To Demonicus (1-5)

In many respects, Demonicus, we shall find that much disparity exists between the principles of good men and the notions of the base; but most of all by far have they parted company in the quality of their friendships.[*] The base honor their friends only when they are present; the good cherish theirs even when they are far away; and while it takes only a short time to break up the intimacies of the base, not all eternity can blot out the friendships of good men.

So then, since I deem it fitting that those who strive for distinction and are ambitious for education should emulate the good and not the bad, I have dispatched to you this discourse as a gift, in proof of my good will toward you and in token of my friendship for Hipponicus; for it is fitting that a son should inherit his father’s friendships even as he inherits his estate.

I see, moreover, that fortune is on our side and that the present circumstances are in league with us; for you are eager for education and I profess to educate; you are ripe for philosophy[*] and I direct students of philosophy. Now those who compose hortatory discourses addressed to their own friends are, no doubt, engaged in a laudable employment;

yet they do not occupy themselves with the most vital part of philosophy. Those, on the contrary, who point out to the young, not by what means they may cultivate skill in oratory, but how they may win repute as men of sound character, are rendering a greater service[*] to their hearers in that, while the former exhort them to proficiency in speech, the latter improve their moral conduct.[*]

Therefore, I have not invented a hortatory[*] exercise, but have written a moral treatise; and I am going to counsel you on the objects to which young men should aspire and from what actions they should abstain, and with what sort of men they should associate and how they should regulate their own lives. For only those who have travelled this road in life have been able in the true sense to attain to virtue—that possession which is the grandest and the most enduring in the world.