De Amicitia, Scipio’s Dream · 9 of 30

De Amicitia, Chapter 8

8.LAELIUS. This is, indeed, the employing of force; for what matters the way in which you compel me? You at any rate do compel me; for it is both 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 conscious infirmity and need, so that in bestowing and receiving the kind offices that belong to it each may have that done for him by the other which he is least able to do for himself, reciprocating services in like manner; or whether, though this relation 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 language gives name to friendship, [Footnote: Amor,—amicitia. ] bears a chief part in unions of mutual benefit; for a revenue of service is levied even on those who are cherished in pretended friendship, and are treated with regard from interested motives. But in friendship there is nothing feigned, nothing pretended, and whatever there is in it is both genuine and spontaneous. Friendship, 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 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 congenial with our own, who becomes dear to us because we seem to see in him an illustrious example of probity and virtue. For there is 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, Pyrrhus and Hannibal. On account of the good faith of the one, we hold him in no unfriendly remembrance; [Footnote: Pyrrhus, after the only victory that he obtained over the Romans, treated his prisoners with signal humanity, and restored them without ransom. See De Officiis, i. 12] the other because of his cruelty our people must always hate. [Footnote: It may be doubted whether Hannibal deserved the reproach here implied. The Roman historians ascribe to him acts of cruelty no worse than their own generals were chargeable with: while nothing of the kind is related by either Polybius, or Plutarch. It is certain that after the battle of Cannae he checked the needless slaughter of the Roman fugitives, and Livy relates several instances 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 character, and to the invention or exaggeration of reports to his discredit.]