember in particular that at a 
 certain time when I and a few of his more intimate 
 associates were sitting with him in the semicircular 
 apartment 2 in his house where he was wont to re- 
 ceive his friends, the conversation turned on a sub- 
 ject about which almost every one was then talking, 
 and which you, Atticus, certainly recollect, as you 
 were much in the society of Publius Sulpicius ; 
 namely, the intense hatred with which Sulpicius, 
 when Tribune of the people, opposed Quintus 
 Pompeius, then Consul,^ with whom he had lived 
 
 ' As Cicero says, the most eloquent of jurists, and the most 
 learned jurist among the eloquent. He was at the same time pre- 
 eminent for moral purity and integrity. It was he, who, as Cicero 
 {De Officiis, iii. 15) relates, insisted on paying for an estate that 
 he bought a much larger sum than was asked for it, because its 
 price had been fixed far below its actual value. 
 
 ^ Latin, hcmicyclio, perhaps, a semicircular seat. 
 ' » The quarrel arose from the zealous espousal of the Marian 
 faction by Sulpicius, who resorted to arms, in order to effect the 
 incorporation of the new citizens from without the city among 
 the previously existing tribes. Hence a series of tumults and 
 conflicts, in one of which a son of Pompeius lost his life. 
 
Cicero de Amidtia. 3 
 
 in the closest and most loving union, — a subject of 
 general surprise and regret. Having incidentally 
 mentioned this affair, Scaevola proceeded to give us 
 the substance of a conversation on friendship, which 
 Laelius had with him and his other son-in-law, 
 Caius Fannius, the son of Marcus, a few days after 
 the death of Africanus. I committed to memory 
 the sentiments expressed in that discussion, and I 
 bring them out in the book which I now send you. 
 I have put them into the form of a dialogue, to 
 avoid the too frequent repetition of " said I " and 
 " says he," and that the discussion may seem as if 
 it were held in the hearing of those who read it. 
 While you, indeed, have often urged me to write 
 something about friendship, the subject seems to 
 me one of imiversal interest, and at the same time 
 specially appropriate to our intimacy. I have 
 therefore been very ready to seek the profit of 
 many by complying with your request. But as in 
 the Cato Major, the work on Old Age inscribed 
 to you, I introduced the old man Cato as leading 
 the discussion, because there seemed to be no other 
 person better fitted to talk about old age than one 
 who had been an aged man so long, and in his age 
 had been so exceptionally vigorous, so, as we had 
 heard from our fathers of the peculiarly memora- 
 ble intimacy of Caius Laelius and Publius Scipio, 
 it appeared appropriate to put into the mouth of 
 Laelius what Scaevola remembered as having been 
 said by him when friendship was the subject in 
 
4 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 hand. Moreover, this method of treatment, resting 
 on the authority of men of an earlier generation, 
 and illustrious in their time, seems somehow to be 
 of sijecially commanding influence on the reader's 
 mind. Thus, as I read my own book on Old Age, 
 I am sometimes so affected that I feel as if not I, 
 but Cato, were talking. But as I then wrote as an 
 old man to aa old man about old age, so in this book 
 I write as the most loving of friends to a friend about 
 friendship.! Then Cato was the chief speaker, than 
 whom there was in his time scarcely any one older, 
 and no one his superior in intellect; now Laelius 
 shall hold the first place, both as a wise man (for 
 so he was regarded), and as excelling in all that can 
 do honor to friendship. I want you for the while 
 to turn your mind away from me, and to imagine 
 that it is Laelius who is speaking. Caius Fannius 
 and Quintus Mucius come to their father-in-law 
 after the death of Africanus. They commence the 
 conversation ; Laelius answers them. In reading 
 all that he says about friendship, you will recognize 
 the picture of your own friendship for me. 
 
 2. Faknius. It is as you say,^ Laelius ; for there 
 never was a better man, or one more justly re- 
 
 ^ In the Latin we have here two remarkable series of asso- 
 nances, rhj'thmical to the ear, and though translatable iu sense, 
 not so in euphony. " Ut turn setiex ad scnem, de smiectule, sic hoc 
 libro ad amicum amicissimus de amicitia scripsi." 
 
 ^ The reference is to what Laelius is supposed to have said 
 already. The dialogue, as given here, is made to commence iu 
 the midst of a conversation. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 5 
 
 nowned, than Africaiius. But you ought to bear it 
 in mind that the eyes of all are turned upon you 
 at this time ; for they both call you and think you 
 wise. This distinction has been latterly given to 
 Cato, and you know that in the days of our fathers 
 Lucius Atilius ^ was in like manner surnamed The 
 "Wise ; but both of them were so called for other 
 reasons than those which have given you this 
 name, — Atilius, for his reputation as an adept 
 in municipal law ; Cato, for the versatility of his 
 endowments : for there were reported to his honor 
 many measures wisely planned and vigorously car- 
 ried through in the Senate, and many cases skil- 
 fully defended in the courts, so that in his old age 
 The Wise was generally applied to him as a sur- 
 name. But you are regarded as wise on somewhat 
 different grounds, not only for your disposition and 
 your moral worth, but also for your knowledge and 
 learning ; and not in the estimation of the common 
 people, but in that of men of advanced culture, 
 you are deemed wise in a sense in which there is 
 reason to suppose that in Greece — where those 
 who look into these things most discriminatingly, 
 do not reckon the seven who bear the name as on 
 the list of wise men — • no one was so regarded ex- 
 cept the man in Athens whom the oracle of Apollo 
 designated as the wisest of men.^ In fine, you are 
 
 1 The first Roman known to have borne the surname of Sapiens. 
 He was one of the earliest of the jurisconsults who took pupils. 
 
 2 Socrates. 
 
6 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 thought to be wise in this sense, that 3'0ii regard 
 all that appertains to your happiness as within 
 your own soul, and consider the calamities to 
 which man is liable as of no consequence in com- 
 parison with virtue. I am therefore asked, and 
 so, 1 believe, is Scaevola, who is now with us, how 
 you bear the death of Africanus ; and the question 
 is put to us the more eagerly, because on the fifth 
 day of the mouth next following,^ when w^e met, 
 as usual, iu the garden of Decimus Brutus the 
 Augur, to discuss our official business, you were 
 absent, though it was your habit always on that 
 day to give your most careful attendance to the 
 duties of j-our office. 
 
 ScAEVOL-A.. As Fannius says, Caius Laelius, many 
 have asked me this question. But I answered in 
 accordance with what I have seen, that you were 
 bearing with due moderation your sorrow for the 
 death of this your most intimate friend, though 
 you, with your kindly nature, could not fail to 
 be moved by it; but that your absence from the 
 monthly meeting of the Augurs was due to illness, 
 not to grief. 
 
 Laelius. You were in the right, Scaevola, and 
 spoke the truth ; for it was not fitting, had I been 
 in good health, for me to be detained by my own 
 
 1 Latin, proxurais nonis. The rwncs, the ninth day liefore the 
 ides, fell on the fifth of the month, except in March, ilay, June, 
 and October, when the ides were two days later. 'We have else- 
 where intimation that the Augurs held a meeting for business on 
 the nones of each month. 
 
Cicero de Amicilia. 7 
 
 -sad feeling from this duty, which I have never 
 failed to discharge ; nor do I think that a man of 
 firm mind can be so affected by any calamity as 
 to neglect his duty. It is, indeed, friendly in you, 
 Fannius, to tell me that better things are said of 
 me than I feel worthy of or desire to have said ; 
 but it seems to me that you underrate Cato. For 
 either there never was a wise man (and so I am 
 inclined to think), or if there has been such a man, 
 Cato deserves the name. To omit other things, 
 how nobly did he bear his son's death ! I remem- 
 bered Paulus,^ I had seen Gallus,^ in their bereave- 
 ments. But they lost boys ; Cato, a man in his 
 prime and respected by all.^ Beware how you 
 place in higher esteem than Cato even the man 
 whom Apollo, as you say, pronounced superlatively 
 wise; for it is the deeds of Cato, the sayings of 
 Socrates, that are held in honor. Thus far in reply 
 to Fannius. As regards myself, I will now answer 
 both of you. 
 
 3. Were I to deny that I feel the loss of Scipio, 
 while I leave it to those who profess themselves 
 wise in such matters to say whether I ought to feel 
 
 1 Paulus Aemilius, who lost two son.s, one a few days 'before, 
 the other shortly after, the triumph decreed to him for the cou- 
 q^uest of the Macedonian King Perseus. 
 
 2 Caius Sulpicius Gallus, mentioned as an astronomer hy Cicero, 
 De Qfficiis, i. 6, and De Seiiectute, 14. 
 
 ' The younger Cato had won fame as a soldier and distinguished 
 eminence as a jurist. At the time of his death he was praetor 
 elect. 
 
8 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 it, I certainly should be uttering a falsehood. I 
 -do indeed feel my bereavement of such a friend as 
 I do not expect ever to have again, and as I am sure 
 I never had beside. But I need no comfort from 
 without; I console myself, and, chief of all, I find 
 comfort in my freedom from the apprehension that 
 oppresses most men when their friends die; for I 
 do not think that any evil has befallen Scipio. If 
 evil has befallen, it is to me. But to be severely 
 afflicted by one's own misfortunes is the token of 
 self-love, not of friendship. As for him, indeed, 
 who can deny that the issue has been to his pre-emi- 
 nent glory ? Unless he had wished — what never 
 entered into his mind — an endless life on earth, 
 what was there within human desire that did not 
 accrue to the man who in his very earliest youth 
 by his incredible ability and prowess surpassed the 
 highest expectations that all had formed of his boy- 
 hood ; who never sought the consulship, yet was 
 made consul twice, the first time before the legal 
 age,i the second time in due season as to himself, 
 but almost too late for his country ; ^ who by the 
 
 ' He left the army in Africa, n. c. 147, for Rome, to oifer him- 
 self as a candidate for the aedileship, for which he had just 
 reached the legal age of thirty-seren ; but such accounts of his 
 ability, efficiency, and courage had preceded him and followed 
 him from the airmy, that he was chosen Consul, -(-irtually bv 
 popular acclamation. 
 
 - The war in Spain had been continued for several years, with 
 frequent disaster and disgrace to the Eoman army, when Scipio, 
 B. c. 134, was chosen Consul with a special view to this war. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 9 
 
 overthrow of two cities i"mplacably hostile to the Eo- 
 man empire put a period, not onh^ to the wars that 
 were, but to wars that else must have been ? What 
 shall I say of the singular affability of his manners, 
 of his filial piety to his mother,^ of his generosity 
 to his sisters,^ of his integrit)' in his relations with 
 all men ? How dear he was to the commuuity was 
 shown by the grief at his funeral What benefit, 
 then, could lie have derived from a few more years ? 
 For, although old age be not burdensome, — as I 
 remember that Cato, the year before he died, main- 
 tained in a conversation with me and Scipio,^ — it 
 yet impairs the fresh vigor which Scipio had not 
 begun to lose. Thus his life was such that nothing 
 either in fortune or in fame could be added to it ; 
 while the suddenness of his death must have taken 
 away the pain of dying. Of the mode of his death 
 it is hard to speak with certainty ; you are aware 
 
 which he closed by the capture and destruction of ITumantia, in 
 connection with which, it must be confessed, his record is rather 
 that of a relentless and sanguinary enemy than of a generous and 
 placable antagonist. 
 
 ' He was the son of Paulus Aemilius, and the adopted son of 
 Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus. His mother, divorced for no 
 assignable reason, was left very poor, and her sou, on the death of 
 the widow of his adopting father, gave her the entire patrimony 
 that then came into his possession. 
 
 2 After his mother's death, law and custom authorized him to 
 resume what he had given her ; but he bestowed it on his sis- 
 ters, thus affording them the means of living comfortably and 
 respectably. 
 
 ^ The De Scnectuie. 
 
10 Cicero de Ainicitia. 
 
 what suspicions are abroad. ^ But this may be 
 said with truth, that of the many days of surpassing 
 fame and happiness wliich Publius Scipio saw in his 
 lifetime, the most glorious was the day before Lis 
 death, when, on the adjournment of the Senate, he 
 was escorted home by the Conscript Fathers, the Ito- 
 man people, the men of Latium, and the allies,^ — 
 so that from so high a grade of honor he seems to 
 have passed on into the assembly of the gods rather 
 than to have gone down into the underworld. 
 
 1 He retired to his sleeping apartment apparently in perfect 
 health, and was found dead on his couch in the morning, — as 
 was rumored, with marks of violence on his neck. His wife 
 was Sempronia, the sister of the Gracchi whose agi-arian schemes 
 he had vehemently opposed. She was suspected of having at 
 least given admission to the assassin, and even her mother, the 
 Cornelia who has heen regarded as imparalleled among Eoman 
 women for the virtues appertaining to a wife and mother, did 
 not escape the charge of complicity. Her son Cains was also 
 among those suspected ; hut the more prohable opinion is that 
 Papirius Carbo was alone answerable for the crime. Oarbo had 
 been Soipio's most bitter enemy, and had endeavored to inflame 
 the people against him as their enemy. 
 
 2 Scipio had at that session of the senate proposed a measure 
 in the utmost degree offensive to Cains Gracchus and his party. 
 The law of Tiberius Gracchus would have disposed, at the hands 
 of the commissioners appointed under it, of large tracts of land 
 belonging to the Italian allies. Scipio's plan provided that such 
 lands should be taken out of the jurisdiction of the commis- 
 sioners, and that matters relating to them should be adjudged by 
 a different board to be specially appointed, — a measure whicli 
 would have been a virtual abrogation of the agrarian law. On 
 this account he had his honorable escort home ; and on this 
 account, in all probability, he was murdered. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 11 
 
 ~ 4. For I am far from agreeing with those who 
 have of late promulgated the opinion that the 
 soul perishes with the body, and that death blots 
 out the whole being.i I, on the other hand, attach 
 superior value to the authority of the ancients, 
 whether that of our ancestors who established re- 
 ligious rites for the dead, which they certainly 
 would not have done if they had thought the dead 
 wholly unconcerned in such observances ; ^ or that 
 of the former Greek colonists in this country, who 
 by their schools and teaching made Southern Italy ^ 
 
 ^ The reference here is, of course, to the Epicureans. This 
 school of philosophy liad grown very rapidly, and numbered many 
 disciples when this essay was written ; but in the time of Laelius 
 it had but recently invaded Rome, and Aniafanius, wlio must 
 have been his contemporary, was the earliest Roman writer who 
 expounded its doctrines. 
 
 2 This is sound reasoning, as these rites were annually re- 
 newed, and consisted in great part of the invocation of ancestor's, 
 — a custom which could not have originated if those ancestors 
 were supposed to be utterly dead. This passage may remind the 
 reader of the answer of Jesus Christ to the Sadducees, who denied 
 that the Pentateuch contained any intimation of immortality. 
 He quotes the passage in which God is represented as saying, " I 
 am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob," and adds, "God is not tlie God of the dead, but of the 
 living, " implying that ancestors whom the writer of that record 
 supposed to be dead could not have been thus mentioned. 
 
 ' Latin Magnam, Oracciain, — the name given to the cluster of 
 Greek colonies that were scattered thick along the shore of 
 Soutliem Italy. At Crotona, in Magna Graecia, Pythagoras es- 
 tablished his school, and these colonies were the chief seat and 
 seminary of his philosophy, which taught the immortality of the 
 soul. 
 
12 Cicero de Artiicitia. 
 
 -^ now in its decline, then flourishing — a seat of 
 learning ; or that of him whom the oracle of ApoUo 
 pronounced the wisest of men, who said not one 
 thing to-day, another to-morrow, as many do, but 
 the same thing always, maintaining that the souls 
 of men are divine, and that when they go out 
 from the body, the return to heaven is open to 
 them, and direct and easy in proportion to their 
 integrity and excellence. This was also the opinion 
 of Scipio, who seemed prescient of the event so 
 near, when, a very short time before his death, he 
 discoursed for three successive days about the 
 republic in the presence of Philus, Manilius, and 
 several others, — you, Scaevola, having gone with me 
 to the conferences, — and near the close of the dis- 
 cussion he told uS what he said that he had heard 
 from Africanus in a vision during sleep.^ If it is 
 true that the soul of every man of surpassing excel- 
 lence takes flight, as it were, from the custody and 
 bondage of the body,' to whom can we imagine the 
 way to the gods more easy than to Scipio ? I 
 therefore fear to mourn for this his departure, lest 
 in such grief there be more of envj' than of friend- 
 ship. But if truth incline to the opinion that soul 
 
 1 The De MepvMica consists of dialogues on three successive 
 days in Scipio's garden, and Scipio is the chief speaker. The 
 work was' supposed to be iiTCCOverably lost, with the exception 
 of this Dream of Scipio, and a few fragments ; but considerable 
 portions of it were discovered in a palimp.sest in 1822. The 
 Dream of Scipio will be found in the latter part of this -volume. 
 
