De Amicitia

QUINTUS MUCIUS SCAEVOLA, the augur, used to relate with an accurate memory and in a pleasing way many incidents about his father-in-law, Gaius Laelius, and, in every mention of him, did not hesitate to call him the Wise. Now, I, upon assuming the toga virilis,[*](If Cicero assumed the toga virilis when he was sixteen, as he probably did (or in the year 90 B.C.), and the augur died in 88 B.C., then Cicero attended his lectures about two years.)had been introduced by my father to Scaevola with the understanding that, so far as I could and he would permit, I should never leave the old man’s side. And so it came to pass that, in my desire to gain greater profit from his legal skill, I made it a practice to commit to memory many of his learned opinions and many, too, of his brief and pointed sayings. After his death I betook myself to the pontiff, Scaevola, who, both in intellect and in integrity, was, I venture to assert, quite the most distinguished man of our State. But of him I shall speak at another time; now I return to the augur.

Numerous events in the latter’s life often recur to me, but the most memorable one of all occurred at his home, as he was sitting, according to his custom, on a semi-circular garden bench, when I and only a few of his intimate friends were with him, and he happened to fall upon a topic which, just about that time, was in many people’s mouths.

And so, Scaevola, having chanced to mention this very fact, thereupon proceeded to repeat to us a discussion on friendship, which Laelius had had with him and with another son-in-law, Gaius Fannius, son of Marcus, a few days after the death of Africanus. I committed the main points of that discussion to memory, and have set them out in the present book in my own way; for I have, so to speak, brought the actors themselves on the stage in order to avoid the too frequent repetition of said I and said he, and to create the impression that they are present and speaking in person.

For while you were pleading with me again and again to write something on friendship, the subject appealed to me as both worthy of general study, and also well fitted to our intimacy. Therefore I have not been unwilling to benefit the public at your request. But, as in my Cato the Elder, which was written to you on the subject of old age, I represented Cato, when an old man, as the principal speaker, because I thought no one more suitable to talk of that period of life than he who had been old a very long time and had been a favourite of fortune in old age beyond other men; so, since we had learned from our forefathers that the intimacy of Gaius Laelius and Publius Scipio was most noteworthy,

But as in that book I wrote as one old man to another old man on the subject of old age, so now in this book I have written as a most affectionate friend to a friend on the subject of friendship. In the former work the speaker was Cato, whom scarcely any in his day exceeded in age and none surpassed in wisdom; in the present treatise the speaker on friendship will be Laelius, a wise man (for he was so esteemed), and a man who was distinguished by a glorious friendship. Please put me out of your mind for a little while and believe that Laelius himself is talking. Gaius Fannius and Quintus Mucius Scaevola have come to their father-in-law’s house just after the death of Africanus[*](The death of Africanus occurred 129 B.C.); the conversation is begun by them and reply is made by Laelius, whose entire discourse is on friendship, and as you read it you will recognize in it a portrait of yourself.

FANNIUS. What you say is true, Laelius; for there was no better man than Africanus, and no one more illustrious. But you should realize that all men have fixed their eyes on you alone; you it is whom they both call and believe to be wise. Recently[*](Cato died in 149 B.C., hence Fannius by recently means twenty years ago. The date of Cato’s imagined discourse on old age was 150 B.C.)this title was given to Marcus Cato and we know that Lucius Acilius was called the Wise in our

But as to yourself, men are wont to call you wise in a somewhat different way, not only because of your mental endowments and natural character, but also because of your devotion to study and because of your culture, and they employ the term in your case, not as the ignorant do, but as learned men employ it. And in this sense we have understood that no one in all Greece was wise except one in Athens, and he,[*](The reference is to Socrates. Cicero often quotes this oracle: infra, 2. 10; ib. 4. 13; C.M. 21. 78; Acad. i. 4. 16.)I admit, was actually adjudged most wise by the oracle of Apollo—for the more captious critics refuse to admit those who are called The Seven into the category of the wise. Your wisdom, in public estimation, consists in this: you consider all your possessions to be within yourself and believe human fortune of less account than virtue. Hence the question is put to me and to Scaevola here, too, I believe, as to how you bear the death of Africanus, and the inquiry is the more insistent because, on the last Nones,[*](The Augurs regularly met in their college on the Nones (i.e. the 7th of March, May, July, and October, the 5th of other months).)when we had met as usual for the practice[*](Commentandi, i.e. practising the augural art under the open sky. Cf. Cic. N.D. ii. 11; De rep. i. 14.)of our augural art in the country home of Decimus Brutus, you were not present, though it had been your custom always to observe that day and to discharge its duties with the most scrupulous care.

