Laelius on Friendship (25-28)

FANNIUS. But we prefer to inquire of you. I have, it is true, often questioned those men too, and indeed have not been an unwilling listener, but the thread of your discourse is of a somewhat different texture.

SCAEVOLA. You would say so with greater confidence, Fannius, if you had been present recently in Scipio’s country home during the discussion on the Republic. What an advocate of justice Laelius was then against the elaborate speech of Philus!

FANNIUS. Ah! but it was an easy thing for the most just of men to defend justice.

SCAEVOLA. Well, then, would not the defence of friendship be easy for that man who has preserved it with the utmost fidelity, constancy, and sense of justice, and thereby gained the greatest renown

LAELIUS. Really you are employing violence; for what matters it what means you take of forcing me? Forcing me you certainly are. For it is not only hard, but not even right, to withstand the earnest requests of one’s sons-in-law, particularly in a good cause.

The oftener, therefore, I reflect on friendship the more it seems to me that consideration should be given to the question, whether the longing for friendship is felt on account of weakness and want, so that by the giving and receiving of favours one may get from another and in turn repay what he is unable to procure of himself; or, although this mutual interchange is really inseparable from friendship, whether there is not another cause, older, more beautiful, and emanating more directly from Nature herself. For it is love (amor), from which the word friendship (amicitia) is derived, that leads to the establishing of goodwill. For while it is true that advantages are frequently obtained even from those who, under a pretence of friendship, are courted and honoured to suit the occasion; yet in friendship there is nothing false, nothing pretended; whatever there is is genuine and comes of its own accord.

Wherefore it seems to me that friendship springs rather from nature than from need, and from an inclination of the soul joined with a feeling of love rather than from calculation of how much profit the friendship is likely to afford. What this feeling is may be perceived even in the case of certain animals, which, up to a certain time, so love their offspring and are so loved by them, that their impulses are easily seen. But this is much more evident in man; first, from the affection existing between children and parents, which cannot be destroyed except by some execrable crime, and again from that kindred impulse of love, which arises when once we have met someone whose habits and character are congenial with our own; because in him we seem to behold, as it were, a sort of lamp of uprightness and virtue.

For there is nothing more lovable than virtue, nothing that more allures us to affection, since on account of their virtue and uprightness we feel a sort of affection even for those whom we have never seen. Is there anyone who does not dwell with some kindly affection on the memory of Gaius Fabricius and Manius Curius, though he never saw them? On the other hand, is there anyone who does not hate Tarquin the Proud, Spurius Cassius, or Spurius Maelius? Against two leaders we had bitter struggles for the empire of Italy-Pyrrhus and Hannibal; for the former, because of his uprightness, we have no great enmity; for the latter, because of his cruelty,[*]this State will always entertain hatred.