Cicero da Amicitia. 13 
 
 ^ and body have the same end, and that there is no 
 remaining consciousness, then, as there is notliing 
 good iu death, there certainly is nothing of evil. 
 For if consciousness be lost, the case is the same 
 with Scipio as if he had never been born, though 
 that he ^va3 born I have so ample reason to rejoice, 
 and this city will be glad so long as it shall stand. 
 Thus in either e^■ent, with him, as I have said, all 
 has issued well, though with great discomfort for 
 me, who more fittingly, as I entered into life before 
 him, ouglit to have left it before him. But I so 
 enjoy the memory of our friendship, that I seem to 
 have owed the happiness of my life to my having 
 lived with Scipio, with whom I was united in the 
 care of public interests and of private affairs, who 
 was my companion at home and -served by my side 
 i^in the army,i and with whom -^ and therein lies" 
 ""the special virtue of friendship —- 1 was in j)erfect , 
 ^liarmony of purpose, taste, and sentiment. Thus I; 
 am now not so much delighted by the reputation for 
 wisdom of which Fannius has just spoken, espe- 
 cially as I do not deserve it, as by the hope that our 
 friendship will live in eternal remembrance; and 
 this I have the more at heart because from all ages 
 scarce three or four pairs of friends are on record,^ 
 
 1 Laelius went with Scipio on tlie campaign which resulted in 
 the destruction of (iii-thage. 
 
 2 Those referred to are probably Theseus and Peirithous, 
 Acliilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Phin- 
 tias, — all bui the last, perhaps the last also, mythical. 
 
14 Cicero de Aniicitia. 
 
 on which list I cannot but hope that the friendsliip 
 of Scipio and Laelius will be known to posterity. 
 
 Fannius. It cannot fail, Laelius, to be as you de- 
 sire. But since you have made mention of friend- 
 ship, and we are at leisure, you will confer on me 
 a very great favor, and, I trust, on Scaevola too, 
 if, as you are wont to do on other subjects when 
 your opinion is asked, you will discourse to us on 
 friendship, and tell us what you think about it, in 
 what estimation you hold it, and what rules you 
 would give for it. 
 
 Scaevola. This will indeed be very gratifying 
 to me, and had not Fannius anticipated me, I was 
 about to make the same request. You thus will 
 bestow a great kindness on both of us. 
 
 5. Laelius. I certainly would not hesitate, if I 
 had confidence in my own powers ; for the subject 
 is one of the highest importance, and, as Fannius 
 says, we are at leisure. It is the custom of philos- 
 ophers, especially among the Greeks, to have sub- 
 jects assigned to them which they discuss even 
 without premeditation.! This is a gi-eat accom- 
 plishment, and requires no small amount of exer- 
 cise. I therefore think that you ought to seek the 
 treatment of friendship by those who profess this 
 ^art. I can only advise you to prefer friendship toN 
 all things else within human attainment, insomuch 
 ■ as nothing beside is so well fitted -to nature, — so 
 well adapted to our needs whether in prosperous 
 
 1 This was the boast and pride of the Greek sophists. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 15 
 
 ,or in adverse circumstances. But I consider tliis~; 
 as a first principle, — that friendsliip can exist only/ 
 ^between good men. In thus saying, I would not>, 
 be so rigid in definition^ as those who establish 
 specially subtle distinctions,^ with literal truth it 
 may be, but with little benefit to the common 
 mind ; for they will not admit that any man who 
 is not wise is a good man. This may indeed be 
 true. But they understand by wisdom a state 
 which no mortal has yet attained; while we ought 
 to look at those qualities which are to be found in 
 actual exercise and in common life, not at those 
 which exist only in fancy or in aspiration. Caius 
 Fabricius, Manius Curius, Tiberius Coruncauius, 
 wise as they were in the judgment of our fathers, 
 I will consent not to call wise by the standard of 
 these philosophers. Let them keep for themselves 
 the name of wisdom, which is invidious and of 
 doubtful meaning, if they will only admit that 
 these may have been good men. But they will 
 not grant even this; they insist on denying the 
 name of good to any but the wise. I therefore 
 adopt the standard of common sense.^ Those who 
 
 ' Latin, Ncque id ad vivum reseco, literally, nor in this matter 
 do I cut to the quick. 
 
 ^ The Stoics of the more rigid type, who maintained that the 
 wise man alone is good, but denied that the traly wise man had 
 yet made Ms appearance on the earth. 
 
 ' Latin, agmnus igilur 2'ing'ii {id aiuntj Minerva ; that is, with 
 a less refined, a grosser wisdom, — a wisdom more nearly conformed 
 to the sound, if somewhat crass, common-sense of the majority. 
 
16 Cicero dc Amicitia. 
 
 so conduct themselves, so live, that their good faith, 
 integrity, equity, and kindness win approval, who 
 are entirely free from avarice, lust, and the infirmi- 
 ties of a hasty temper, and in whom there is per- 
 fect consistency of character ; in fine, men like those 
 whom I have named, while they are regarded as 
 good, ought to be so called, because to the utmost 
 of human capacity tliey follow Nature, who is the 
 best guide in living well. Indeed, it seems to me 
 thoroughly evident that there should be a certain 
 measure of fellowship among all, but more intimate 
 the nearer we approach one another. Thus this 
 feeling has more power between fellow-citizens than 
 toward foreigners, between kindred than between 
 those of different families. Toward our kindred, 
 Nature herself produces a certain kind of friendship. 
 But this lacks strength ; and indeed frieudsliip, in 
 its full sense, has precedence of kinship in this par- 
 ticular, that good-will may be taken away from 
 kinship, not from friendship ; for when good-will 
 is removed, friendship loses its name, while that of 
 kinship remains. How great is the force of friend- 
 ship we may best understand from this, — that out 
 of the boundless society of the human race which 
 Nature has constituted, the sense of fellowship is 
 so contracted and narrowed that the whole power 
 of loving is bestowed on the union of two or a very 
 few friends. 
 
 6. Friendship is nothing else than entire fellow- 
 feeling as to all things, human and divine, with 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 17 
 
 mutual good-will and affection;^ and I doubt 1 
 whether anything better than this, wisdom alone 
 excepted, has been given to man by the immortal ^ 
 gods. Some prefer riches to it ; some, sound health ; 
 some, power; some, posts of honor; many, even 
 sensual gratification. This last properly belongs to 
 beasts ; the others are precarious and uncertain, 
 dependent not on our own choice so much as on 
 the caprice of Fortune. Those, indeed, who regard 
 virtue as the supreme good are entirely in the 
 right; but it is virtue itself that produces and sus- 
 tains friendship, nor without virtue can friendship 
 by any possibility exist. In saying this, however, 
 I would interpret virtue in accordance with our 
 habits of speech and of life; not defining it, as 
 some philosophers do, by high-sounding words, but 
 numbering on the list of good men those who are 
 commonly so regarded, — the Pauli, the Catos, the 
 Galli, the Scipios, the Phili Mankind in general 
 
 1 It may be doubted whether this close conformity of opinion 
 and feeling is essential, or even favorable, to friendship. The 
 amicable comparison and collision of thought and sentiment are 
 certainly consistent with, and often conducive to, the most friendly 
 intimacy. Friends are not infrequently the complements, rather 
 than the likenesses, of each other. Cicero and Atticus were as 
 close friends as Scipio and Laelius ; but they were at many points 
 exceedingly unlike. Atticus had the tact and skill in worldly 
 matters which Cicero lacked. Atticus kept aloof from public 
 affairs, while Cicero was unhappy whenever he could not imagine 
 himself as taking a leading part in them. Atticus was an Epi- 
 curean, and Cicero never loses an opportunity of attacking the 
 Epicurean philosophy. 
 
 2 
 
18 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 are content with these. Let us then leave out of the 
 account such good men as are nowhere to be found. 
 Among such good men as there really are, friend- 
 ship has more advantages than I can easily name. 
 In the first place, as Eunius says : — 
 
 " How can life be ■worth li'S'ing, if devoid 
 Of the calm trust reposed bj friend in friend ? 
 What sweeter joy than in the kindred soul. 
 Whose converse differs not from self-communion ? " 
 
 How could you have full enjoyment of prosperity, 
 unless with one whose pleasure in it was equal to 
 your own ? For would it be easy to bear adver- 
 sity, unless with the sympathy of one on whom it 
 rested more heavily than on your own souL Then, 
 too, other objects of desire are, in general, adapted, 
 each to some specific purpose, — wealth, that you 
 may use it ; power, that you may receive the hom- 
 age of those around j'^ou ; posts of honor, that you 
 may obtain reputation ; sensual gratification, that 
 you may live in pleasure ; health, that you may be 
 free from pain, and may have full exercise of your 
 bodily powers and faculties. But^ friendship com- 
 bines the largest number of utilities. Wherever 
 you turn, it is at hand. K"o place shuts it out. It 
 is never unseasonable, never annoying. Thus, as 
 the proverb says, "You cannot put water or fire 
 to more uses than friendship serves." I am not 
 now speaking of the common and moderate type 
 of friendship, which yet yields both pleasure and 
 profit, but of true and perfect friendship, Kke that 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 19 
 
 which existed in the few instances that are held in 
 special remembrance. Such friendship at once en- 
 hances the lustre of prosperitj'', and by dividing and 
 sharing adversity lessens its burden. 
 
 7. Moreover, while friendship comprises the great- 
 est number and variety of beneficent offices, it cer- 
 tainly has this special prerogative, that it lights up 
 a good hope for the time to come, and thus pre- 
 serves the minds tliat it sustains from imbecility 
 or prostration in misfortune. For he, indeed, who 
 looks into the face of a friend beholds, as it were, 
 a copy of himself Thus the absent are present, 
 and the poor are rich, and the weak are strong, and 
 — what seems stranger still ^ — - the dead are alive, 
 such is the honor, the enduring remembrance, the 
 longing love, with which the dying are followed by 
 the living ; so that the death of the dying seems 
 happy, the life of the living full of praise.^ But 
 if from the condition of human life 3-ou were to 
 exclude all kindly union, no house, no city, could 
 stand, nor, indeed, could the tillage of the field 
 
 1 Literally, what is harder to say. 
 
 ^ The sense of this sentence is somewhat overlaid hy the rhet- 
 oric ; yet It undoubtedly means that an absent friend is esteemed 
 and honored in the person of the friend who not only loves him, 
 but is regarded as representing Mm ; that a poor friend enjoys the 
 prosperity of his rich friend as if it were his own ; that a weak 
 friend feels his feebleness energized by the friend who in need will 
 iight his battles for him ; and that no man is suffered to lapse from 
 the kind and reverent remembrance of those who see his likeness 
 in the friend who keeps his memory green. 
 
20 Cicero de Ainicitia. 
 
 survive. If it is not perfectly understood what 
 virtue there is in friendship and concord, it may 
 he learned from dissension and discord. Por what 
 house is so stable, what state so firm, that it cannot 
 be utterly overturned by hatred and strife ? Hence 
 it may be ascertained how much good there is in 
 friendship. It is said that a certain philosopher of 
 Agrigentum ^ sang in Greek verse that it is friend- 
 ship that draws together and discord that parts aU 
 things which subsist in harmony, and which have 
 their various movements in nature and in the whole 
 universe. The worth and power of friendship, too, 
 aU mortals understand, and attest by their approval 
 in actual instances. Thus, if there comes into con- 
 spicuous notice an occasion on which a friend 
 incurs or shares the perils of his friend, who can 
 fail to extol the deed with the highest praise ? 
 What shouts filled the whole theatre at the per- 
 formance of the new play of my guest ^ and friend 
 Marcus Pacuvius, when — the king not knowin<T 
 
 1 Empedocles. Only a few fragments of his great poem are 
 extant. His theory seems like - poetical version of Newton's 
 law of universal gravitation. The analogy between physical 
 attraction and the mutual attraction of congenial minds and 
 souls has its record in the French word aimant, denoting load- 
 stone or inagiiet. 
 
 ^ Or host ; (or the word hospes' may have either meaning. It 
 denotes not the fact of giving or receiving hospitality, but the 
 permanent and sacred relation established between host and 
 guest. This relation has lost much of its character in modem 
 civilization, and I doubt whether it has a name in any modern 
 European language. 
 
Cwero de Amicitia. 21 
 
 which of the two was Orestes — Pylades said that 
 he was Orestes, while Orestes persisted in assert- 
 ing that he was, as in fact he was, Orestes ! ^ The 
 whole assembly rose in applause at this mere fic- 
 titious representation. What may we suppose that 
 they would have done, had the same thing occurred 
 in real life ? In that case Nature herself displayed 
 her power, when men recognized that as rightly done 
 by another, which they would not have had the 
 courage to do themselves. Thus far, to the utmost 
 of my ability as it seems to me, I have given you 
 my sentiments concerning friendship. If there is 
 more to be said, as I think that there is, endeavor 
 to obtain it, if you see fit, of those who are wont to 
 discuss such subjects. 
 
 Fanndjs. But we would rather have it from 
 you. Although I have often consulted those phi- 
 losophers also, and have listened to them not un- 
 willingly, yet the thread of your discourse differs 
 somewhat from that of theirs. 
 
 1 Among the many and conflicting legends about Orestes is 
 that which seems to have been the theme of the lost tragedy of 
 Pacurius. Orestes, after avenging on his mother and her para- 
 mour the murder of his father, in order to expiate the guilt of 
 matricide, was directed by the Delphian oracle to go to Tauris, 
 and to steal and transport to Athens an image of Artemis that 
 had fallen from heaven. His friend Pylades accompanied him 
 on this expedition. They were seized by Thoas the king, and 
 Orestes, as principal offender, was to be sacrificed to Artemis. 
 His sister, Iphigeneia, priestess of Artemis, contrived their escape, 
 and the three arrived safe at Athens with the sacred image. 
 
22 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 ScAEVOLA. You would say so all tlie more, Fan- 
 nius, had you been present in Scipio's garden at 
 that discussion about the republic, and heard what 
 an advocate of justice he showed himself in answer 
 to the elaborate speech of Philus.^ 
 
 Fannius. It was indeed easy for the man pre- 
 eminently just to defend justice. 
 
 ScAEVOLA. As to friendship, then, is not its de- 
 fence easy for him who has won the highest celeb- 
 rity on the ground of friendship maintained with 
 pre-eminent faithfulness, consistency, and probity ? 
 
 8. Laelius. This is, indeed, the employing of 
 force; for what matters the way in which you 
 
 1 Carneades, when on an embassy to Rome, for the entertain- 
 ment of his Roman hosts, on one day delivered a, discourse in 
 behalf of justice as the true policy for the State, and on the next 
 day delivered an equally subtile and eloquent discourse maintain- 
 ing the opposite thesis. In the third Book of the De Repuhlica 
 Philus is made a "devil's advocate," and has assigned to him the 
 championship of what we are wont to call a Machiavelian policy, 
 and, in general, of the men-ally wrong as the politically right. He 
 is represented as taking the part reluctantly, saying that one con- 
 sents to soil his hands in order to find gold, and he professes to 
 give the substance of the famous discourse of Cameades. Laelius 
 answers him, and, so far as we can judge from the fi-agments of his 
 reply that are extant, with the preponderance of reason, which 
 Cicero intended should incline on the better side. There was 
 perhaps a, sublatent irony in making Philus play this part ; for 
 he was an eminently upright man. Valerius Maximus eulocrizes 
 him for his rigid integrity and impartiality, and relates that when 
 at the expiration of his consulship he was sent to take command 
 of the ai'my against Fumautia, he chose for his lieutenants 
 Metellus and Pompeius, both his intensely bitter enemies, but 
 the men best fitted for the service. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 23 
 
 compel me ? You at any rate do compel me ; for 
 it is botli hard and unfair not to comply with, the 
 wishes of one's sons-in-law, especially in a case that 
 merits favorable consideration. 
 