SCAEVOLA. There is indeed a great deal of questioning,

LAELIUS. Your reply was excellent, Scaevola, and it was correct; for no personal inconvenience of any kind ought to have kept me from the discharge of the duty you mentioned, and which I have always performed when I was well, nor do I think it possible for any event of this nature to cause a man of strong character to neglect any duty.

Now as for your saying, Fannius, that so great merit is ascribed to me—merit such as I neither admit nor claim —you are very kind; but it seems to me that your estimate of Cato is scarcely high enough. For either no man was wise—which really I think is the better view—or, if anyone, it was he. Putting aside all other proof, consider how he bore the death of his son, but on the death of his only daughter about eighteen months before this essay was written Cicero’s grief was unrestrained.)remembered the case of Paulus, and I had been a constant witness of the fortitude of Gallus, but their sons died in boyhood, while Cato’s son died in the prime of life when his reputation was assured.

Therefore, take care not to give the precedence over Cato even to that man, whom, as you say, Apollo adjudged the wisest of men; for the former is praised for his deeds, the latter for his words.

Now, as to myself, let me address you both at

But who would say that all has not gone wonderfully well with him? For unless he had wished to live for ever—a wish he was very far from entertaining—what was there, proper for a human being to wish for, that he did not attain? The exalted expectation which his country conceived of him in his childhood, he at a bound, through incredible merit, more than realized in his youth. Though he never sought the consulship, he was elected consul twice—the first time[*](Scipio was elected consul the first time in 147 B.C., at the age of thirty-eight, when a candidate for the aedileship, and given command of the war against Carthage. He was elected again in 134 B.C. (though not a candidate), to conduct the siege against Numantia and to end a war which had gone on unsuccessfully for the Romans for eight years.)before he was of legal age, the second time at a period seasonable for him, but almost too late for the safety of the commonwealth. And he overthrew the two cities that were the deadliest foes of our empire and thereby put an end not only to existing wars, but to future wars as well. Why need I speak of his most affable manners, of his devotion to his mother, of his generosity to his sisters,[*](Scipio’s mother, Papiria, had been divorced by Paulus, and Scipio gave her the legacy received by him from his adoptive grandmother, Aemilia, wife of Scipio the Elder. After his mother’s death he gave the same property to his sisters.)of his kindness to his relatives,

Therefore, his life really was such that nothing could be added to it either by good fortune or by fame; and, besides, the suddenness of his death took away the consciousness of dying. It is hard to speak of the nature of his death; you both know what people suspect[*](After a violent scene in the Senate, where he opposed Carbo in the execution of the agrarian law, Scipio was escorted home in the evening by admiring crowds. The next morning he was found dead in bed. Cf. Appian, Bell. Civ. i. 20; Vell. Pat. ii. 4. In other works (De or. ii. 170; Fam. ix. 21. 3; Qu. Fr. ii. 3. 3) Cicero takes the view that Carbo murdered him; Cf. also Cic. De fat. 18; Livy, Epit. 59; Plut. C. Grac. 10.); yet I may say with truth that, of the many very joyous days which he saw in the course of his life—days thronged to the utmost with admiring crowds—the most brilliant was the day before he departed this life, when, after the adjournment of the Senate, he was escorted home toward evening by the Conscript Fathers, the Roman populace, and the Latin allies, so that from so lofty a station of human grandeur he seems to have passed to the gods on high rather than to the shades below.

For I do not agree with those who have recently begun to argue that soul and body perish at the same time, and that all things are destroyed by death. I give greater weight to the old-time view, whether it be that of our forefathers, who paid such reverential rites to the dead, which they surely would not have done if they had believed those rites were a matter of indifference to the

Scipio held this same view, for only a few days before his death, in the presence of Philus, Manilius and several others (you were there, too, Scaevola, having gone with me), he, as if with a premonition of his fate, discoursed for three days on the commonwealth, and devoted almost all of the conclusion of his discussion to the immortality of the soul, making use of arguments which he had heard, he said, from Africanus the Elder through a vision in his sleep. If the truth really is that the souls of all good men after death make the easiest escape from what may be termed the imprisonment and fetters of the flesh, whom can we think of as having had an easier journey to the gods than Scipio? Therefore, I fear that grief at such a fate as his would be a sign more of envy than of friendship. But if, on the other hand, the truth rather is that soul and body perish at the same time, and that no sensation remains, then, it follows that, as there is nothing good in death, so, of a certainty, there is nothing evil. For if a man has lost sensation the result is

