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[Illustration: MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO]
De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream
By Cicero
Translated, with an Introduction and Notes
By Andrew P. Peabody
SYNOPSIS.
* * * * *
DE AMICITIA
1. Introduction.
2. Reputation of Laelius for wisdom. The curiosity to know how he bore
the death of Scipio.
3. His grounds of consolation in his bereavement
4. He expresses his faith in immortality. Desires perpetual memory in
this world of the friendship between himself and Scipio.
5. True friendship can exist only among good men.
6. Friendship defined.
7. Benefits derived from friendship.
8. Friendship founded not on need, but on nature.
9. The relation of utility to friendship.
10. Causes for the separation of friends.
11. How far love for friends may go.
12. Wrong never to be done at a friend's request.
13. Theories that degrade friendship
14. How friendships are formed.
15. Friendlessness wretched.
16. The limits of friendship.
17. In what sense and to what degree friends are united. How friends are
to be chosen and tested.
18. The qualities to be sought in a friend.
19. Old friends not to be forsaken for new.
20. The duties of friendship between persons differing in ability, rank,
or position.
21. How friendships should be dissolved, and how to guard against the
necessity of dissolving them.
22. Unreasonable expectations of friends. Mutual respect necessary in
true friendship.
23. Friendship necessary for all men.
24. Truth-telling, though it often gives offence, an essential duty from
friend to friend.
25. The power of truth. The arts of flattery.
26. Flattery availing only with the feeble-minded.
27. Virtue the soul of friendship. Laelius describes the intimacy of the
friendship between himself and Scipio.
* * * * *
SCIPIO'S DREAM.
1. Scipio's visit to Masinissa. Circumstances under which the dream
occurred.
2. Appearance of the elder Africanus, and of his own father, to Scipio.
Prophecy of Scipio's successes and honors, with an intimation of his
death by the hands of his kindred.
3. Conditions on which heaven may be won.
4. The nine spheres that constitute the universe.
5. The music of the spheres.
6. The five zones of the earth.
7. Brevity and worthlessness of earthly fame.
8. All souls eternal.
9. The soul to be trained for immortality. The fate of those who merge
their souls in sense.
INTRODUCTION
DE AMICITIA.
The _De Amicitia_, inscribed, like the _De Senectute_, to Atticus, was
probably written early in the year 44 B.C., during Cicero's retirement,
after the death of Julius Caesar and before the conflict with Antony.
The subject had been a favorite one with Greek philosophers, from whom
Cicero always borrowed largely, or rather, whose materials he made
fairly his own by the skill, richness, and beauty of his elaboration,
Some passages of this treatise were evidently suggested by Plato; and
Aulus Gellius says that Cicero made no little use of a now lost essay of
Theophrastus on Friendship.
In this work I am especially impressed by Cicero's dramatic power. But
for the mediocrity of his poetic genius, he might have won pre-eminent
honor from the Muse of Tragedy. He here so thoroughly enters into the
feelings of Laelius with reference to Scipio's death, that as we read we
forget that it is not Laelius himself who is speaking. We find ourselves
in close sympathy with him, as if he were telling us the story of his
bereavement, giving utterance to his manly fortitude and resignation and
portraying his friend's virtues from the unfading image phototyped on
his own loving memory. In other matters too Cicero goes back to the time
of Laelius and assumes his point of view assigning to him just the
degree of foresight which he probably possessed and making not the
slightest reference to the very different aspect in which he himself had
learned to regard and was wont to represent the personages and events of
that earlier period. Thus while Cicero traced the downfall of the
republic to changes in the body politic that had taken place or were
imminent and inevitable when Scipio died he makes Laelius perceive only
a slight though threatening deflection from what had been in the earlier
time [Footnote 1]. So too though Cicero was annoyed more than by almost
any other characteristic of his age by the prevalence of the Epicurean
philosophy and ascribed to it in a very large degree the demoralization
of men in public life with Laelius the doctrines of this school are
represented as they must have been in fact as new and unfamiliar. In
time Laelius is here made to say not a word which he being the man that
he was and at the date assumed for this dialogue might not have said
himself; and it may be doubted whether a report of one of his actual
conversations would have seemed more truly genuine.