 In reflecting, then, very frequently on friendship, 
 the foremost question that is wont to present itself 
 is, whether friendship is craved on account of con- 
 scious infirmity and need, so that in bestowing and 
 receiviug the kind of&ces that belong to it each 
 may have that done for him by the other which 
 he is least able to do for himself, reciprocating ser- 
 vices in like manner ; or whether, though tliis rela- 
 tion of mutual benefit is the property of friendship, 
 it has yet another cause, more sacred and more 
 noble, and derived more genuinely from the very 
 nature of man. Love, which in our langimge gives 
 name to friendship,^ bears a chief part in unions 
 of mutual benefit ; for a revenue of service is lev- 
 ied even on those who are cherished in pretended 
 friendship, and are treated with regard from inter- 
 ested motives. But_ in friendship there is nothing \ 
 feigned, nothing pretended, and whatever there is J 
 in it is both genuine and spontaneous. Friend- *) 
 ship, therefore, springs from nature rather than ) 
 from need, — from an inclination of the mind with 
 a certain consciousness of love rather than from ' 
 calculation of the benefit to be derived from it.- 
 Its real quality may be discerned even in some 
 classes of animals, which up to a certain time so 
 1 Amor, — amicitia. 
 
24 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 love their offspring, and are so loved by them, that 
 the mutual feeling is plainly seen, — a feeling which 
 is much more clearly manifest in man, first, in the 
 affection which exists between children and parents, 
 and which can be dissolved only by atrocious guilt ; 
 
 , and in the next place, in the springing up of a like 
 feeling of love, when we find some one of manners 
 and character conc;enial with our own, who becomes 
 dear to us because we seem to see in him an illus- 
 trious example of probity and virtue. For there is 
 
 f nothing more lovable than virtue, — nothing which 
 more surely wins affectionate regard, insomuch that 
 .on the score of virtue and probity we love even 
 those whom we have never seen. Who is there 
 that does not recall the memory of Caius Fabricius, 
 of Manius Curius, of Tiberius Coruncanius, whom 
 he never saw, with some good measure of kindly 
 feeling ? On the other hand, who is there that can 
 fail to hate Tarquinius Superbus, Spurius Cassius, 
 Spurius Maelius? Our dominion in Italy was at 
 stake in wars under two commanders, PyiThus and 
 Hannibal. On account of the good faith of the 
 one, we hold him in no unfriendly remembrance ; ^ 
 the other because of his cruelty our people must 
 always hate.^ 
 
 1 Pyrrhus, after tlie only victory that he ohtained over the 
 Romans, treated his prisoners with signal humanity, and restored 
 them without ransom. See De Officiis, i. 12. 
 
 2 It may be doubted whether Hannibal deserved the reproach 
 here implied. The Eoman historians ascribe to him acts of cru- 
 elty no worse than their own generals were chargeable with ; while 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 25 
 
 9. But if good faitli has such attractive power 
 
 that we love it in those whom we have never seen, 
 
 or — what means still more — in an enemy, what 
 
 (wonder is it if the minds of men are moved to 
 
 ; affection when they behold the virtue and goodness 
 
 of those with whom they can become intimately 
 
 j united ? 
 
 Love is, indeed, strengthened by favors received, 
 by witnessing assiduity in one's service, and by 
 habitual intercourse ; and when these are added to 
 the first impulse of the mind toward love, there 
 flames forth a marvellously rich glow of affectionate 
 feeling. If there are any who think that this pro- 
 ceeds from conscious weakness and the desire to 
 have some person through whom one can obtain 
 what he lacks, they assign, indeed, to friendship a 
 mean and utterly ignoble origin, born, as they would 
 have it, of poverty and neediness. If this were true, 
 then the less of resource one was conscious of hav- 
 ing in himself, the better fitted would he be for 
 friendship. The contrary is the case; for the more 
 confidence a man has in himself, and the more 
 thoroughly he is fortified by virtue and wisdom, so 
 
 nothing of the kind is related bj' either Poly bins or Plutarch, It 
 is certain that after the battle of Cannae he cheeked the needless 
 slaughter of the Eoman fugitives, and Livr relates several in- 
 stances in which he paid funeral honors to distinguished Romans 
 slain in battle. The intense hostility of the Romans to Carthage 
 may have led to an unfair estimate of the great general's char- 
 acter, and to the invention or exaggeration of reports to his dis- 
 credit. 
 
26 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 that lie is in need of no one, and regards all that 
 concerns him as in his own keeping, the more note- 
 worthy is he for the friendships which he seeks and 
 cherishes. What ? Did Africauus need me ? Not 
 in the least, by Hercules. As little did I need 
 him. But I was drawn to him bj' admiration of 
 his virtue, while he, in turn, loved me, perhaJDS, 
 from some favorable estimate of my character ; 
 and intimacy increased our mutual affection. But 
 though utilities many and great resulted from our 
 friendship, the cause of our mutual love did not 
 proceed from the hope of what it might bring. 
 For as we are beneficent and generous, not in 
 order to exact kindnesses in return (for we do not 
 put our kind offices to interest), but are by nature in- 
 clined to be generous, so, in my opinion, friendship 
 is not to be sought for its wages, but because its 
 I revenue consists entirely in the love which it im- 
 ' plies. Those, however, who, after the manner of 
 beasts, refer everything to pleasure,^ think very 
 differently. Nor is it wonderful that they do ; for 
 men who have degraded all their thoughts to so 
 mean and contemptible an end can rise to the 
 contemplation of nothing lofty, nothing macnifi- 
 cent and divine. "We may, therefore, leave them 
 out of this discussion. But let us have it well 
 understood that the feeling of love and the en- 
 dearments of mutual affection spring from nature 
 in case there is a well-established assurance of 
 
 ^ The Epicureans. 
 
Cicero dc Amicitia. 27 
 
 moral worth iii the person thus loved. Those who 
 desire to become friends approach each other, and 
 enter into relation with each other, that each may- 
 enjoy the society and the character of him whom 
 he has begun to love ; and they are equal in love, 
 and on either side are more inclined to bestow 
 obligations than to claim a return, so that in this 
 matter there is an honorable rivalry between them. 
 Thus will the greatest benefits be derived from 
 friendship, and it will have a more solid and genu- 
 ine foundation as tracina; its origin to nature than 
 if it proceeded from human weakness. For if it 
 were utility that cemented friendships, an altered 
 aspect of utility would dissolve them. But be- 
 cause nature cannot be changed, therefore true 
 friendships are eternal This may suf&ce for the 
 origin of friendship, unless you have, perchance, 
 some objection to what I have said. 
 
 Faitnius. Go on, Laelius. I answer by the right 
 of seniority for Scaevola, who is younger than I am. 
 
 ScAEVOLA. I am of the same mind with you. 
 Let us, then, hear farther. 
 
 10. Laelius. Hear, then, my excellent friends, 
 the substance of the frequent discussions on friend- 
 ship between Scipio and me. He, indeed, said^ 
 
 1 The construction of this entire section is in the sutijunctive 
 imperfect, depending on the diceiat in the second sentence. It* 
 has seemed to me that the direct form of construction which 
 -I hare adopted is more consonant with the genius of our 
 
28 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 that nothing is more difificult than for friendship to 
 last through life ; for friends happen to have con- 
 flicting interests, or different political opinions. 
 Then, again, as he often said, characters change, 
 sometimes under adverse conditions, sometimes 
 with growing years. He cited also the analogy 
 of what takes place in early youth, the most ardent 
 loves of boyhood being often laid aside with its 
 robe. But if friendships last on into opening man- 
 hood, they are not infrequently broken up by 
 rivalry in quest of a wife, or in the pursuit of some 
 advantage which only one can obtain.^ Then, if 
 friendships are of longer duration, they yet, as 
 Scipio said, are liable to be undermined by compe- 
 tition for of&ce ; and indeed there is nothing more 
 fatal to friendship than, in very many cases, the 
 greed of gain, and among some of the best of men 
 the contest for place and fame, which has often 
 engendered the most intense enmity between those 
 
 1 Had Cicero not been personating Lafilius, who died long be- 
 fore the quarrel occurred, he would undoubtedly have cited the 
 case of Servilius Caepio and Livius Dmsus. Tliey married each 
 other's sisters, and were united in the closest intimacy, and seem- 
 ingly in the dearest mutual love ; but as rivals in bidding for a 
 ring at an auction-sale they had their first quarrel, which grew 
 into intense mutual hatred, led almost to a civil war between 
 their respective partisans, and bore no small part in starting the 
 series of dissensions which issued in the Social War, and the de- 
 struction of not far from three hundred thousand lives. I refer to 
 this in a note, because it must have been fresh in Cicero's mem- 
 ory, and had annotation been the habit of his time, he would 
 most assuredly have given it the place which 1 now give it. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 29 
 
 who had been the closest friends. Strong and gen- 
 serally just aversion, also, springs up when any- 
 'Jthing morally wrong is required of a friend; as 
 when he is asked to aid in the gratification of 
 impure desire, or to render his assistance in some 
 unrighteous act, — in which case those who refuse, 
 although their conduct is highly honorable, are yet 
 charged by the persons whom they will not serve 
 with being false to the claims of friendship, while 
 those who dare to make such a demand of a friend 
 profess, by the very demand, that they are ready 
 to do anything and everything for a friend's sake. 
 By such quarrels, not only are old intimacies often 
 dissolved, but undying hatreds generated. So many 
 of these perils hang like so many fates over friend- 
 ship, that to escape them all seemed to Scipio, as 
 he said, to indicate not wisdom alone, but equally 
 a rare felicity of fortune. 
 
 11. Let ns then, first, if you please, consider 
 how far the love of friends ought to go. If Co- 
 riolanus had friends, ought they to have helped 
 him in fighting against his country, or should 
 the friends of VisceUinus ^ or those of Spurius 
 
 - . 1 Spuriua Cassias Viscellinus, the author of the earliest agra- 
 rian law, passed, but never carried into execution. He was con- 
 demned to death, — probably a victim to the rancorous opposition 
 of the patrician order, of which he was regarded as a recreant 
 member by virtue of his advocacy of the rights or just claims of 
 theplebs. Cicero in early life was by no means so hostile to the 
 principle underlying the agrarian laws and to the memory of the 
 Gracchi, as he was after he had reached the highest ofacea in 
 the gift of the people. 
 
30 Cicero ch Amicitia. 
 
 Maelius ^ have aided tliem in the endeavor to usurp 
 regal power ? We saw, indeed, Tiberius Gracchus, 
 when he was disturbing the peace of the State, 
 deserted by Quintus Tubero and others with whom 
 he had been on terms of intimacy. But Caius Blos- 
 sius, of Cumae, the guest,^ Scaevola, of your famUy, 
 coming to nie, when I was in conference with the 
 Consuls Laenas and KupiUus, to implore pardon, 
 urged the plea that he held Tiberius Gracchus in so 
 dear esteem that he felt bound to do whatever he de- 
 sired. I then asked him, " Even if he had wanted 
 you to set fire to the Capitol, would you have done 
 it ? " He replied, " He never would have made such 
 a request." " But if he had ? " said I. " I would have 
 obeyed him,'' was the answer. And, by Hercules, 
 he did as he said, or even more ; for he did not so 
 much yield obedience to the audacious schemes of 
 Tiberius Gracchus, as he was foremost in them ; 
 he was not so much the companion of his madness, 
 as its leader. Therefore, in consequence of this 
 foUy, alarmed by the appointment of special judges 
 for his trial, he fled to Asia, entered the service of 
 
 1 Maelius, of the equestrian order, but of a plebeian family, 
 oHained vmbouuded popularity with the 2>T'<:is by selling com at a 
 low price, and giving away large quantities of it, in a time of fam- 
 ine. He was charged with seeking kingly power, and, on account 
 of his alleged movements with that purpose, Cincinnatus was 
 appointed dictator, and JIaelius, resisting a summons to his tribu- 
 nal, was killed by Ahala, his master of the horse. There seems 
 to have been little evidence of his actual guilt. 
 
 "^ Bbspes, guest, host, or both. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 31 
 
 our enemies, and finally met the heavy and just 
 punishment for his disloyalty to his country.' It 
 is, then, no excuse for wrong-doing that you do 
 wrong for the sake of a friend. Indeed, since it 
 may have been a belief in your virtue that has 
 made one your friend, it is hard for friendship to 
 last if you fall away from virtue. But if we should 
 determine either to concede to friends whatever 
 they may ask, or to exact from them whatever we 
 may desire, we and they must be endowed with 
 perfect wisdom, in order for our friendship to be 
 blameless. We are speaking, however, of such 
 friends as we have before our eyes, or as we have 
 seen or have known by report, — of such as are 
 found in common life. It is frour these that we 
 must take our examples, especially from such of 
 them as make the nearest approach to perfect 
 wisdom. We have learned from our fathers that 
 Papus Aemilius was very intimate with Caius 
 Luscinus, they having twice been consuls together, 
 as well as colleagues in the censorship; and it is 
 said also that Manius Curius and Tiberius Corun- 
 canius lived in the closest friendship both with 
 them and with each other. Now we cannot sus- 
 pect that either of these men would have asked of 
 one of his friends anything inconsistent with good 
 faith, or with an engagement sanctioned by oath, or 
 
 1 He took refuge witli Aristonicus, King of Pergamus, then at 
 war witli Rome ; and when Aristonicus was conquered, Blossius 
 committed suicide for fear of being captured by tlie Roman army. 
 
32 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 with his duty to the State. Indeed, to -what pur- 
 pose is it to say that among such men if one had 
 asked anything wrong, he would not have obtained 
 it ? For they were men of the most sacred integ- 
 rity ; while to ask anything wrong of a friend and 
 to do it when asked are alike tokens of deep de- 
 pravity. But Caius Carbo and Caius Cato were 
 the followers of Tiberius Gracchus, as was his 
 brother Caius, at first with little ardor, but now^ 
 most zealously. 
 
 12. As to friendship, then, let this law be enacted, 
 that we neither ask of a friend what is wrong, nor 
 do what is wrong at a friend's request. The plea 
 that it was for a friend's sake is a base apology, — 
 one that should never be admitted with regard to 
 other forms of guilt, and certainly not as to crimes 
 against the State. We, indeed, Fannius and Scae- 
 vola, are so situated that we ought to look far in 
 advance for the perils that our country may in- 
 cur. Already has our public policy deviated some- 
 what from the method and course of our ancestors. 
 Tiberius Gracchus attempted to exercise supreme 
 power; nay, he really reigned for a few months. 
 What like this had the Eoman people ever heard or 
 seen before ? What, after his death, the friends 
 and kindred who followed him did in their revenge 
 
 1 Now; that is, at the time at which this dialogue has its 
 assumed date, immediately after Scipio's death. At that time 
 Caius Gracchus was acting as a commissioner under his brother's 
 agrarian law. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 33 
 
 on PuUius Scipio^ I cannot say without tears. 
 We put up with Carho ^ as well as we could in 
 consideration of the recent punishment of Tiberius 
 Gracchus; but I am in no mood to predict what is to 
 be expected from the tribuneship of Caius Gracchus. 
 Meanwhile the evil is creeping upon us, from its 
 very beginning fraught with threats of ruin. Be- 
 fore recent events,^ you perceive how much degen- 
 eracy was indicated in the legalizing of the ballot, 
 first by the Gabiniau,* then two years later by the 
 Cassian law.^ I seem already to see the people 
 
 1 Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, who took the lead of the 
 Senate in the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, and iucurred 
 such popular odium that he could not safely stay in Rome. He 
 was sent on a fictitious mission to Asia to get him out of tlie 
 way of the people, and, not daring to return, wandered with no 
 settled habitation till his death at Pergamum not long before 
 the assumed date of this dialogue. 
 
 2 Carbo succeeded Tiberius Gracchus on the commission for 
 carrying the agrarian law into execution, and was shortly afterward 
 chosen Tribune. He then proposed a law, i^ermitting a tribune to 
 be re-elected for an indefinite number of years. This law was ve- 
 hemently opposed by Scipio Africanus the Younger, and if he was 
 really killed by Carbo, it was probably on account of his hostility 
 to Carbo's ambitious schemes. 
 
