On Friendship and Scipio’s Dream · 5 of 11

Sections 10–17

10.LAELIUS. Hear then, my excellent friends the substance of the frequent discussions on friendship between Scipio and me. He indeed, said that nothing is more difficult than for friendship to last through life; for friends happen to have conflicting 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 manhood, 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 competition for office; 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 who had been the closest friends. Strong and generally just aversion, also, springs up when anything 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 friendship, 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 us then, first, if you please, consider how far the love of friends ought to go. If Coriolanus had friends, ought they to have helped him in fighting against his country, or should the friends of Viscellinus or those of Spurius Maelius have aided them 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 Blossius, of Cumae, the guest, Scaevola, of your family, coming to me, when I was in conference with the Consuls Laenas and Rupilius, to implore pardon, urged the plea that he held Tiberius Gracchus in so dear esteem that he felt bound to do whatever he desired. 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 folly, alarmed by the appointment of special judges for his trial, he fled to Asia, entered the service of 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 from 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 Coruncanius lived in the closest friendship both with them and with each other. Now we cannot suspect 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 with his duty to the State. Indeed, to what purpose 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 integrity; while to ask anything wrong of a friend and to do it when asked are alike tokens of deep depravity. 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 Scaevola, are so situated that we ought to look far in advance for the perils that our country may incur. Already has our public policy deviated somewhat 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 Roman people ever heard or seen before? What, after his death, the friends and kindred who followed him did in their revenge on Publius Scipio I cannot say without tears. We put up with Carbo 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. Before recent events, you perceive how much degeneracy was indicated in the legalization of the ballot, first by Gabinian, then two years later by the Cassian law. I seem already to see the people utterly alienated from the Senate, and the most important affairs determined by the will of the multitude; 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 cannot 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 Themistocles? 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; they therefore both committed suicide. Association with depraved men for such an end is not, then, to be shielded by the plea of friendship, but rather to be 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 country,—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 law of 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 greatest value. Let admonition be administered, too, not only in plain terms, but even with severity, if need be, and let heed be given to such admonition. 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 nothing which they cannot seem to prove. Some of them hold that very intimate friendships are to be avoided; that there is no need that one feel solicitude 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 possible, 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. . Cicero here veils his thorough conversance with Greek literature and philosophy, and assumes the part of Laelius, in whose time, though Greek was not omitted in the education of cultivated men, the study was comparatively new, and was not carried to any great extent.]

Others, I am told, with even much less of true human feeling, teach what I touched upon briefly a little while ago, that friendships 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 be renounced; for 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 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 rejoice in what is good and to be grieved by the opposite. 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 inanimate 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 renouncing them.

14.Since virtue attracts friendship, as I have said, if there shines forth any manifestation of virtue with which a mind similarly disposed can come into contact and union from such intercourse love must of necessity spring. For what is so absurd as to be charmed with many things that have no substantial worth, as with office, 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? 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 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 mutual kind feeling and in this we have a fountain of friendship established by nature.

But the same kind feeling extends to the community 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 them the wisest counsel, which it would not do if it had no love for the people.

Now 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 cultivated 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 friendship 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, by the faith of gods and men, who is there that would be willing to have a superabundance of all objects of desire and to live in the 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 feeling, perpetual suspicion 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 receive the show of homage, but only while the occasion for it lasts. 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 faithful 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 waywardness; nor can there be created anything more utterly insupportable than a fortune-favored fool. There are to be seen those who previously behaved 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 right of superior strength. But every one has his own firm and sure possession of his friendships, 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 third, that one’s friends should value him according to his own self-estimate. I cannot give 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 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 inveighing 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 opinion 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 balanced. 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 estimate and treatment of him. There are some persons who are liable to fits of depression, or who 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 which 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 ambitious 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, aggrieved by all the right and fitting things that friends do. This precept then from whomsoever it came, amounts to the annulling of friendship. The 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 saying 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 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 such affairs as devolve upon us,—an esteem which it is base to conciliate by flattery and fawning. Virtue, which has the sincere regard of the people as its consequence, is by no means to be sacrificed to friendship.

But, to return to Scipio, who was all the time talking 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 character 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 pecuniary 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 friendship, where shall we come upon those who do not put honors, civic offices, military commands, places 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 nature 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 thrown 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 you 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 misfortunes to which it is not easy to find those who are willing to stoop. Although Ennius is right in saying

“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.