This is a rare gift often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by
dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 _Deflexit jam aliquantul im_]
seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and
culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an age
not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author finds
it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now and
then to show through its chinks his own more modern features, while this
form of internal evidence never fails to betray an intended forgery
however skilfully wrought. On the other hand there is no surer proof of
the genuineness of a work purporting to be of an earlier but alleged to
be of a later origin than the absence of all tokens of a time subsequent
to the earliest date claimed for it. [Footnote: Thus among the many
proofs of the genuineness of our canonical Gospels perhaps none is more
conclusive than the fact that though evidently written by unskilled men
they contain not a trace or token of certain opinions known to have been
rife even before the close of the first Christian century; while the (so
called) apocryphal Gospels bear, throughout, such vestiges of their
later origin as would neutralize the strongest testimony imaginable in
behalf of their primitive antiquity.]
In connection with this work it should be borne in mind that the special
duties of friendship constituted an essential department of ethics in
the ancient world and that the relation of friend to friend was regarded
as on the same plane with that of brother to brother. No treatise on
morals would have been thought complete had this subject been omitted.
Not a few modern writers have attempted the formal treatment of
friendship but while the relation of kindred minds and souls has lost
none of its sacredness and value, the establishment of a code of rules
for it ignores on the one hand the spontaneity of this relation, and on
the other hand, its entire amenableness to the laws and principles that
should restrict and govern all human intercourse and conduct.
Shaftesbury, in his 'Characteristics,' in his exquisite vein of irony
sneers at Christianity for taking no cognizance of friendship either in
its precepts or in its promises. Jeremy Taylor, however, speaks of this
feature of Christianity as among the manifest tokens of its divine
origin, and Soame Jenyns takes the same ground in a treatise expressly
designed to meet the objections and cavils of Shaftesbury and other
deistical writers of his time. These authors are all in the right and
all in the wrong, as to the matter of fact. There is no reason why
Christianity should prescribe friendship which is a privilege, not a
duty, or should essay to regulate it, for its only ethical rule of
strict obligation is the negative rule which would lay out for it a
track that shall never interfere with any positive duty selfward,
manward or Godward. But in the life of the Founder of Christianity, who
teaches, most of all, by example, friendship has its apogee,--its
supreme pre-eminence and honor. He treats his apostles and speaks of and
to them, not as mere disciples but as intimate and dearly beloved
friends, among these there are three with whom he stands in peculiarly
near relations, and one of the three was singled out by him in dying for
the most sacred charge that he left on the earth, while at the same time
that disciple shows in his Gospel that he had obtained an inside view so
to speak, of his Master's spiritual life and of the profounder sense of
his teachings which is distinguished by contrast rather than by
comparison from the more superficial narratives of the other
evangelists.
But Christianity has done even more than this for friendship. It has
superseded its name by fulfilling its offices to a degree of perfectness
which had never entered into the ante-Christian mind. Man shrinks from
solitude. He feels inadequate to bear the burdens, meet the trials, and
wage the conflicts of this mortal life, alone. Orestes always needed and
craved a Pylades, but often failed to find one. This inevitable
yearning, when it met no human response found still less to satisfy it
in the objects of worship. Its gods, though in great part deified men,
could not be relied on for sympathy, support or help. The stronger
spirits did not believe in them, the feebler looked upon them only with
awe and dread. But Christianity, in its anthropomorphism, which is its
strongest hold on faith and trust, insures for the individual man in a
Divine Humanity precisely what friends might essay to do yet could do
but imperfectly for him. It proffers the tender sympathy and helpfulness
of Him who bears the griefs and carries the sorrows of each and all;
while the near view that it presents of the life beyond death inspires
the sense of unbroken union with friends in heaven, and of the
fellow-feeling of "a cloud of witnesses" beside. Thus while friendship in
ordinary life is never to be spurned when it may be had without
sacrifice of principle, it is less a necessity than when man's relations
with the unseen world gave no promise of strength, aid, or comfort.
Experience has deepened my conviction that what is called a free
translation is the only fit rendering of Latin into English; that is,
the only way of giving to the English reader the actual sense of the
Latin writer. This last has been my endeavor. The comparison is, indeed,
exaggerated; but it often seems to me, in unrolling a compact Latin
sentence, as if I were writing out in words the meaning of an algebraic
formula. A single word often requires three or four as its English
equivalent. Yet the language is not made obscure by compression. On the
contrary, there is no other language in which it is so hard to bury
thought or to conceal its absence by superfluous verbiage.
I have used Beier's edition of the _De Amicitia_, adhering to it in the
very few cases in which other good editions have a different reading.
There are no instances in which the various readings involve any
considerable diversity of meaning.
LAELIUS.