 8 The reference undoubtedly here is to the Papirian law which 
 had been passed just before the assumed date of this dialogue, 
 having been proposed and carried through by (Caius Papirius) 
 Carbo. By this law the use of the ballot was established in all 
 matters of popular legislation. 
 
 4 By which magistrates were to be chosen by ballot. 
 
 5 By which the judges were to be chosen by ballot. With 
 reference to the use of the ballot the parties in Rome were 
 prototypes of like parties in England. The voice of the people 
 
 3 
 
34 Cicero de Atnicitia. 
 
 utterly alienated from the Senate, and the most im- 
 portant affairs determined by the wiU of the multi- 
 tude ; for more persons will learn how these things 
 are brought about than how they may be resisted. 
 To what purpose am I saying this ? Because no 
 one makes such attempts without associates. It is 
 therefore to be enjoined on good men that they 
 must not think themselves so bound that they can- 
 not renounce their friends when they are guilty of 
 crimes against the State. But punishment must be 
 inflicted on all who are implicated in such guilt, — 
 on those who follow, no less than on those who lead. 
 Who in Greece was more renowned than Themis- 
 tocles 1 Who had greater influence than he had ? 
 When as commander in the Persian war he had 
 freed Greece from bondage, and for envy of his 
 fame was driven into exile, he did not bear as he 
 ought the ill treatment of his ungrateful country. 
 He did what Coriolanus had done with us twenty 
 years before. Neither of these men found any 
 helper against his country ;i they therefore both 
 
 was for tile tallot, on the ground that it made suffrage free, as 
 it could not he when employers or patrons could dictate to 
 their dependents and make them suffer for failure to vote in 
 favor of their own candidates or measures. The aristocratic 
 party opposed the ballot as fatal to their controlling iullueuce 
 which many sincere patriots, like Cicero, regarded as essential 
 to the public safety, while patrician demagogues, intri'niers 
 and office-seekers made it subservient to their own selfish or 
 partisan interests. 
 
 1 No one of hi.? own fellow-countrymen. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 35 
 
 committed suicide.^ Association with depraved 
 men for sucli an end is not, then, to be shielded 
 'by the plea of friendship, hut rather to he avenged 
 by punishment of the utmost severity, so that no 
 one may ever think himself authorized to follow a 
 friend to the extent of making war upon his coun- 
 try, — an extremity which, indeed, considering the 
 course that our public affairs have begun to take, 
 may, for aught I know, be reached at some future 
 time. I speak thus because I feel no less concern 
 for the fortunes of the State after my death than 
 as to its present condition. 
 
 13. Let this, then, be enacted as the_first-lawof 
 friendship, that we demand of friends only what is 
 right, and that we do for the sake of friends only 
 ■what_is„right.^ This understood, let us not wait 
 to be asked. Let there be constant assiduity and 
 no loitering in a friend's service. Let us also dare 
 to give advice freely ; for in friendship the authority 
 of friends who give good counsel may be of the 
 
 1 If the story of Coiiolanus be not a myth, as Kiehuhr sup- 
 poses it to be, his suicide forms no part of the story as Livy tells 
 it. The suicide of Themistocles is related as a supposition, not 
 as an established fact. If he died by poison, as was said, it may 
 have been administered by a rival in the favor of Artaxerxes. 
 
 2 This is a virtual repetition of the law of friendship announced 
 at the beginning of the ijrevious section, and Cicero probably so 
 intended it. He states the rule, then demonstrates its validity, 
 then repeats it in an almost identical form, implying what the 
 mathematician expresses when he puts at the end of a demonstra- 
 tion Quod erat demonstrandum. 
 
36 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 greatest value. Let admonition be administered, 
 too, not only in plain terms, but even with sever- 
 ity, if need be, and let heed be given to such admo- 
 nition. 
 
 On this subject some things that appear to me 
 strange have, as I am told, been maintained by 
 certain Greeks who are accounted as philosophers, 
 and are so skilled in sophistry that there is noth- 
 ing which they cannot seem to j)rove. Some of 
 them hold that very intimate friendships are to be 
 avoided ; that there is no need that one feel solici- 
 tude for others ; that it is enough and more than 
 enough to take care of your own concerns, and 
 annoying to be involved to any considerable extent 
 in affairs not belonging to you ; that the best way 
 is to have the reins of friendship as loose as possi- 
 ble, so that you can tighten them or let them go at 
 pleasure ; for, according to them, ease is the chief 
 essential to happy living, and this the mind cannot 
 enjoy, if it bears, as it were, the pains of travail 
 in behalf of a larger or smaller circle of friends.^ 
 
 ^ This passage seems to be a paraphrase of a passage in the 
 Sippolytus of Euripides, in which the Nurse say-s : " It behooves 
 mortals to form moderate friendships -with one another, and not 
 to the very marrow of the soul ; and the affections of the mind 
 should he held loosely, so that we may slacken or tighten them. 
 That one soul should he in travail for two is a hea^-j' burden." 
 Euripides was regarded, and rightly, as no less a philosopher than 
 a tragedian, and was not infrequently styled <ro06s. Cicero here 
 veils his thorough conversance with Greek literature and philoso- 
 phy, and assumes the part of Laelius, in whose time, thouo-h 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 37 
 
 Others,! I am told, with even much less of true 
 human feeling, teach what I touched upon briefly a 
 a little wliile ago, that friendsliips are to be sought 
 for defence and help, not on account of good-will and 
 affection. The less of self-confidence and the less 
 of strength one has, the more is he inclined to make 
 friends. Thus it is that women ^ seek the support 
 of friendship more than men do, the poor more than 
 the rich, the unfortunate more than those who seem 
 happy. Oh, pre-eminent wisdom ! It is like taking 
 the sun out of the world, to bereave human life 
 of friendship, than which the immortal gods have 
 -given man nothing better, nothing more gladdening. 
 What is the ease of which they speak ? It is indeed 
 pleasing in aspect, but on many occasions it is to 
 -^e renoimced ;rfor it is not fitting, in order to avoid 
 solicitude, either to refuse to undertake any right 
 cause or act, or to drop it after it is undertaken. If 
 'we flee from care, we must flee from virtue, which 
 of necessity with no little care spurns and abhors its 
 opposites, as goodness spurns and abhors wickedness ; 
 temperance, excess ; courage, cowardice. Thus you 
 
 Greek was not omitted in the education of cultivated men, the 
 study -n-as comparatively new, and was not carried to any great 
 extent. 
 
 1 The Epicureans. 
 
 2 Latin, mulierculae, a diminutive, meaning, however, not lUtU 
 ■uiomen, hut denoting the feebleness and dependence of women m 
 comparison with men. It must be confessed, too, that the term 
 is sometimes used, and perhaps here, semi-contemptuously ; for 
 the Roman man felt an overweening pride in mere manhood. 
 
38 Cicero de jLmicitia. 
 
 may see that honest men are excessively grieved 
 by the dishonest, the brave by the pusillanimous, 
 those who lead sober lives by the dissolute. It is 
 indeed characteristic of a well-ordered mind to re- 
 joice in what is good and to be grieved by the oppo- 
 site. If, then, pain of mind fall to the lot of a wise 
 man, as it must of necessity unless we imagine his 
 mind divested of its humanity, why should we take 
 friendship wholly out of life, lest we experience 
 some little trouble on account of it ? Yet more ; if 
 emotion be eliminated, what difference is there, I 
 say not between a man and a brute, but between a 
 man and a rock, or the trunk of a tree, or any inani- 
 -^mate object? Nor are those to be listened to, who 
 regard virtue as something hard and iron-like.^ As 
 in many other matters, so in friendship, it is tender 
 and flexible, so that it expands, as it were, with a 
 friend's well-being, and shrinks when his peace is 
 disturbed. Therefore the pain which must often be 
 incurred on a friend's account is not of sufficient 
 moment to banish friendship from human life, any 
 more than the occasional care and trouble which 
 the virtues bring should be a reason for renouncino- 
 them. 
 
 14. Since virtue attracts friendship, as I have 
 said, if there shines forth any manifestation of vir- 
 
 ' Here, undouliteclly, Cicero refers to the sterner type of Stoi- 
 cism, which in his time was already ohsolescent, and -svas yielding 
 place to the mQder, while no less rigid, ethics of which the Dc 
 Officiis may be regarded as the manual. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 39 
 
 tue with which a mind similarly disposed can come 
 into contact and union, from such intercourse love 
 must of necessity spring. Tor what is so absurd as 
 to be charmed with many things that have no sub- 
 stantial worth, as with of&ce, fame, architecture, 
 dress, and genteel appearance, but not to be in any 
 wise charmed by a mind endowed with virtue, and 
 capable of either loving, or — if I may use the 
 word — re-loving 1 ^ Nothing indeed yields a richer 
 revenue than kind affections ; nothing gives more 
 delight than the interchange of friendly cares and 
 offices. Then if we add, as we rightly may, that 
 -^there is nothing which so allures and attracts aught 
 else to itself as the likeness of character does to 
 friendship, it will certainly be admitted that good 
 • men love good men and adopt them into fellowship, 
 j as if united with them by kindred and by nature. 
 By nature, I say; for nothing is more craving or 
 greedy of its like than nature. This, then, as I 
 think, is evident, Fannius and Scaevola, that among 
 the good toward the good there cannot but be mu- 
 tual kind feeling, and in this we have a fountain of 
 friendship established by nature. 
 
 But the same kind feeling extends to the commu- 
 nity at large. For virtue is not unsympathetic, nor 
 unserviceable,^ nor proud. It is wont even to watch 
 over the well-being of whole nations, and to give 
 
 1 Latin, redamare, a word coined by Cicero, and used with the 
 apology, vi Ua dicam. 
 
 2 Latin, immunis, literally, without office. 
 
40 Cicero cle Amicitia. 
 
 them tlie wisest counsel, which it would not do if 
 it had no love for the people. 
 
 N'ow those who maintain that friendships are 
 formed from motives of utility annul, as it seems to « 
 me, the most endearing bond of friendship ; for it 
 is not so much benefit obtained through a friend as 
 it is the very love of the friend that gives delight. 
 What comes from a friend confers pleasure, only in 
 case it bears tokens of his interest in us; and so 
 far is it from the truth that friendships are culti- 
 vated from a sense of need, that those fully endowed 
 with wealth and resources, especially with virtue, 
 which is the surest safeguard, and thus in no need 
 of friends, are the very persons who are the most 
 generous and munificent. Indeed, I hardly know 
 whether it may not be desirable that our friends 
 should never have need of our services. Yet in the 
 case of Scipio and myself, what room would there 
 have been for the active exercise of my zeal in his 
 behalf, had he never needed my counsel or help at 
 home or in the field ? In this instance, however, 
 the service came after the friendship, not the friend- 
 ship after the service. 
 
 15. If these things are so, men who are given up 
 to pleasure are not to be listened to when they 
 express their opinions about friendship, of which 
 they can have no knowledge either by experience or 
 by reflection. For, bj- the faith of gods and men, 
 w'ho is there that would be willing to have a super- 
 abundance of all objects of desire and to live in the 
 
Cicero de Amidtia. 41 
 
 utmost fulness of wealth and what wealth can bring, 
 on condition of neither loving any one nor being 
 loved by any one? This, indeed, is the life of 
 tyrants, in which there is no good faith, no affection, 
 no fixed confidence in kindly feeHng, perpetual sus- 
 picion and anxiety, and no room for friendship ; for 
 who can love either him whom he fears, or him by 
 whom he thinks that he is feared ? Yet they re- 
 ceive the show of homage, but only while the occa- 
 sion for it lasts.i If they chance to fall, as they 
 commonly have fallen, they then ascertain how 
 destitute of friends they have been, as Tarquin is 
 reported to have said that he learned what faithful 
 and what unfaithful friends he had, when he could 
 no longer render back favors to those of either class, 
 — although I wonder whether pride and insolence 
 like his could have had any friends. Moreover, as 
 his character could not have won real friends, so 
 is the good fortune of many who occupy foremost 
 places of influence so held as to preclude faith- 
 ful friendships. Not only is Fortune blind, but she 
 generally makes those blind whom she embraces. 
 Thus they are almost always beside themselves 
 under the influence of haughtiness and wayward- 
 ness ; nor can there be created anything more 
 utterly insupportable than a fortune-favored fool. 
 There are to be seen those who previously behaved 
 
 1 Latin, dum taxat ad Umpus; that is, while the homage ren- 
 dered is in close contact with the occasion, — with the immunity 
 or profit to be purchased by it. 
 
42 Cicero de Amidtia. 
 
 with propriety who are changed by station, power, 
 or prosperity, and who spurn their old friendships 
 and lavish indulgence on the new. But what is 
 more foolish than when men have resources, means, 
 wealth at their fullest command, and can obtain 
 horses, servants, splendid raiment, costly vases, 
 whatever money can buy, for them not to procure 
 friends, who are, if I may so speak, the best and 
 the most beautiful furniture of human life ? Other 
 things which a man may procure know not him who 
 procures them, nor do they labor for his sake, — 
 indeed, they belong to him who can make them his 
 by the riglit of superior strength. But every one 
 has his own firm and sure possession of his friend- 
 ships ; while even if those things which seem the 
 gifts of fortune remain, still life unadorned and 
 deserted by friends cannot be happy. But enough 
 has been said on this branch of our subject. 
 
 16. We must now determine the limits or bounds 
 of friendship. On this subject I find three opinions 
 proposed, neither of which has my approval, — the 
 first, that we should do for our friends just what we 
 would do for ourselves ; the second, that our good 
 offices to our friends should correspond in quantity 
 and quality to those which they perform for us; 
 the tliird, that one's friends should value him 
 according to his own self-estimate. I cannot wive 
 unqualified assent to either of these opinions. The 
 first — that one should be ready to do for his 
 friends precisely what he would do for himself — is 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 43 
 
 inadmissible. How many things there are that we 
 do for our friends which we should never do on our 
 own account ! — such as making a request, even an 
 entreaty, of a man unworthy of respect, or inveigh- 
 ing against some person with a degree of bitterness, 
 nay, in terms of vehement reproach. In fine, we 
 are perfectly right in doing in behalf of a friend 
 things that in our own case would be decidedly 
 unbecoming. There are also many ways in which 
 good men detract largely from their own comfort, or 
 suffer it to be impaired, that a friend may have the 
 enjoyment which they sacrifice. The second opin- 
 ion is that which limits kind offices and good-will 
 by the rule of equality. This is simply making 
 friendship a matter of calculation, with the view of 
 keeping a debtor and creditor account evenly bal- 
 anced. To me friendship seems more affluent and 
 generous, and not disposed to keep strict watch lest 
 it may give more than it receives, and to fear that 
 a part of its due may be spilled over or suffered to 
 leak out, or that it may heap up its own measure 
 ^ over-full in return.^ But worst of all is the third 
 limit, which prescribes that friends shall take a 
 man's opinion of himself as a measure for their esti- 
 mate and treatment of him. There are some per- 
 
 1 We have here, first, a figure drawn from pecuniary accounts, 
 then one from liquid measure, then one from dry measure, — all 
 designed to affix the brand of the most petty meanness on the (so- 
 called) friendship which makes it a point neither to leave nor to 
 brook a preponderance of obligation on either side. 
 
44 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 sons who are liable to fits of depression, or Avho have 
 little hope of better fortune than the present. In 
 such a case, it is the part of a friend, not to hold the 
 position toward his friend whiclr he holds toward 
 himself, but to make the efficient endeavor to rouse 
 him from his despondency, and to lead him to 
 better hope and a more cheerful train of thought. 
 It remains for me, then, to establish another limit 
 of friendship. But first let me tell you what Scipio 
 was wont to speak of with the severest censure. 
 He maintained that no utterance could have been 
 invented more inimical to friendship ^ than that of 
 him who said that one ought to love as if he were 
 going at some future time to hate ; nor could he be 
 brought to believe that this maxim came, as was 
 reported, from Bias, who was one of the seven wise 
 men, but he regarded it as having proceeded from 
 some sordid person, who was either inordinately am- 
 bitious, or desirous of bringing everything under his 
 own control. For how can one be a friend to him 
 to whom he thinks that he may possibly become an 
 enemy ? In this case one would of necessity desire 
 and choose that his friend should commit offences 
 very frequently, so as to give him, so to speak, the 
 more numerous handles for fault-finding ; and on 
 the other hand one would be vexed, pained, ag- 
 grieved by all the right and fitting things that 
 friends do. This precept, then, from whomsoever it 
 came, amounts to the annulling of friendship. The 
 
 1 Latin, inimidorem (tliat is, in-amwiorcm) amicitiae. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 45 
 
 proper rule should be, that we exercise so much 
 caution in forming friendships, that we should never 
 begin to love a friend whom it is possible that we 
 should ever hate ; but even in case we should have 
 been unfortunate in our choice, Scipio thought that 
 it would be wiser to bear the disappointment when 
 it comes than to keep the contingency of future 
 alienation in view. 
 
