On Having Many Friends (5-9)

Just as Zeuxis,[*] when some persons charged him with painting slowly, retorted by saying, Yes, it takes me a long time, for it is to last long, so it is necessary to preserve friendship and intimacy by

adopting them only after spending a long time in passing judgement upon them. Is it, then, true that while it is not easy to pass judgement on a large number of friends, yet it is easy to associate with a large number at the same time, or is this also impossible? Now it is a fact that the enjoyment of friendship lies in its intimacy, and the pleasantest part of it is found in association and daily companionship:

Never in life again shall we take counsel together Sitting apart from our comrades.[*]

And in regard to Odysseus, Menelaus says:

Else there were nothing Which could have parted us twain in the midst of our love and enjoyment; No, not till Death’s dark cloud had wrapped its shadow around us.[*]

Now what is commonly called having a multitude of friends apparently produces the opposite result. For friendship draws persons together and unites them and keeps them united in a close fellowship by means of continual association and mutual acts of kindness— Just as the fig-juice fastens the white milk firmly and binds it, as Empedocles [*] puts it (for such is the unity and consolidation that true friendship desires to effect); but, on the other hand, having a multitude of friends causes disunion, separation, and divergence, since, by calling one hither and thither, and transferring one’s attention now to this person, now to that, it does not permit any blending or close attachment of goodwill to take place in the intimacy which moulds itself about friendship and takes enduring form. This at once suggests also the inequality there must be and embarrassment about rendering services, since the very useful elements in friendship are rendered practically useless by having many friends. For

In divers men solicitude excites conduct diverse.[*]

For neither do our natures tend in the same direction as our impulses, nor do we, day in and day out, meet with the same sort of fortune; and the occasions which prompt our various actions, like the winds, help some friends on their way, and are adverse to others.

But if all our friends want the same things at the same time, it is hard to satisfy all, in either their counsels, their public life, their ambitions, or their dispensing of hospitality. And if at one and the same time they chance to be occupied in diverse activities and experiences, and call upon us at the same instant, one to join him on a voyage to foreign parts, another to help him in defending a suit, another to sit with him as judge, another to help him in managing his buying and selling, another to help him to celebrate his wedding, another to mourn with him at a funeral, [*] The city is with burning incense filled; Full too of joyous hymns and doleful groans [*] is the possession of a host of friends. It is impossible to be with them all, and unnatural to be with none, and yet to do a service to one alone, and thus to offend many, is a source of vexation; For fond affection does not brook neglect.[*]

Yet people are more tolerant of acts of negligence and remissness on the part of their friends, and they accept from them without anger such excuses as I forgot, I didn’t know. But the man who says, I did not appear with you when your case was in court, for I was appearing with another friend, and I did not come and see you when you had fever, for I was busy helping so-and-so to entertain some friends, thus alleging, as the reason for his inattention, his attention to others, does not absolve himself from blame, but only aggravates the trouble by arousing jealousy. But most people, apparently, look at the possession of a host of friends merely from the point of view of what such friendships are able to bestow, and overlook what these demand in return, forgetting that he who accepts the services of many for his needs must in turn render like service to many in their need. Therefore, just as Briareus in purveying for fifty bellies with an hundred hands had no advantage over us who manage one stomach with what two hands provide, so in making use of many friends is involved also serving many, and sharing in their anxieties, preoccupations, and troubles. For no credence is to be given to Euripides [*] when he says:

In the friendship which mortals with each other form Moderation should rule, and it never should reach To the soul’s inmost marrow; and easy to loose Should the spells ever be that are laid on the mind So to thrust them aside or to draw them close,

thus easing off one’s friendship or hauling it close according to exigencies, like the sheet of a ship’s sail. But let us, my dear Euripides, turn the application [*] of this advice to our enmities, and advise the use of moderation in our disagreements, not reaching the soul’s inmost marrow, and that hatred, anger, complainings, and suspicions be easy to loose, and commend rather to us the Pythagorean [*] maxim, not to clasp hands with many; that is, not to make many friends nor to welcome a common and indiscriminate friendship, or even a friendship with one person, if the coming of any friendship into one’s life brings with it many afflictions, wherein refusal to share the other’s anxieties, burdens, toils, and dangers is altogether intolerable for free-born and generous persons.