Caius Laelius Sapiens, the son of Caius Laelius, who was the life-long
friend of Scipio Africanus the Elder, was born B.C. 186, a little
earlier in the same year with his friend Africanus the Younger. He was
not undistinguished as a military commander, as was proved by his
successful campaign against Viriathus, the Lusitanian chieftain, who had
long held the Roman armies at bay, and had repeatedly gained signal
advantages over them. He was known in the State, at first as leaning,
though moderately and guardedly, to the popular side, but after the
disturbances created by the Gracchi, as a strong conservative. He was a
learned and accomplished man, was an elegant writer,--though while the
Latin tongue retained no little of its archaic rudeness,--and was
possessed of some reputation as an orator. Though bearing his part in
public affairs, holding at intervals the offices of Tribune, Praetor,
and Consul, and in his latter years attending with exemplary fidelity to
such duties as belonged to him as a member of the college of Augurs, he
yet loved retirement, and cultivated, so far as he was able, studious
and contemplative habits. He was noted for his wise economy of time. To
an idle man who said to him, "I have sixty years" [_Sexaginta annos
habeo._] (that is, I am sixty years old), he replied, "Do you mean the
sixty years which you have not?" His private life was worthy of all
praise for the virtues that enriched and adorned it; and its memory was
so fresh after the lapse of more than two centuries, that Seneca, who
well knew the better way which he had not always strength to tread,
advises his young friend Lucilius to "live with Laelius;" [_Vire cum
Laelio._] that is, to take his life as a model.
The friendship of Laelius and the younger Scipio Africanus well deserves
the commemoration which it has in this dialogue of Cicero. It began in
their boyhood, and continued without interruption till Scipio's death.
Laelius served in Africa, mainly that he might not be separated from his
friend. To each the other's home was as his own. They were of one mind as to
public men and measures, and in all probability the more pliant nature
of Laelius yielded in great measure to the stern and uncompromising
adherence of Scipio to the cause of the aristocracy. While they were
united in grave pursuits and weighty interests, we have the most
charming pictures of their rural and seaside life together, even of
their gathering shells on the shore, and of fireside frolics in which
they forgot the cares of the republic, ceased to be stately old Romans,
and played like children in vacation-time.
FANNIUS.
Caius Fannius Strabo in early life served with high reputation in
Africa, under the younger Africanus, and afterward in Spain, in the war
with Viriathus. Like his father-in-law, he was versed in the philosophy
of the Stoic school, under the tuition of Panaetius. He was an orator,
as were almost all the Romans who aimed at distinction; but we have no
reason to suppose that he in this respect rose above mediocrity. He
wrote a history, of which Cicero speaks well, and which Sallust commends
for its accuracy; but it is entirely lost, and we have no direct
information even as to the ground which it covered. It seems probable,
however, that it was a history either of the third of the Punic wars, or
of all of them; for Plutarch quotes from him--probably from his History
--the statement that he, Fannius, and Tiberius Gracchus were the first to
mount the walls of Carthage when the city was taken.
SCAEVOLA.
Quintus Mucius Scaevola filled successively most of the important
offices of the State, and was for many years, and until death, a member
of the college of Augurs. He was eminent for his legal learning, and to
a late and infirm old age was still consulted in questions of law, never
refusing to receive clients at any moment after daylight. But while he
was regarded as foremost among the jurists of his time, he professed
himself less thoroughly versed in the laws relating to mortgages than
two of his coevals, to whom he was wont to send those who brought cases
of this class for his opinion or advice. He was remarkable for early
rising, constant industry, and undeviating punctuality,--at the meetings
of the Senate being always the first on the ground.
No man held a higher reputation than Scaevola for rigid and scrupulous
integrity. It is related of him that when as a witness in court he had
given testimony full, clear, strong, and of the most damnatory character
against the person on trial, he protested against the conviction of the
defendant on his testimony, if not corroborated, on the principle, held
sacred in the Jewish law, that it would be a dangerous precedent to
suffer the issue of any case to depend on the intelligence and veracity
of a single witness. When, after Marius had been driven from the city,
Sulla asked the Senate to declare him by their vote a public enemy,
Scaevola stood in a minority of one; and when Sulla urged him to give
his vote in the affirmative, his reply was: "Although you show me the
military guard with which you have surrounded the Senate-house, although
you threaten me with death, you will never induce me, for the little
blood still in an old man's veins, to pronounce Marius--who has been the
preserver of the city and of Italy--an enemy."
