Laelius on Friendship (31-35)

For as men of our class are generous and liberal, not for the purpose of demanding repayment—for we do not put our favours out at interest, but are by nature given to acts of kindness—so we believe that friendship is desirable, not because we are influenced by hope of gain, but because its entire profit is in the love itself.

From this view those men who, after the manner of cattle, judge everything by the standard of pleasure, vigorously dissent; nor is it strange; for the raising of the vision to anything lofty, noble and divine is impossible to men who have abased their every thought to a thing so lowly and so mean. Therefore let us dismiss these persons from our conversation and let us for ourselves believe that the sentiments of love and of kindly affection spring from nature, when intimation has been given of moral worth; for when men have conceived a longing for this virtue they bend towards it and move closer to it, so that, by familiar association with him whom they have begun to love, they may enjoy his character, equal him in affection, become readier to deserve than to demand his favours, and vie with him in a rivalry of virtue. Thus the greatest advantages will be realized from friendship, and its origin, being derived from nature rather than from weakness, will be more dignified and more consonant with truth. For on the assumption that advantage is the cement of friendships, if advantage were removed friendships would fall apart; but since nature is unchangeable, therefore real friendships are eternal.

You now have my views on the origin of friendship, unless you have something to say in reply.

FANNIUS. Pray go on, Laelius, and I answer for my friend here, as I have the right to do, since he is my junior.

SCAEVOLA. Well said, Fannius. Therefore, let us hear.

LAELIUS. Then listen, most worthy gentlemen, to the points very frequently mentioned between Scipio and me in our discussions of friendship. Now he, indeed, used to say that nothing was harder than for a friendship to continue to the very end of life; for it often happened either that the friendship ceased to be mutually advantageous, or the parties to it did not entertain the same political views; and that frequently, too, the dispositions of men were changed, sometimes by adversity and sometimes by the increasing burdens of age. And then he would draw an illustration of this principle from the analogy of early life.

For, said he, the most ardent attachments of boyhood are often laid aside with the boyish dress; but if continued to the time of manhood, they are broken off, sometimes by rivalry in courtship or sometimes by a contest for some advantage, in which both of the parties to the friendship cannot be successful at the same time. But should the friendship continue for a longer time, yet it is often overthrown when a struggle for office happens to arise; for while, with the generality of men, the greatest bane of friendship is the lust for money, with the most worthy men it is the strife for preferment and glory, and from this source frequently have sprung the deadliest enmities between the dearest friends.

Then, too, disagreements of a very serious nature, and usually justifiable, arise from a demand upon friends to do something that is wrong, as, for example, to become agents of vice or abettors in violence, and when the demand is refused, however honourable the refusal, it is nevertheless charged by those to whom the compliance was denied that the laws of friendship have been disregarded; besides, those who dare demand anything and everything of a friend, by that very demand profess a willingness to do anything whatever for the sake of a friend. By their ceaseless recriminations not only are social intimacies usually destroyed, but also everlasting enmities are produced. So many dangers of this kind, he would say, hover like evil fates over friendships, that it seems to me to require both wisdom and good luck to escape them all.