There is truth in the remark of the wise Chilon,[*] who, in answer to the man who boasted of having no enemy, said, The chances are that you have no friend either. For enmities follow close upon friendships, and are interwoven with them, inasmuch as

it is impossible for a friend not to share his friend’s wrongs or disrepute or disfavour; for a man’s enemies at once look with suspicion and hatred upon his friend, and oftentimes his other friends are envious and jealous, and try to get him away. As the oracle given to Timesias [*] about his colony prophesied:

Soon shall your swarms of honey-bees turn out to be hornets,

so, in like manner, men who seek for a swarm of friends unwittingly run afoul of hornets’ nests of enemies. Besides, the resentment of an enemy and the gratitude of a friend do not weigh equally in the [*] balance. See what treatment Alexander meted out to the friends and family of Philotas and Parmenio, Dionysius those of Dion, Nero those of Plautus,[*] and Tiberius those of Sejanus, [*] torturing and killing them. For as the golden crown and the robe of Creon’s daughter did not help Creon,[*] but, as he suddenly ran to her and clasped her in his arms, the fire, fastening upon him, burned him up and destroyed him as well as his daughter, so some persons without deriving any benefit from their friends’ good fortunes, perish with them in their misfortunes. This is the experience especially of men of culture and refinement, as Theseus, for example, shared with Peirithoüs his punishment and imprisonment,

Yoked fast in duty’s bonds not forged by man,[*]

and Thucydides [*] asserts that in the pestilence those who had the highest claim to virtue perished with their friends who were ill; for they did not spare themselves in going, as they did, to visit those who had claims on their friendship.

For these reasons it is not a fit thing to be thus unsparing of our virtue, uniting and intertwining it now with one and now with another, but rather only with those who are qualified to keep up the same participation, that is to say, those who are able, in a like manner, to love and participate. For herein plainly is the greatest obstacle of all to having a multitude of friends, in that friendship comes into

being through likeness. Indeed, if even the brute beasts are made to mate with others unlike themselves only by forcible compulsion, and crouch aside, and show resentment as they try to escape from each other, while with animals of their own race and kind they consort with mutual satisfaction, and welcome the participation with a ready goodwill, how then is it possible for friendship to be engendered in differing characters, unlike feelings, and lives which hold to other principles? It is true that the harmony produced on harp and lyre gets its consonance through tones of dissonant pitch, a likeness being somehow engendered between the higher and the lower notes; but in our friendship’s consonance and harmony there must be no element unlike, uneven, or unequal, but all must be alike to engender agreement in words, counsels, opinions, and feelings, and it must be as if one soul were apportioned among two or more bodies.

What man is there, then, so indefatigable, so changeable, so universally adaptable, that he can assimilate and accommodate himself to many persons, without deriding the advice of Theognis [*] when he says:

Copy this trait of the cuttle-fish, which changes its colour So as to seem to the eye like to the rock where it clings?

However, the changes in the cuttle-fish have no depth, but are wholly on the surface, which, owing to its closeness or looseness of texture, takes up the emanations from objects which come near to it; whereas friendships seek to effect a thorough-going likeness in characters, feelings, language, pursuits, and dispositions. Such varied adaptation were the task of a Proteus,[*] not fortunate and not at all scrupulous, who by magic can change himself often on the very instant from one character to another, reading books with the scholarly, rolling in the dust with wrestlers, following the hunt with sportsmen, getting drunk with topers, and taking part in the canvass of politicians, possessing no firmly founded character of his own. And as the natural philosophers say of the formless and colourless substance and material which is the underlying basis of everything and of itself turns into everything, that it is now in a state of combustion, now liquefied, at another time aeriform, and then again solid, so the possession of a multitude of friends will necessarily have, as its underlying basis, a soul that is very impressionable, versatile, pliant, and readily changeable. But friendship seeks for a fixed and steadfast character which does not shift about, but continues in one place and in one intimacy. For this reason a steadfast friend is something rare and hard to find. [*]