 17. I would then define the terms of friendship 
 by saj'ing that, where friends are of blameless 
 character, there may fittingly be between them a 
 community of all interests, plans, and purposes, 
 without any exception, even so far that, if perchance 
 there be occasion for furthering the not entirely 
 right wishes of friends when life or reputation is at 
 stake, one may in their behalf deviate somewhat 
 from a perfectly straight course,^ yet not so far as to 
 
 1 This at first sight appears like a license to yield up moral 
 considerations to friendship, though the qualification, in the se- 
 quel, "not so far as to incur absolute dishonor," aud "virtue is 
 by no means to be sacrificed," seem saving clauses. But Cicero 
 certainly has a right to be his o^vn intei-preter, since in the De 
 Officiis, as I think, he explains in full, and in accordance with the 
 highest moral principle, what he means here ; and we have a 
 double right to insist on this interpretation, first, because the De 
 Officiis was ^vi'itten so very little while after the Dc Amicitia, and 
 both at so ripe an age, that a change of opinion on important mat- 
 ters was improbable, and, secondly, because in the later treatise he 
 expressly refers to the former as giving in full liis views on friend- 
 ship, and thus virtually sanctions that treatise. Now in the De 
 Officiis he says : " A good mau will do nothing against the State, 
 or in violation of his oath or of good faith, for the sake of his 
 
46 Cicero dc Amicitia. 
 
 incur absolute dishonor. There is a point up to 
 which a concession made to friendship is venial. 
 But we are not bound to be careless of our own 
 reputation, nor ought we to regard the esteem of 
 our fellow-citizens as an instrument of small impor- 
 tance in the management of such affairs as devolve 
 upon us, — an esteem which it is base to conciliate ^ 
 by flatter}- and fawning. Virtue, which has the 
 sincere regard of the people as its consequence, is 
 by no means to be sacriticed to friendship. 
 
 friend, not even if he were a judge in liis friend's case. . . He 
 %vill yield so far to friendsliip as to wisli his friend's case to be 
 worthy of succeeding, and to accommodate him as to the time of 
 trial, within legal limits. But inasmuch as he must give sentence 
 upon his oath, he will hear it in mind that he has God for a wit- 
 ness.'' In another passage of the De OJiciis, Cicero asserts, some- 
 what hesitatingly, yet on the authority. «f Panaetius as the 
 strictest of Stoics, the moral rightfulness of "defending on some 
 occasions a guilty man, if he he not utterly depraved and 'false to 
 all human relations." As in the passage on which I am comment- 
 ing special reference is made to the peril of life or reputation, what 
 Cicero contends for, as it seems to me, is the right of defending a 
 guQty friend as an advocate, or of favoring him as to time and 
 mode of trial as a judge. Aulus Gellius, in connection with this 
 passage in the De Amicitia, tells the following story of Chile, who 
 was on some of the lists of the seven wise men. Chilo, on the 
 last day of his life, said that the only thing that gave him uneasy 
 thought, and was burdensome to his conscience, was that once 
 when he and two other men were judges in a case in which a friend 
 of his was on trial for a capital crime, he, in accordance with his own 
 conviction, voted his friend guilty, but so influenced the minds of 
 his two associates that they gave theu- voice for his acquittal. 
 
 1 Latin, coUigcre, to collect, or gather up, one by one, the good- 
 will of each individual citizen. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 47 
 
 But, to return to Scipio, who was all the time 
 tallying about friendship, he often complained that 
 men exercised greater care about all other matters ; 
 that one could always tell how many goats and 
 sheep he had, but could not tell how many friends 
 he had ; and that men were careful in selecting their 
 beasts, but were negligent in the choice of friends, 
 and had nothing like marks and tokens ^ by which 
 to determine the fitness of friends. 
 
 Firm, steadfast, self-consistent men are to be 
 chosen as friends, and of this kind of men there is 
 a great dearth. It is very difficult to judge of char- 
 acter before we have tested it ; but we can test it 
 only after friendship is begun. Thus friendship is 
 prone to outrun judgment, and to render a fair trial 
 impossible. It is therefore the part of a wise man 
 to arrest the impulse of kindly feeling, as we check 
 a carriage in its course, that, as we use only horses 
 that have been tried, so we may avail ourselves of 
 friendships in which the characters of our friends 
 have been somehow put to the test. Some readily 
 show how fickle their friendship is in paltry pecuni- 
 ary matters ; others, whom a slight consideration of 
 that kind cannot influence, betray themselves when 
 a large amount is involved. But if some can be 
 found who think it mean to prefer money to friend- 
 ship, where shaU we come upon those who do not 
 put honors, civic offices, military commands, places 
 
 1 Latin, sigiM et notas, the marks and tokens by which the 
 quality and worth of goats and sheep were estimated. 
 
48 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 of power and trust, before friendship, so that when 
 these are offered on the one hand, and the claims 
 of friendship on the other, they will much rather 
 make choice of the objects of ambition ? For na- 
 ture is too feeble to despise a commanding station ; 
 and even though it be obtained by the violation of 
 friendship, men think that this fault will be tin-own 
 into obscurity, because it was not without a weighty 
 motive that they held friendship in abeyance. Thus 
 'true friendships are rare among those who are in 
 public office, and concerned in the affairs of the 
 State. For where will j'ou find him who prefers a 
 friend's promotion to his own ? What more shall 
 I say ? Not to dwell longer on the influence of 
 ambition upon friendship, how burdensome, how 
 difficult does it seem to most men to share misfor- 
 tunes ! to which it is not easy to find those who are 
 willing to stoop. Although Ennius is right in say- 
 ing, 
 
 " In unsure fortune a sure friend is seen," 
 
 yet one of these two things convicts most persons 
 of fickleness and weakness, — either their despising 
 their friends when they themselves are prosperous, 
 or deserting their friends in adversity. 
 
 18. Him, then, who alike in either event shall 
 have shown himself unwavering, constant, firm in 
 friendship, we ought to regard as of an exceedingly 
 rare and almost divine order of men. 
 
 Still further, good faith is essential to the main- 
 tenance of the stability and constancy which we 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 49 
 
 demand in friendship ; for nothing that is unfaith- 
 ful is stable. It is, moreover, fitting to choose for 
 a friend one who is frank, affable, accommodating, 
 interested in the same things with ourselves, — aU 
 which qualities come under the head of fidelity ; for 
 a changeful and wily disposition cannot be faithful, 
 nor can he who has not like interests and a kindred 
 nature with his friend be either faithful or stable. 
 I ought to add that a friend should neither take 
 pleasure in finding fault with his friend, nor give 
 credit to the charges which others may bring against 
 him, — all which is implied in the constancy of 
 which I have been speaking. Thus we come back 
 to the truth which I announced at the beginning 
 of our conversation, that friendship can exist only 
 between the good. It is, indeed, the part of a good 
 or — what is the same thing — a wise man^ to 
 adhere to these two principles in friendship, — first, 
 that he tolerate no feigning or dissembling (for an 
 ingenuous man will rather show even open hatred 
 than hide his feeling by his face); and, secondly, 
 that he not only repel charges made against his 
 friend by others, but that he be not himself suspi- 
 cious, and always thinking that his friend has done 
 something unfriendly. 
 
 To these requisites there may weU be added 
 suavity of speech and manners, which is of no little 
 worth as giving a relish to the intercourse of friend- 
 ship. Eigidness and austerity of demeanor on every 
 
 1 Wisdom and goodness were identical witli the Stoics. 
 4 
 
50 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 ! occasion indeed carry weight with them ; but friend- 
 Iship ought to be more gentle and mild, and more' 
 inclined to all that is genial and affable. / 
 
 19. There occurs here a question by no means 
 dif&cult,i ^vhether at any time new friends worthy 
 of our love are to be preferred to the old, as we 
 are wont to prefer young horses to those that have 
 passed their prime. Shame that there should be 
 hesitation as to the answer! There ought to be 
 no satiety of friendships, as there is rightly of 
 many other things. The older a friendship is, the 
 more precious should it be, as is the case with 
 wines that wiU bear keeping ; ^ and there is truth 
 in the proverb, that many pecks of salt must be 
 eaten together to bring friendship to perfection.^- 
 If new friendships offer the hope of fruit, like 
 the j'^oung shoots in the grain-field that give prom- 
 ise of harvest, they are not indeed to be spurned ; 
 yet the old are to be kept in their place. There 
 
 1 Latin, svhdifficilis, which I should render someivhat difficult, 
 did not Cicero treat the question as one that presents no diffi- 
 culty. In the ancient tongues, as in our own, or even more than 
 in our own, a word is often better defined by its use than in the 
 dictionary. 
 
 2 Some of the best Italian wines will not " bear keeping,'' and 
 it was probably true of more of them in Cicero's time than now 
 that wines are so often vitiated by strong alcoholic mixtures in 
 order to preserve them. Cato, in his De Ee Sustica, prescribes a 
 method of determining whether the wine of any given vintage 
 will "keep." 
 
 ' Aristotle quotes this as a proverbial saying, so that it must 
 be of very great antiquity. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 51 
 
 is very great power in long habit. To recur to 
 the horse, there is no one who would not rather 
 use the horse to which he has become accus- 
 tomed, if he is still sound, than one unbroken 
 and new. Nor has habit this power merely as 
 to the movements of an animal ; it prevails no 
 less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed 
 with the places, though mountainous and woody,^ 
 where we have made a long sojourn. But what is 
 most remarkable in friendship is that it puts a 
 man on an equality with his inferior. For there 
 often are in a circle of friends those who excel the 
 rest, as was the case with Scipio in our flock, if I 
 may use the word. He never assumed superiority 
 over Philus, never over Eupilius, never over Mum- 
 mius, never over friends of an order lower than his 
 own. Indeed he always reverenced as a superior, 
 because older than himself, his brother Quintus 
 Maximus,^ a thoroughly worthy man, but by no 
 means his equal ; and in fact he wanted to make all 
 his friends of the more consequence by whatever 
 advantages he himself possessed. This example all 
 ought to imitate, that if they have attained any su- 
 periority of virtue, genius, fortune, they may impart 
 
 1 Therefore uninviting ; for mountain and forest had not in 
 early time the charm which we find in them. Indeed, the love 
 of nature uncultivated and unadorned is, for the most part, of 
 modern growth. 
 
 2 Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the eldest son of 
 Aemilius Paulus, and the adopted son of Fabius Maximus. 
 
52 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 it to and share it with those with whom they are 
 the iTiost closely connected ; and that if they are 
 of humble parentage, and have kindred of slender 
 ability or fortune, they may increase their means 
 of well-being, and reflect honor and worth upon 
 them, — as in fable those who were long in servile 
 condition through ignorance of their parentage and 
 race, when they were recognized and found to be 
 sons either of gods or of kings, retained their love 
 for the shepherds whom for many years they sup- 
 posed to be their fathers. Much more ought the 
 like to be done in the case of real and well-known 
 fathers ; for the best fruit of genius, and virtue, and 
 every kind of excellence is reaped when it is thus 
 bestowed on near kindred and friends. 
 
 20. Moreover, as among persons bound by ties of 
 friendship and intimacy those who hold the higher 
 place ought to bring themselves down to the same 
 plane with their inferiors, so ought these last not to 
 feel aggrieved because they are surpassed in ability, 
 or fortune, or rank by their friends. Most of them, 
 however, are always finding some ground of com- 
 plaint, or even of reproach, especially if they can 
 plead any service that they have rendered faithfully, 
 in a friendly way, and with a certain amount of 
 painstaking on their part. Such men, indeed, are 
 hateful when they reproach their friends on the 
 score of services which he on whom they were 
 bestowed ought to bear in mind, but which it is 
 unbecoming for him who conferred them to recount. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 53 
 
 Those who are superior ought, undoubtedly, not only 
 to waive all pretension in friendly intercourse, but to 
 do what they can to raise their humbler friends to 
 their own level.' There are some who give their 
 friends trouble by imagining that they are held in 
 low esteem, which, however, is not apt to be the 
 case except with those who think meanly of them- 
 selves. Those who feel thus ought to be raised to 
 a just self-esteem, not only by kind words, but 
 by substantial service. But what you do for any 
 one must be measured, first by your own ability, 
 and then by the capacity of him whom you would 
 favor and help. Por, however great your influence 
 may be, you cannot raise all your friends to the 
 highest positions. Thus Scipio coidd effect the 
 election of Publius Eupilius to the consulship ; but 
 he could not do the same for his brother Lucius.^ 
 In general, friendships that are properly so called 
 are formed between persons of mature years and 
 established character; nor if young men have been 
 fond of hunting or of ball-playing, is there any need 
 of permanent attachment to those whom they then 
 liked as associates in the same sport. On this prin- 
 ciple our nurses and the slaves that led us to school 
 will demand by right of priority the highest grade 
 
 1 Or, as it might be rendered by supplying a se, " so ought the 
 humbler to do what they can to raise themselves." Some of the 
 commentators prefer this sense ; but if Cicero meant se, I think 
 that he would have written it. 
 
 2 The brother of Publius Eupilius, not his own brother. 
 
54 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 of affectionate regard, — persons, indeed, who are 
 not to be neglected, but who are on a somewhat 
 different footing from that of friends. Friendships 
 formed solely from early associations cannot last; 
 for differences of character grow out of a diversity 
 of pursuits, and unlikeness of character dissolves 
 friendships. Nor is there any reason why good 
 men cannot be the friends of bad men, or bad men 
 of good, except that the dissiliency of pursuits 
 and of character between them is as great as it 
 can be. 
 
 It is also a counsel worthy of heed, that excessive 
 fondness be not suffered to interfere, as it does too 
 often, with important services that a friend can ren- 
 der. To resort again to fable, Neoptolemus could 
 not have taken Troy ^ if he had chosen to comply 
 with the wishes of Lycomedes, who brought him 
 up, and who with many tears attempted to dissuade 
 him from his expedition. Equally in actual life 
 there are not infrequently important occasions on 
 which the society of friends must be for a time 
 abandoned ; and he who would prevent this because 
 he cannot easily bear the separation, is of a weak 
 and unmanly nature, and for that very reason unfit 
 to fill the place of a friend. In fine, in all matters 
 you should take into consideration both what you 
 may reasonably demand of your friend, and what 
 you can fitly suffer him to obtain from you. 
 
 ' Or ratlier, could not liave Tjorne the indispensable part which 
 it was predicted that he should bear in the taking of Troy. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 55 
 
 21. The misfortune involved in tlie dissolution 
 of friendships is sometimes unavoidable ; for I am 
 now coming down from the intimacies of wise men 
 to common friendships. Faults of friends often be- 
 tray themselves openly — whether to the injury of 
 their friends themselves, or of strangers — in such a 
 way that the disgrace falls back upon their friends. 
 Such friendships are to be effaced by the suspension 
 of intercourse, and, as I have heard Cato say, to be 
 unstitched rather than cut asunder, unless some 
 quite intolerable offence flames out to full view, so 
 that it can be neither right nor honorable not to 
 effect an immediate separation and dissevering. But 
 if there shall have been some change either in char- 
 acter or in the habits of life, or if there'have sprung 
 up some difference of opinion as to public affairs, 
 — I am speaking, as I have just said, of common 
 friendships, not of those between wise men, — care 
 should be taken lest there be the appearance, not 
 only of friendship dropped, but of enmity taken up; 
 for nothing is more unbecoming than to wage war 
 with a man with whom you have lived on terms 
 of intimacy. Scipio, as you know, had withdrawn 
 from the friendship of Quintus Pompeius ^ on my 
 
 1 Laelius intending to present himself as a, candidate for the 
 consulship, Scipio asked Pompeius whether he was going to he a 
 candidate, and when, he replied in the negative, asked him to use 
 his influence in hehalf of Laelius. This Pompeius promised, and 
 then, instead of heing true to his word, offered himself for the 
 consulship, and was elected. 
 