Wherefore, as I have already said, it has gone very well with him, less so with me, for, as I was before him in entering life, it had been more reasonable to expect that I should have been before him in leaving it. Still, such is my enjoyment in the recollection of our friendship that I feel as if my life has been happy because it was spent with Scipio, with whom I shared my public and private cares; lived under the same roof at home; served in the same campaigns abroad, and enjoyed that wherein lies the whole essence of friendship—the most complete agreement in policy, in pursuits, and in opinions. Hence, I am not so much delighted by my reputation for wisdom which Fannius just now called to mind, especially since it is undeserved, as I am by the hope that the memory of our friendship will always endure; and this thought is the more pleasing to me because in the whole range of history only three or four pairs[*](The three pairs are Theseus and Pirithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades; the fourth, probably in Cicero’s mind (Cic. Off. iii. 45; Fin. ii. 79), was Damon and Phintias (vulg. Pythias).)of friends are mentioned; and I venture to hope that among such instances the friendship of Scipio and Laelius will be known to posterity.

FANNIUS. That cannot be otherwise, Laelius. But since you have mentioned friendship and we are free from public business, it would be very agreeable to me—and to Scaevola, too, I hope— if, following your usual practice on other subjects when questions concerning them are put to you, you would discuss friendship and give us your opinion as to its theory and practice.

SCAEVOLA. Indeed it will be agreeable to me, and,

LAELIUS. I certainly should raise no objection if I felt confidence in myself, for the subject is a noble one, and we are, as Fannius said, free from public business. But who am I? or what skill[*](i.e. readiness acquired by practice in extemporaneous discussion—an art practised by sophists and rhetoricians and by the philosophers of the New Academy; cf. Cic. De fin. ii. 1; De or. i. 102.)have I? What you suggest is a task for philosophers and, what is more, for Greeks—that of discoursing on any subject however suddenly it may be proposed to them. This is a difficult thing to do and requires no little practice. Therefore, for a discussion of everything possible to be said on the subject of friendship, I advise you to apply to those who profess that art; all that I can do is to urge you to put friendship before all things human; for nothing is so conformable to nature and nothing so adaptable to our fortunes whether they be favourable or adverse.

This; however, I do feel first of all—that friendship cannot exist except among good men; nor do I go into that too deeply,[*](Id ad vivum reseco, lit. cut back to the quick.)as is done by those[*](i.e. those who profess the art of disputation; cf. 17.)who, in discussing this point with more than usual accuracy, and it may be correctly, but with too little view to practical results, say that no one is good unless he is wise. We may grant that; but they understand wisdom to be a thing such as no mortal man has yet attained.[*](The perfect wise man of the Stoics represents an ideal, though they allowed that a few men, such as Socrates, almost realized it.)I, however, am bound to look at things as they are in the experience of everyday life and not as they are in fancy or in hope. Never could I say that Gaius Fabricius, Manius Curius, and Tiberius Coruncanius, whom our ancestors adjudged to be wise, were wise by such a standard as that.

Let us then proceed with our own dull wits, as the saying is. Those who so act and so live as to give proof of loyalty and uprightness, of fairness and generosity; who are free from all passion, caprice, and insolence, and have great strength of character —men like those just mentioned—such men let us consider good, as they were accounted good in life, and also entitled to be called by that term because, in as far as that is possible for man, they follow Nature, who is the best guide to good living.

For it seems clear to me that we were so created that between us all there exists a certain tie which strengthens with our proximity to each other. Therefore, fellow countrymen are preferred to foreigners and relatives[*](Propinquitas may be applied to neighbours or fellow-citizens as well as to relatives.) to strangers, for with them Nature herself engenders friendship, but it is one that is lacking in constancy. For friendship excels relationship[*](Propinquitas may be applied to neighbours or fellow-citizens as well as to relatives.) in this, that goodwill may be eliminated from relationship while from friendship it cannot; since, if you remove goodwill from friendship the very name of friendship is gone; if you remove it from relationship, the name of relationship still remains.

Moreover, how great the power of friendship is may most clearly be recognized from the fact that, in comparison with the infinite ties uniting the human race and fashioned by Nature herself, this thing called friendship has been so narrowed that the bonds of affection always unite two persons only, or, at most, a few.

For friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, and I am inclined to think that, with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has been given to man by the immortal gods. Some prefer riches, some good health, some power, some public honours, and many even prefer sensual pleasures. This last is the highest aim of brutes; the others are fleeting and unstable things and dependent less upon human foresight than upon the fickleness of fortune. Again, there are those who place the chief good in virtue and that is really a noble view; but this very virtue is the parent and preserver of friendship and without virtue friendship cannot exist at all.