56 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 account ; he. became alienated from Metellus ^ be- 
 cause of their different views as to the administra- 
 tion of the State. In both cases he conducted him- 
 self with gravity and dignity, and without any 
 feeling of bitterness. The endeavor, then, must 
 first be, to prevent discord from taking place among 
 friends, and if anything of the kind occurs, to see 
 that the friendship may seem to be extinguished 
 rather than crushed out. Care must thus be taken 
 lest friendships lapse into violent enmities, whence 
 are generated quarrels, slanders, insults, which j^et, 
 if not utterly intolerable, are to be endured, and 
 this honor rendered to old friendship, that the 
 blame may rest with him who does, not with him 
 who suffers, the wrong. 
 
 The one surety and preventive against these mis- 
 takes and misfortunes is, not to form attachments 
 too soon, nor for those unworthy of such regard. 
 
 But it is those in whose very selves there is rea- 
 son why they should be loved, that are worthy of 
 friendship. A rare class of men! Indeed, super- 
 latively excellent objects of every sort are rare, nor 
 is anything more difficult than to discover that 
 which is in all respects perfect in its kind. But 
 most persons have acquired the habit of recognizin" 
 
 1 Scipio and Metellus, though their intimacy was suspended 
 for political reasons, held each other in the highest regard ; and no 
 person in Eome expressed profounder sorrow than Metellus for 
 Soipio's death, or was more warm in his praise as a man of un- 
 paraEeled ability, worth, and patriotism. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. <5^ 
 
 nothing as good in human relations and affairs that 
 does not produce some revenue^ and they most love 
 those friends, as they do those cattle, that will yield 
 them the greatest gain. Thus they lack that most 
 beautiful and most natural friendship, which is to 
 be sought in itself and for its own sake ; nor can 
 they know from experience what and how great is 
 the power of such friendship. One loves himself, 
 not in order to exact from himself any wages for 
 such love, but because he is in himself dear to him- 
 self ISTow, unless this same property be transferred 
 to friendship, a true friend will never be found ; for 
 such a friend is, as it were, another self. But if it 
 is seen in beasts, birds, fishes, animals tame and 
 wild, that they first love themselves (for self-love is 
 born with everything that lives), and that they then 
 require and seek those of their kind to whom they 
 may attach themselves, and do so with desire and 
 with a certain semblance of human love, how much 
 more is this natural in man, who both loves him- 
 self, and crajes another whose soul he may so. blend 
 with his own as almost to make one out of two ! 
 
 22. But men in general are so perverse, not to 
 say shameless, as to wish a friend to be in character 
 what they themselves could not be, and they expect 
 of friends what they do not give them in return. 
 The proper course, however, is for one first to be 
 himseK a good man, and then to seek another 
 like himself. In such persons the stability of 
 friendship, of which I have been speaking, can be 
 
58 Cicero de Amieitia. 
 
 made sure, since, united in mutual love, tbey will, 
 in the first place, hold in subjection the desires to 
 which others are enslaved ; then they will find de- 
 light in whatever is equitable and just, and each 
 will take upon himself any labor or burden in the 
 other's stead, while neither will ever ask of the other 
 aught that is not honorable and right. Nor will 
 they merely cherish and love, they will even rever- 
 ence each other. But he who bereaves friendship 
 of mutual respect ^ takes from it its greatest orna- 
 ment. Therefore those are in fatal error who think 
 that in friendship there is free license for all lusts 
 /and evil practices. Friendship is given by nature, 
 7not as a companion of the vices, but as a helper of 
 the virtues, that, as solitary virtue might not be able 
 to attain the summit of excellence, iinited and asso- 
 ciated with another it might reach that eminence. 
 'As to those between whom there is, or has been, 
 or shaU be such an alliance, the fellowship is to be 
 regarded as the best and happiest possible, inas- 
 much as it leads to the highest good that nature 
 can bestow. This is the alliance, I say, in which 
 are included all things that men think worthy their 
 endeavor, — honor, fame, peace of mind, and pleasure, 
 so that if these be present life is happy, and cannot 
 be happy without them. Such a Kfe being the best 
 
 1 Latin, verccuTidia, an indefinite word ; for it mar have almost 
 any good meaning. I have rendered it respect, because I have no 
 doubt that it derives its meaning here from verebuntar, which I 
 have rendered reverence, in the preceding sentence. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 59 
 
 and greatest boon, if we wish to make it ours, we 
 must devote ourselves to the cultivation of virtue, 
 without which we can attain neither friendship nor 
 anything else desirable. But if virtue be left out 
 of the account, those who think that they have 
 friends perceive that they are mistaken when some 
 important crisis compels them to put their friends 
 to the test. Therefore — for it is worth reiterating 
 — you ought to love after having exercised your 
 judgment on your friends, instead of forming your 
 judgment of them after you have begun to love 
 them. But while in many things we are charge- 
 able with carelessness, we are most so in choosing 
 and keeping our friends. "We reverse the old 
 proverb,^ take counsel after acting, and attempt to 
 do over again what we have done ; for after having 
 become closely connected by long habit and even 
 by mutual services, some occasion of offence springs 
 up, and we suddenly break in sunder a friendship 
 in full career. 
 
 23. The more blameworthy are they who are so 
 very careless in a matter of so essential importance. 
 Indeed, among things appertaining to human life, 
 it is friendship alone that has the unanimous voice 
 
 I What this proverb may have been we cannot determine with 
 precision from its opposite ; hut the caution based upon it might 
 remind one of our proverb about shutting the ham-door after the 
 horse is stolen. The words, ucta, agimus, so terse that they can 
 be translated only by a paraphrase, are probably the convei'se of 
 the proverb, which may have been something like non agetida 
 sunt acta. 
 
60 Cicero de Amicitia. ' 
 
 of all men as to its capacity of service. By many 
 even virtue is scorned, and is said to be a mere 
 matter of display and ostentation. Many despise 
 wealth, and, contented with little, take pleasure in 
 slender diet and inexpensive living. Though some 
 are inflamed with desire for of&ce, many there are 
 who hold it in so low esteem that they can imagine 
 nothing more inane or worthless. Other things, 
 too, which seem to some admirable, very many re- 
 gard as of no value. But all have the same feeling 
 ^ as to friendship, — alike those who devote them- 
 selves to the public service, those who take delight 
 in learning and philosophy, those who manage their 
 own affairs in a quiet way, and, lastly, those who 
 are wholly given up to sensual pleasure. They all 
 agree that without friendship life cannot be, if one 
 only means to live in some form or measure respect- 
 ably.^ For friendship somehow twines through all 
 lives, and leaves no mode of being without its pres- 
 ence. Even if one be of so rude and savage a na- 
 ture as to shun and hate the society of men, as 
 we have learned was the case with that Timon of 
 Athens,^ if there ever was such a man,^ he yet 
 
 ^ Latin, libcraliter ; that is, worthily of a free man. 
 
 2 Plutarch says that Timon had an associate, virtually a friend, 
 not unlike himself, Apemantus, on whom he freely vented his 
 spite and scorn for all the world beside, and that he also took a 
 special liking to Alcibiades in his youth, perhaps as to one fitted 
 and destined to do an untold amoimt of mischief. 
 
 ' Latin, ncscio, quern, I know not whom, or, of whom I am 
 ignorant ; that is, there may or may not have been such a man. 
 
Ckero de Amieitia. 61 
 
 cannot help seeking some one in whose presence he 
 may vomit the venom of his bitterness. The need 
 of friendship would be best shown, were such a 
 thing possible, if some god should take us away 
 from this human crowd, and place us anywhere in 
 solitude, giving us there an abundant supply of aU 
 things that nattire craves, but depriving us utterly 
 of the sight of a human countenance. Who could 
 be found of so iron make that he could endure^ 
 such a life, and whom solitude would not render 
 incapable of enjoying any kind of pleasure ? That 
 is true then which, if I remember aright, our elders 
 used to say that they had heard from their seniors 
 in age as having come from Archytas of Taren- 
 tum, — "If one had ascended to heaven, and had 
 obtained a full view of the nature of the universe 
 and the beauty of the stars, yet his admiration 
 would be without delight, if there were no one to 
 whom he could tell what he had seen." Thus Na- 
 ture has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it ^ , 
 were, on some support; and the sweetest support^ 
 is found in the most intimate friendship. 
 
 24. But while Nature declares by so many tokens 
 what she desires, craves, needs, we — I know not 
 how — grow deaf, and fail to hear her counsel. 
 
 Intercourse among friends assumes many different 
 forms and modes, and there frequently arise causes 
 
 1 Latin, tam . . . ferrous, qui . . . ferre posset, — an as- 
 sonance which cannot be represented by corresponding English 
 words. 
 
62 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 of suspicion and offence, which it is the part of a 
 wise man sometimes to avoid, sometimes to remove, 
 sometimes to bear. One ground of offence, namely, 
 freedom in telling the truth, must be put entirely 
 away, in order that friendship may retain its ser- 
 viceableness and its good faith; for friends often 
 need to be admonished and reproved, and such 
 offices, when kindly performed, ought to be received 
 in a friendly way. Yet somehow we witness in 
 actual life what my friend ^ says in his play of 
 Andria : — 
 
 " Complacency " wins friends ; but truth gives birth to hatred." 
 
 ■ Truth is offensive, if hatred, the bane of friendship, 
 is indeed born of it ; but much more offensive is 
 complacency, when in its indulgence for wrong- 
 doing it suffers a friend to go headlong to ruin. 
 The greatest blame, however, rests on him who 
 both spurns the truth when it is told him, and is 
 driven by the complacency of friends to self-decep- 
 tion. In this matter, therefore, there should be the 
 utmost discretion and care, first, that admonition be 
 without bitterness, then, that reproof be without in- 
 vective. But in complacency — for I am ready to 
 use the word which Terence furnishes — let pleas- 
 ing truth be told ; let flattery, the handmaid of the 
 
 I Terence, with whom Laelius was so intimate that he was 
 reported, probably on no sufficient ground, to hare aided in the 
 composition of some of the plays that bear Terence's name. This 
 verse is from the Andria. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 63 
 
 \-ice3, be put far away, as unworthy, not only of 
 a friend, but of any man aboye the condition of 
 a slave; for there is one way of living with a 
 tyrant, another with a friend. We may weU de- ' 
 spair of saving him whose ears are so closed to the 
 truth that he cannot hear what is true from a 
 friend. Among the many pithy sayings of Cato 
 was this : " There are some who owe more to their 
 bitter enemies than to the friends that seem sweet ; 
 for those often tell the truth, these never." It is 
 indeed ridiculous for those who are admonished 
 not to be annoyed by what ought to trouble them, 
 and to be. annoyed by what ought to give them no 
 offence. Their faults give them no pain ; they take 
 it hard that they are reproved ; — while they ought, 
 on the contrary, to be grieved for their wrong-doing, 
 to rejoice in their correction. 
 
 25. As, then, it belongs to friendship both to 
 admonish and to be admonished^ and to do the 
 former freely, yet not harshly, to receive the latter 
 patiently, not resentfully, so it is to be maintained 
 that friendship has no greater pest than adulation, 
 flattery, subserviency ; for under its many names ^ 
 a brand should be put on this vice of fickle and 
 
 1 Latin, muUis nominibus, which some commentators render 
 " on many accounts," nomen, being used familiarly in the sense of 
 "account" with reference to matters of purchase and sale, debt 
 and credit. But I think that Cicero brings in adukdio, ilanditia, 
 and assentatio, as so many synonyms of oiseqtiium, intending to 
 comprehend in his indictment whatever alias the one vice may 
 assume. 
 
64 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 deceitful men, who say everything with the view of 
 giving pleasure, without any reference to the truth. 
 While simulation is bad on every account, inas- 
 much as it renders the discernment of the truth 
 which it defaces impossible, it is most of all inimi- 
 cal to friendship ; for it is fatal to sincerity, with- 
 out which the name of friendship ceases to have 
 i any meaning. For since the essence of friendship 
 consists in this, that one mind is, as it were, made 
 out of several, how can this be, if in one of the 
 several there shall be not always one and the same 
 mind, but a mind varying, changeful, manifold ? 
 And what can be so flexible, so far out of its right- 
 ful course, as the mind of him who adapts himself, 
 not only to the feelings and wishes, but even to the 
 look and gesture, of another ? 
 
 "Does one say No or Yes ? I say so too. 
 My rule is to assent to everything," 
 
 as Terence, whom I have just quoted, says ; but he 
 says it in the person of Gnatho,^ — a sort of friend 
 which only a frivolous mind can tolerate. But as 
 there are many like Gnatho, "v^o stand higher 
 than he did in place, fortune, and imputation, their 
 subserviency is the more offensive, because their 
 position gives weight to their falsehood. 
 
 But a flattering friend may be distinguished and 
 discriminated from a true friend by proper care, as 
 easily as everything disguised and feigned is seen to 
 
 1 A parasite, in Terence's play of Eunuchus, from which these 
 verses are quoted. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 65 
 
 differ from what is genuine and real. The assembly 
 of the people, though consisting of persons who 
 have the least skill in judgment, yet always knows 
 the difference between him who, merely seeking 
 popularity, is sycophantic and fickle, and a firm, 
 inflexible, and substantial citizen. With what soft 
 words did Caius Papirius^ steal ^ into the ears of 
 the assembly a little while ago, when he brouo-ht 
 forward the law about the re-election of the tribunes 
 of the people \^ I opposed the law. But, to say 
 nothing of myself, I will rather speak of Scipio. 
 How great, ye immortal gods, was his dignity of 
 bearing ! What majesty of address ! So that you 
 might easily call him the leader of the Eoman peo- 
 ple, rather than one of their number. But you were 
 there, and you have copies of his speech. Thus the 
 law was rejected by vote of the people. But, to re- 
 turn to myself, you remember, when Quintus Maxi- 
 mus, Scipio's brother, and Lucius Mancinus were 
 Consuls, how much the people seemed to favor the 
 law of Caius Licinius Crassus about the priests. 
 The law proposed to transfer the election of priests 
 
 1. Caius Papirius Carbo, tlie suspected murderer of Scipio. 
 
 ^ Latin, injluebai, flowed in, a figure 'beautifully appropriate, 
 but hardlj' translatable. 
 
 8 There was an old law, which prohibited the re-election of a 
 citizen to the same ofElce till after an interval of ten years. In the 
 law here referred to, Carbo — then Tribune — sought to provide 
 for the re-election of tribunes as soon and as often as the people 
 might choose, thus undoubtedly hoping to secure for himself a 
 permanent tenure of office. 
 
 5 
 
66 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 from their own respective colleges to the suffrage of 
 the people ; ^ and he on that occasion introduced the 
 custom of facing the people in addressing thern.^ 
 Yet under my advocacy the religion of the immor- 
 tal gods obtained the ascendency over his plausible 
 speech. That was during my praetorship, five years 
 before I was chosen Consul. Thus the cause was 
 gained by its own merits rather than by ofi&eial 
 ■ authority. 
 
 26. But if on the stage, or — what is the same 
 thing — in the assembly of the people, in which 
 there is ample scope for f^lse and distorted represen- 
 tations, the truth only needs to be made plain and 
 clear in order for it to prevail, what ought to be the 
 case in friendship, which is entirely dependent for 
 its value on truth, — in which unless, as the phrase 
 is, you see an open bosom and show your own, you 
 can have nothing worthy of confidence, nothing of 
 which you can feel certain, not even the fact of your 
 loving or being loved, since you are ignorant of 
 what either really is ? Yet this flattery of which I 
 have spoken, harmful as it is, can injure only him 
 who takes it in and is delighted with it. Thus it 
 is the case that he is most ready to open his ear 
 to flattery, who flatters himself and finds supreme 
 
 1 Tlie several pontifical colleges had been close corporations, 
 filling their own vacancies. The law which Laelius defeated 
 proposed ti'ansfemng the election of priests to the people. 
 
 2 It had been customary, when the Senate was in session, for 
 him who harangued the people to face the temple where the Senate 
 sat, thus virtually recognizing the supi-erae authority of that body. 
 
Cicero do Amicitia. 67 
 
 delight in himself. Virtue indeed loves itself; for 
 it has thorough knowledge of itself, and understands 
 how worthy of love it is. But it is reputed, not 
 real, virtue of which I am now speaking ; for there 
 are not so many possessed of virtue as there are that 
 desire to seem virtuous. These last are delighted 
 with flattery, and when false statements are framed 
 purposely to satisfy and please them, they take the 
 falsehood as valid testimony to their merit. That, 
 however, is no friendship, in which one of the (so- 
 called) friends does not want to hear the truth, and 
 the other is ready to lie. The flattery of parasites 
 on the stage would not seem amusing, were there 
 not in the play braggart soldiers^ to be flattered. 
 " Great thanks indeed did Thais render to me ?" 
 
 " Great " was a sufficient answer ; but the answer in 
 the play is " Prodigious." The flatterer always mag- 
 nifies what he whom he is aiming to please wishes 
 to have great. But while this smooth falsehood 
 takes effect only with those who themselves attract 
 and invite it, even persons of a more substantial and 
 
 1 Latin, milites gloriosi. Miles Gloriosus is the title of one of 
 the comedies of Plautus ; and one of the stock characters of the 
 ancient comedy is a conceited, swaggering, brainless soldier, who 
 is perpetually toasting of his own valor and exploits, and who 
 takes the most fulsome and ridiculous flattery as the due recog- 
 nition of his transcendent merit. The verse here quoted is from 
 Terence's Eimuchus. Thraso, a miles gloriosus (from whom is 
 derived our adjective thrasonical), asks this question of Gnatho, 
 the parasite, one of whose speeches is quoted in § 25. Magnas 
 is the word in the question ; ingentes, in the answer. 
 
68 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 solid character need to be warned to be on their 
 guard, lest they be ensnared by flattery of a more 
 cunning type. No one who has a moderate share 
 of common-sense fails to detect the open flatterer ; 
 but great care must be taken lest the wily and cov- 
 ert flatterer may insinuate himself; for he is not 
 very easily recognized, since he often assents by 
 opposing, plays the game of disputing in a smooth, 
 caressing way, and at length submits, and suffers 
 himself to be outreasoned, so as to make him on 
 whom he is practising his arts appear to have had 
 the deeper insight. But what is more disgraceful 
 than to be made game of ? One must take heed 
 not to put himself in the condition of the character 
 in the play of Tlie Heiress : ^ — 
 
 " Of an old fool one never made such sport 
 As you have made of me this very day ; " 
 
 for there is no character on the stage so foolish as 
 that of tliese unwary and credulous old men. But 
 I know not how my discourse has digressed from 
 the friendships of perfect, that is, of wise men, — 
 wise, I mean, so far as wisdom can fall to the lot 
 of man, — to friendships of a lighter sort. Let us 
 then return to our original subject, and bring it to 
 a speedy conclusion. 
 
 1 Epicleros, a comedy by Caecilius Statms, of whose works 
 ouly a few fragments, like this, are extant. Next to the braggart 
 soldier, a credulous old man — generally a father — who could 
 have all manner of tricks played upon him mthout detecting their 
 import, was the favorite butt for ridicule in the ancient comedy. 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 69 
 
 27. Virtue, I say to you, Caius Fannius, and to 
 you, Quintus Mucius, — virtue both forms and pre- ; 
 serves friendships. In it is mutual agreement ; in 
 it is sta^hility ; in it is consistency of conduct and 
 character. When it has put itself forth and shown 
 its light, and has seen and recognized the same 
 light in another, it draws near to that light, and 
 receives in return what the other has to give; and 
 from this intercourse love, or friendship, — • call it 
 which you may, — is kindled. These terms are 
 equally derived in our language from loving ; ^ and 
 to love is nothing else than to cherish affection for 
 him whom you love, with no felt need of his ser- 
 vice, with no quest of benefit to be obtained from 
 him ; vsrhile, nevertheless, serviceableness blooms out 
 from friendship, however little you may have had 
 it in view. With this affection I in my youth 
 loved those old men, — Lucius Paulus, Marcus Cato, 
 Caius Gallus, PubUus Nasica, Tiberius Gracchus, 
 the father-in-law of my friend Scipio. This rela- 
 tion is more conspicuous among those of the same 
 age, as between myself and Scipio, Lucius Furius, 
 Publius Eupilius, Spurius Mummius. Bat in my 
 turn, as an old man, I find repose in the attachment 
 of young men, as in yours, and in that of Quintus 
 Tubero, and I am delighted with the intimacy of 
 Publius Eutilius and Aulus Virginius, who are just 
 emerging from boyhood. While the order of human 
 life and of nature is such that another generation 
 
 1 Amm- . . . amicitia . . . db a'ma,ndo. 
 
70 Cicero de Amicitia. 
 
 must come upon the stage, it would be most desira- 
 ble, could such a thing be, to reach the goal, so to 
 speak, with those of our own age with whom we 
 started on the race ; but since man's life is frail and 
 precarious, we ought always to be in quest of some 
 younger persons whom we may love, and who will 
 love us in return ; for when love and kindness cease 
 all enjoyment is taken out of life. 
 
 For me indeed, Seipio, though suddenly snatched 
 away, still lives and will always live ; for I loved the 
 virtue of the man, vrhich is not extinguished. INor 
 does it float before my eyes only, as I have always 
 had it at hand ; it will also be renowned and illus- 
 trious with generations to come. K"o one wiU ever 
 enter with courage and hope on a high and noble 
 career, without proposing to himself as a standard 
 the memory and image of his virtue. Indeed, of 
 all things which fortune or nature ever gave me, I 
 have nothing that I can compare with the friend- 
 ship of Seipio. In this there was a common feeling 
 as to the affairs of the State ; in this, mutual coun- 
 sel as to our private concerns ; in this, too, a repose 
 fuU of delight. Never, so far as I know, did I 
 offend him in the least thing; never did I hear 
 from him a word which I would not wish to l^ear. 
 We had one home ; ^ the same diet, and that sim- 
 
 1 This may refer to their living together on their cam- 
 paigns, journeys, and rural sojourns ; but more probably to the 
 fact that each felt as much at home in the other's house as in his 
 
Cicero de Amicitia. 71 
 
 pie ; 1 we were together, not only in military service, 
 but also in journeying and in our rural sojourns. 
 And what shall I say of our unflagging zeal in the 
 pursuit of knowledge, and in learning everything 
 new within our reach, — an employment in which, 
 when not under the eyes of the public, we passed all 
 our leisure time together ? -Had the recoUection and 
 remembrance of these things died with him, I could 
 not anyhow bear the loss of a man, thus bound to 
 me in the closest intimacy and holding me in the 
 dearest love, ^ut they are not blotted out, they are 
 rather nourished and increased by reflection and 
 memory; and were I entirely bereft of them, my 
 advanced age would still be my great comfort , for 
 I can miss his society but for a brief season, and all 
 sorrows, however heavy, if they can last but a little 
 while, ought to be endured. 
 
 I had these things to say to you about friendship; 
 and I exhort you that you so give the foremost 
 place to virtue without which friendship cannot 
 be, that with the sole exception of virtue, you may 
 think nothing to be preferred to friendship. 
 
 1 Latin, communis. I do not find that this word has in Latin 
 the sense of cJieap and mean which our word commm, has. But 
 here it cannot mean that Laelius and Scipio fed together, which 
 is sufficiently said in the preceding idem vietus. It must there- 
 fore denote such fare as was common to them with their fellow- 
 citizens in general, and that is simple and not luxurious fare. 
 
SCIPIO'S DREAM. 
 
 1. When I arrived in Africa, to serve, as you 
 know, in the office of military Tribune of the fourth 
 Legion, under Manius^ Manilius as consul, I de- 
 sired nothing so much as to meet Masinissa^ the 
 king, who for sufficient reasons ^ stood in the most 
 friendly relation to our family. When I came to 
 him, the old man embraced me with teai-s, and 
 shortly afterward looked up to heaven and said : " I 
 thank thee, sovereign Sun,* and all of you lesser 
 
 1 The praenomen Marcus is given to Manilius in the manu- 
 script of the De Republica discovered by Angelo Mai ; but Manius 
 is the reading in all previous authorities as to this special frag- 
 ment 
 
 2 King of Numidia, — a country neariy identical in extent 
 with the present province of Algeria. Its name defines its peo- 
 ple, being derived from vojCiaSes, Tiomads. Its inhabitants were a 
 wild, semi-savage cluster of tribes, black and white. Masinissa, ' 
 though faithful to the Eomans after he had convinced himself 
 that theirs must be the ascendant star, was a crafty, treacherous, 
 cruel prince, probably with enough of civilization to have acquired 
 some of its vices, while he had not lost those of the savage. 
 
 s The elder Africanus had confirmed him in the possession of 
 his own ISTumidia, and had added to it the adjoining kingdom of 
 Cirta. 
 
 * The Numidians worshipped the heavenly bodies. 
 
74 Scipio's Dream. 
 
 lights of heaven, that before I pass away from this 
 life I behold in my kingdom and beneath this roof 
 Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose very name renews 
 my strength, so utterly inseparable from my thought 
 is the memory of that best and most invincible of 
 men who first bore it." Then I questioned him 
 about his kingdom, and he asked me about our 
 republic ; and with the many things that we had to 
 communicate to each other, the day wore away. 
 
 At a later hour, after an entertainment of royal 
 magnificence, we prolonged our conversation far 
 into the night, while the old man talked to me 
 about nothing else but Africanus, rehearsing not 
 only all that he had done, but all that he had said. 
 When we parted to go to our rest, sleep took a 
 stronger hold on me than usual, on account both of 
 the fatigue of my journey and of the lateness of 
 the hour. In my sleep, I suppose in consequence 
 of our conversation (for generally our thoughts and 
 utterances by day have in our sleep an effect like 
 that which Ennius describes in his own case as to 
 Homer,^ about whom in his waldng hours he was 
 perpetually thinking and talking), Africanus ap- 
 peared to me, with an aspect that reminded me 
 more of his bust than of his real face. I shuddered 
 when I saw him. But he said : " Preserve your 
 presence of mind, Scipio ; be not afraid, and com- 
 mit to memory what I shall say to you. 
 
 1 The first verse of the Annates of Ennius was : 
 
 " In sonmis mihi visus Homerus adesse poeta." 
 
Scipio's Dream. 75 
 
 2. "Do you see that city, whicli was brought 
 through me into subjection to the Roman people, 
 but now renews its old hostility, and cannot remain 
 quiet," — and he showed me Carthage from a high 
 place full of stars, shining and splendid, • — " against 
 which you, being little more than a common soldier, 
 are coming to fight? In two years from now you 
 as Consul will overthrow this city, and you will 
 obtain of your own right the surname which up 
 to this time you hold as inherited from me. When 
 you shall have destroyed Carthage, shall have 
 celebrated your triumph over it, shall have been 
 Censor, and shall have traversed, as an ambassa- 
 dor, Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you will be 
 chosen a second time Consul in your absence, and 
 will put an end to one of the greatest of wars by 
 extirpating ISTumantia. But when you shall be 
 borne to the Capitol in your triumphal chariot after 
 this war, you will find the State disturbed by the 
 machinations of my grandson.^ 
 
 "In this emergency, Africanus, it will behoove 
 you to show your country the light of your energy, 
 genius, and wisdom. But I see at that time, as it 
 were, a double way of destiny. Tor when your age 
 shall' have foUowed the sun for eight times seven 
 revolutions, and these two numbers ^ — each perfect, 
 
 1 Tiberius Gracchus, wliose mother, Cornelia, was the daughter 
 of the elder Africanus. 
 
 2 The Pythagoreans regarded seren as the number representing 
 light, and dght as representing love. Seven was also a perfect 
 
76 Scipios Dream. 
 
 though for different reasons — shall have completed 
 for you in the course of nature the destined period, 
 to you alone and to your name the whole city will 
 turn ; on you the Senate will look, on you all good 
 citizens, on you the allies^ on you the LatinL You 
 will be the one man on whom the safety of the city 
 wiU rest ; and, to say no more, you, as Dictator, 
 must re-establish tlie State, if you escape the im- 
 pious hands of your kindred." ^ Here, when Laelius 
 had cried out, and the rest of the company had 
 breathed deep sighs, Scipio, smiling pleasantly upon 
 them, said, "I beg you not to rouse me from sleep 
 and break up my vision. Hear the remainder 
 of it." 
 
 3. "But that you, Africanus, may be the more 
 prompt in the defence of the State, know that for 
 all who shall have preserved, succored, enlarged 
 their country, there is a certain and determined 
 place in heaven where they enjoj- eternal happiness ; 
 for to the Supreme God who governs this whole 
 universe nothing is more pleasing than those com- 
 panies and unions of men that are called cities. Of 
 
 number, as corresponding to tlie number of celestial orbits (in- 
 cluding tbe .sun, the moon, and the five known planets), the 
 number of days in the quarter of the moon's revolution, and the 
 number of the gates of sense (so to speak), mouth, eyes, ears, and 
 nostrils. Eight was a perfect number, as being first after unity 
 on the list of cubes ; and Plato in the Timacus speaks of eight 
 celestial rerolutions — including that of the earth — as unequal in 
 duration and velocity, but as forming, in some unexplained way, 
 a cycle sjmchronous with the year. 
 1 See Ve Amicitia § 3, note. 
 
Scipio's Dream. 77 
 
 these the rulers and preservers, goiug hence, return ; 
 hither." 
 
 Here I, although I had been alarmed, not indeed 
 so much by the fear of death as by that of the 
 treachery of my own kindred, yet asked whether 
 Paulus, my father, and others whom we supposed 
 to be dead were living. " Yes, indeed," he replied, 
 " those who have fled from the bonds of the body, 
 like runners from the goal, live ; while what is 
 called your life is death. But do you see your 
 father Paulus coming to you ? " When I saw him, 
 I shed a flood of tears; but he, embracing and 
 kissing me, forbade my weeping. 
 
 Then as soon as my tears would suffer me to 
 speak, I began by saying, " Most sacred and excel- 
 lent father, since this is life, as Africanus tells me, 
 why do I remain on the earth, and not rather hasten 
 to come to you?" "JSTot so," said he; "for unless 
 the God who has for his temple all that you now 
 behold, shall have freed you from this prison of 
 the body, there can be no entrance for you hither. 
 Men have indeed been brought into being on this 
 condition, that they should guard the globe which 
 you see in the midst of this temple, which is called 
 the earth ; and a soul has been given to them from 
 those eternal fires which you call consteUations 
 and stars, which, globed and round, animated with 
 god-derived minds, complete their courses and move 
 through their orbits with amazing speed. Tou, 
 therefore, Publius, and all rightly disposed men are 
 
78 Scipio's Dream. 
 
 bound to retain the soul in the body's keeping, nor 
 without the command of him who gave it to you 
 to depart from the life appointed for man, lest you 
 may seem to have taken flight from human duty as 
 assigned by God. But, Scipio, like this your grand- 
 father,^ like me, your father, cherish justice and 
 that sacred observance of duty to your kind, which, 
 while of great worth toward parents and family, is 
 of supreme value toward your country. Such a life 
 is the way to heaven, and to this assembly of those 
 who have already lived, and, released from the body, 
 inhabit the place which you now see,'' — it was that 
 circle that shines forth among the stars in the most 
 dazzling white, — " which you have learned from 
 the Greeks to call the Milky Way." And as I 
 looked on every side I saw other things transcen- 
 dently glorious and wonderful There were stars 
 which we never see from here below, and all the 
 stars were vast far beyond what we have ever im- 
 agined. The least of them was that which, farthest 
 from heaven, nearest to the earth, shone with a 
 borrowed light. But the starry globes very far sur- 
 passed the earth in magnitude. The earth itself in- 
 deed looked to me so small as to make me ashamed of 
 our empire, which was a mere point on its surface. 
 
 4. While I was gazing more intently on the 
 earth, Africanus said : " How long, I pray you, will 
 your mind be fastened on the ground ? Do you not 
 
 1 By adoption. The younger Africanus was adopted by a son 
 of the elder. 
 
Scipid's Dream. 79 
 
 see into the midst of what temples you have come ? 
 lu your sight are nine orbs, or rather globes, by 
 which all things are held together. One is the 
 celestial, the outermost, embracing all the rest, — 
 the Supreme God himself,^ who governs and keeps 
 in their places the other spheres. In this are 
 fixed those stars which ever roll in an unchanging 
 course. Beneath this are seven spheres which have 
 a retrograde movement, opposite to that of the 
 heavens. One of these is the domain of the star 
 which on earth they call Saturn. N^ext is the lumi- 
 nary which beai-s the name of Jupiter, of prosper- 
 ous and healthful omen to the human race ; then, 
 the star of fiery red which you call Mars, and which 
 men regard with terror. Beneath, the Sun holds 
 nearly the midway spaee,^ leader, prince, and ruler 
 of the other lights, the mind and regulating power 
 of the universe, so vast as to illuminate and flood 
 all things with his light. Him, as his companions, 
 Venus and Mercury follow on their different courses ; 
 and in a sphere still lower the moon revolves, 
 lighted by the rays of the sun. Beneath this there 
 is nothing that is not mortal and perishable, ex- 
 cept the souls bestowed upon the human race by 
 the gift of the gods. Above the moon all things are 
 
 1 Here crops out the Pantheism — the non-detachment or 
 semi-detachment of God from nature — which casts a penumbra 
 around monotheism and the approaches to it, almost always, 
 except under Hebrew and Christian auspices. 
 
 2 The middle, as the fifth of the nine spheres, enclosed by four, 
 and enclosing four. 
 
80 Scipio's Dream. 
 
 eternal The earth, which is the central and ninth 
 sphere, has no motion, and is the lowest^ of all, and 
 all heavy bodies gravitate spontaneously toward it." 
 5. When I had recovered from my amazement 
 at these thincrs I asked, "What is tliis sound so 
 strong and so sweet that fills my ears ? " " This," he 
 replied, " is the melody which, at intervals unequal, 
 yet differing in exact proportions, is made by the 
 impulse and motion of the spheres themselves, 
 which, softening shriller by deeper tones, produce 
 a diversity of regular harmonies. Kor can such 
 vast movements be urged on in silence ; and by the 
 order of nature the shriller notes sound from one 
 extreme of the universe, the deeper from the other. 
 Thus yonder supreme celestial sphere with its clus- 
 tered stars, as it revolves more rapidly, moves with 
 a shrill and quick strain ; this lower sphere of the 
 moon sends forth deeper notes ; while the earth, the 
 ninth sphere, remaining motionless,^ always stands 
 fixed in the lowest place, occupying the centre of 
 the universe. But these eight revolutions, of which 
 two, those of Mercury and Venus, are in unison, 
 make seven distinct tones, with measured intervals 
 between, and almost all things are arranged in 
 sevens.^ Skilled men, copying this harmony with 
 
 1 The lowest because central, and therefore farthest from the 
 outeimost or celestial sphere. 
 
 ^ Therefore mthout sound. 
 
 2 Latin, qui numerus (that is, septem) rerum omnium fere nodus 
 est. Literally, " which number is the knot of almost everytliing.'' 
 The more intelligible form in which I have rendered these words 
 
Scipio's Dream. 81 
 
 strings and voice, have opened for themselves a way 
 back to this place, as have others who with excelling 
 genius have cultivated divine sciences in human 
 life. But the ears of men are deafened by being 
 filled with this melody ; nor is there in you mortals ' 
 a duller sense than that of hearing. As where 
 the Nile at the Palls of Catadupa pours down from 
 the loftiest mountains, the people who live hard 
 by lack the sense of hearing because of the loud- 
 ness of the cataract, so this harmony of the whole 
 universe in its intensely rapid movement is so loud 
 that men's ears cannot take it in, even as you can- 
 not look directly at the sun, and the keenness and 
 visual power of the eye are overwhelmed by its 
 rays." While I marvelled at these things, I ever 
 and anon cast my eyes again upon the earth. 
 
 6. Then Africanus said : " I perceive that you are 
 now iixing your eyes on the abode and home of men, 
 and if it seems to you small, as it reaUy is, then 
 look always at these heavenly things, and despise 
 those earthly. For what reputation from the speech / 
 of men, or what fame worth seeking, can you obtain ? ' 
 You see that the inhabited places of the earth are 
 scattered and of small extent, that in the spots ^ — 
 so to speak — where men dwell there are vast soli- 
 seems to me to convey their true meaning, fend my telief to that 
 effect is confinned by reading what several commentators say 
 about the passage. 
 
 1 Latin, maculis, — a figure so bold in Cicero's time as to need 
 an apology for its use, but now employed with no consciousness of 
 its being otherwise than strictly literaL 
 
 6 
 
82 Sciirio's Drccmi. 
 
 tary tracts interposed, aud that those who live on 
 the earth are not only so separated that no com- 
 munication can pass from place to place, but stand, 
 in part at an oblique angle, in part at a right angle 
 with you, in part even in an opposite direction ; ^ 
 and from these you certainly can anticipate no 
 fame. 
 
 " You perceive also that this same earth is girded 
 and surrounded by belts, two of which — the far- 
 thest from each, other, and each resting at one ex- 
 tremity on the very pole of the heavens — you see 
 entirely frost-bound ; while the middle and largest 
 of them burns under the sun's intensest heat. 
 Two of them are habitable, of which the southern, 
 whose inhabitants are your antipodes, bears no re- 
 lation to your people; and see how small a part 
 they occupy in this other northern zone, in which 
 3'ou dwell. For all of the earth with which you 
 have any concern — narrow at the north and south, 
 broader in its central portion — is a mere little 
 island, surrounded by that sea which you on earth 
 call the Atlantic, the Great Sea, the Ocean, while 
 yet, with such a name, you see how small it is. 
 To speak only of these cultivated and well-known 
 regions, could your name even cross this Caucasus 
 which you have in view, or swim beyond that 
 
 1 It hardly needs to be said, tliat the reference here is to the 
 convex surface of the earth, on which those remote from one 
 another may hold all the various angles to each other that are 
 borne by the spokes of a -svheel. 
 
Scipio's Dream. 83 
 
 Ganges ? Who, in what other lands may lie in the 
 extreme east or west, or under northern or southern 
 skies, will ever hear your name ? All these cut off, 
 you surely see within what narrow bounds your 
 fame can seek to spread. Then, too, as regards the 
 very persons who tell of your renown, how long 
 will they speak of it? 
 
 7. " But even if successive generations should 
 desire to transmit the praise of every one of us 
 from father to son in unbroken succession, yet 
 because of devastations by flood and fire, which 
 will of necessity take place at a determined time, 
 we must fail of attaining not only eternal fame, but 
 even that of very long diiration. Now of what 
 concern is it that those who shall be born hereafter 
 should speak of you, when you were spoken of by 
 none who were born before you, who were not 
 fewer, and certainly were better men ? — especially, 
 too, when among those who might hear our names 
 there is not one that can retain the memories of a 
 single year. Men, indeed, ordinarily measure the 
 year only by the return of the sun, that is, one star, 
 to its place ; but when aU the stars, after long 
 intervals, shall resume their original places in the 
 heavens, then that completed revolution may be 
 truly called a year. As of old the sun seemed to be 
 eclipsed and blotted out when the soul of Eomulus 
 entered these temples, so when the sun shall be 
 again eclipsed in the same part of his course, and 
 at the same period of the year and day, with all the 
 
84 Scijno's Bream. 
 
 constellations and stars recalled to the point from 
 which they started on their revolutions, then count 
 the year as brought to a close.^ But be assured that 
 the twentieth part of this year has not yet come 
 round. 
 
 " Therefore, should you renounce the hope of re- 
 turning to this place in which are aU things that 
 great and excellent men can desire, of what worth 
 is that human glory which can scarcely extend to 
 a small part of a single year ? If, then, you shall 
 determine to look high up, and to behold continu- 
 ously this dwelling and eternal home, you will 
 neither give yourself to the flattery of the people, 
 nor place your hope of well-being on rewards that 
 man can bestow. Let Virtue herself by her own 
 charms draw you to true honor. What others may 
 say of you, regard as their concern, not youi-s. 
 They wiU doubtless talk about you, but all that 
 they say is confined within the narrow limits of 
 the regions wliich you now see ; nor did such speech 
 as to any one ever last on into eternity, — it is 
 buried with those who die, and lost in oblivion for 
 those who may come afterward." 
 
 8. When he had spoken thus, I said, "0 Afri- 
 canus, if indeed for those who have deserved well 
 
 1 The Stoics raaintained that the visible universe would last 
 through such a cycle as is here descrihed, which ia their conjec- 
 tural astronomy comprehended many thousands of years, and then 
 would be consumed by fire, or somehow be reduced to chaos, and 
 a new universe take its place. 
 
Scipio's Bream. 85 
 
 of their country there is, as it were, an open road 
 by which they may enter heaven, though from boy- 
 hood treading in my father's steps and yours, I have 
 done no discredit to your fame, I yet shall now 
 strive to that end with a more watchful diligence." 
 And he replied : " Strive ^ indeed, and bear this in 
 mind, that it is not you that are mortal, but your 
 body only. ISTor is it you whom this outward form 
 makes manifest ; but exevj man's mind is he, — not 
 the bodily shape which can be pointed at by the 
 finger. Know also that j'ou are a god, if he indeed 
 is a god who lives, who perceives, who remembers, 
 who foresees, who governs and restrains and moves 
 the body over which he is made rider even as the 
 Supreme God holds the universe under his sway ; 
 and in truth as the eternal God himself moves the 
 universe which is mortal in every part, so does the 
 everlasting soul move the corruptible body. 
 
 " That, indeed, which is in perpetual movement is 
 eternal; but that which, while imparting motion 
 to some other substance, derives its own movement 
 from some other source, must of necessity cease to 
 live when it ceases to move. Then that alone 
 which is the cause of its own motion, because it 
 is never deserted by itself, never has its move- 
 ment suspended. But for other substances that are 
 moved this is the source, the first cause,^ of move- 
 ment. But the first cause has no origin; for all 
 
 1 Or, you will strive indeed. 
 
 2 Latin, princijpiuin. 
 
86 Scipio's Dream. 
 
 things spring from the first cause : itself, from noth- 
 ing. That indeed would not be a first cause which 
 derived its beginning from anj'thing else ; and if it 
 has no beginning, it never ceases to be. For the 
 first cause, if extinct, will neither itself be bom 
 again from aught else, nor will it create aught else 
 from itself, if indeed all things must of necessity 
 originate from the first cause. Thus it is that the 
 first cause of motion is derived from that which is in 
 its nature self-moving; but this can neither be born 
 nor die. Were it to die, the whole heaven would 
 of necessity collapse, and all nature would stand 
 stUl, nor could it find any force which could be set 
 in movement anew from a primitive impulse.^ 
 
 9. " Since, then, that which is the source of its 
 own movement is manifestly eternal, who is there 
 that can deny that this nature has been given to the 
 soul ? For whatever is moved by external impulse 
 is soulless;^ but whatever has a soul^ is stirred to 
 action by movement inward and its own ; for this is 
 the peculiar nature and virtue of the soul. More- 
 over, if it is this alone of all things that is the source 
 of its own movement, it certainly did not begin to 
 be, and is eternal. 
 
 ' From a first cause ; the first cause, by hypothesis, having 
 ceased to he. 
 
 ^ Latin, manim/um. 
 
 " Latin, animal. My renderings of inanimum and animal 
 here, if not justified by any parallel insbinces (and I know not 
 whether they are), are required by the obvious meaning of the 
 sentence. 
 
Sci;pids Dream. 87 
 
 " This soul I bid you to exercise in the best pur- ' 
 suits, and the best are your cares for your country's i 
 safetj', by which if your soul be kept in constant 
 action and exercise, it will have tlie more rapid 
 flight to this its abode and home. This end it will 
 attain the more readily, if, while it shaU. be shut up 
 in the body, it shall peer forth, and, contemplating 
 those things that are beyond, abstract itself as far 
 as possible from the body.' For the souls of those 
 who have surrendered themselves to the pleasures 
 of the body, have jdelded themselves to their ser- 
 vice, and, obeying them under the impulse of sensual 
 lusts, have transgressed the laws of gods and men, 
 when thej' pass out of their bodies are tossed to 
 and fro around the earth, nor return to this place ■ 
 till thej' have wandered in banishment for many 
 ages." y 
 
 He departed ; I awoke from sleep. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Augustine, Saint, a work of, written on a palimpsest over a copy 
 of the De Republica, xvi. 
 
 Carneades, sophistry of, 29 n. 
 Christianity, relation of, to friendship, viii. 
 Cicero, dramatic power of, v. 
 
 liable to be misjudged as to the moral bearing of a pas- 
 sage in the De Amicitia, 45 n. 
 
 De Amicitia, the, when wiittcn, v. 
 Dc EepuUica, discovery of the, xvii. 
 form of the, xviiL 
 
 Empedocles, poem of, anticipating the theory of universal gravi- 
 tation, 20 u. 
 Euripides, paraphrase of a passage in the Rippolytus of, 36 n. 
 
 Fannius, Caius, life of, xiii. 
 
 Friendship, place of, in ancient systems of ethics, vii. 
 
 how replaced under Christian auspices, viii. 
 
 defined, 16. 
 
 power of, 19. 
 
 source of, 23. 
 - how far dependent on mutual benefits, 25. 
 
 how formed between individuals, 26. 
 
 how broken, 28. 
 
 limits of, 29. 
 
 duties of, 32. 
 
90 Index. 
 
 Friendship, authorizes no demand or concession that is morally 
 wrong, 35. 
 worth of, 39. 
 
 unreasonably neglected by the many, 41. 
 theories as to the bounds of, 42. 
 concessions to be made on account of, in matters of 
 
 right, 45. 
 what sort of men arc faithful in, 47. 
 qualities essential to happiness in, 49. 
 old to be preferred to new, 50. 
 affronts and grievances in, 53. 
 unreasonable exactions of, 54. 
 dissolution of, when necessary, 65. 
 mutual respect essential to, 57. 
 preralent indifference to, 60. 
 duty of truth-telling in, 62. 
 flattery fatal to, 64. 
 of Laelius and Scipio described, 70. 
 
 Hannibal, character of, 24 n. 
 Sospcs, double meaning of, 20 n. 
 
 Immortalit)-, reasons for believing in, 11. 
 
 Laelius, Cains, life and character of, xi. 
 
 friendship of, for the j'ounger Africanus, xii. 
 made chief interlocutor in the Do Amicitia, 3. 
 feelings ascribed to, on Soipio's death, 8. 
 
 Mai, Angelo, the restorer of the De Ecpublica, xvii. 
 Masinissa, character of, 73 n. 
 Music of the spheres, SO. 
 
 Xumbers, perfect, in the Pj-thagorean philo.sophy, 75 n. 
 
 Orestes and Pylades, in the tragedy of Pacuvius, 20. 
 storj- of, 21 n. 
 
 Palimpsests, autiquit}' of, xri. 
 
 successful use of, xviL 
 
Index. 91 
 
 Reputation, of how little extent, S2. 
 how short-lived, S4. 
 
 Soaevola, Quintus Mucins, the augui', life and character of, xlv. 
 
 a teacher of young men, 1. 
 Scaevola, Quintus Mucins, the high priest, commended in the 
 
 Do Officiis for his uprightness, 2 n. 
 Scipio Africanus, the elder, apx^ears in a di-eam to the younger 
 Africanus, 74. 
 predicts his career, 75. 
 Scipio Africanus, the younger, death of, 10 n. 
 
 time and scene of the Dream of, 73. 
 Shaftesbury, sneers of, at Christianity for taking no cognizance of 
 
 friendship, viii. 
 Soul, nature of the, 85. 
 
 indestructibleness of the, 86. 
 Stoics, the, over-suhtile and exacting in their definition of good- 
 ness, 15. 
 
 Truth, power of, 65. 
 
 essential to and in friendship, 66. 
 
 Universe, the, described in Scipio's Dream, 79. 
 
 Virtue, the soul of friendship, 59. 
 
 Zones of the earth, as appearing in Scipio's Dream, 82. 
 
 University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.