His daughter married Lucius Licinius Crassus, who had such reverence tor
his father-in-law, that, when a candidate for the consulship, he could
not persuade himself in the presence of Scaevola to cringe to the
people, or to adopt any of the usual self-humiliating methods of
canvassing for the popular vote.
SCIPIO'S DREAM.
PALIMPSESTS [Footnote: _Rubbed again_,--the parchment, or papyrus, having
been first polished for use, and then rubbed as clean as possible, to be
used a second time.]--the name and the thing--are at least as old as
Cicero. In one of his letters he banters his friend Trebatius for
writing to him on a palimpsest,[Footnote: _In palimpsesto_.] and marvels
what there could have been on the parchment which he wanted to erase.
This was a device probably resorted to in that age only in the way in
which rigid economists of our day sometimes utilize envelopes and
handbills. But in the dark ages, when classical literature was under a
cloud and a ban, and when the scanty demand for writing materials made
the supply both scanty and precarious, such manuscripts of profane
authors as fell into the hands of ecclesiastical copyists were not
unusually employed for transcribing the works of the Christian Fathers
or the lives of saints. In such cases the erasion was so clumsily
performed as often to leave distinct traces of the previous letters. The
possibility of recovering lost writings from these palimpsests was first
suggested by Montfaucon in the seventeenth century; but the earliest
successful experiment of the kind was made by Bruns, a German scholar,
in the latter part of the eighteenth, century. The most distinguished
laborer in this field has been Angelo Mai, who commenced his work in
1814 on manuscripts in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, of which he was
then custodian. Transferred to the Vatican Library at Rome, he
discovered there, in 1821, a considerable portion of Cicero's _De
Republica_, which had been obliterated, and replaced by Saint
Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms. This latter being removed by
appropriate chemical applications, large portions of the original
writing remained legible, and were promptly given to the public.
This treatise Cicero evidently considered, and not without reason, as
his master-work. It was written in the prime of his mental vigor, in the
fifty-fourth year of his age, after ample experience in the affairs of
State, and while he still hoped, more than he feared for the future of
Rome. His object was to discuss in detail the principles and forms of
civil government, to define the grounds of preference for a republic
like that of Rome in its best days, and to describe the duties and
responsibilities of a good citizen, whether in public office or in
private life. He regarded this treatise, in its ethics, as his own
directory in the government of his province of Cilicia, and as binding
him, by the law of self-consistency, to unswerving uprightness and
faithfulness, He refers to these six books on the Republic as so many
hostages [Footnote: _Praedibus_.] for his uncorrupt integrity and
untarnished honor, and makes them his apology to Atticus for declining
to urge an extortionate demand on the city of Salamis.
The work is in the form of Dialogues, in which, with several
interlocutors beside, the younger Africanus and Laelius are the chief
speakers; and it is characterized by the same traits of dramatic genius
to which I have referred in connection with the _De Amicitia_.
The _De Republica_ was probably under interdict during the reigns of the
Augustan dynasty; men did not dare to copy it, or to have it known that
they possessed it; and when it might have safely reappeared, the
republic had faded even from regretful memory, and there was no desire
to perpetuate a work devoted to its service and honor. Thus the world
had lost the very one of all Cicero's writings for which he most craved
immortality. The portions of it which Mai has brought to light fully
confirm Cicero's own estimate of its value, and feed the earnest--it is
to be feared the vain--desire for the recovery of the entire work.
Scipio's Dream, which, is nearly all that remains of the Sixth Book of
the _De Republica_, had survived during the interval for which the rest
of the treatise was lost to the world. Macrobius, a grammarian of the
fifth century, made it the text of a commentary of little present
interest or value, but much prized and read in the Middle Ages. The
Dream, independently of the commentary, has in more recent times passed
through unnumbered editions, sometimes by itself, sometimes with
Cicero's ethical writings, sometimes with the other fragments of the _De
Republica_.
In the closing Dialogue of the _De Republica_ the younger Africanus
says: "Although to the wise the consciousness of noble deeds is a most
ample reward of virtue, yet this divine virtue craves, not indeed
statues that need lead to hold them to their pedestals, nor yet triumphs
graced by withering laurels, but rewards of firmer structure and more
enduring green." "What are these?" says Laelius. Scipio replies by
telling his dream. The time of the vision was near the beginning of the
Third Punic War, when Scipio, no longer in his early youth, was just
entering upon the career in which he gained pre-eminent fame,
thenceforward to know neither shadow nor decline.
* * * * *
I have used for Scipio's Dream, Creuzer and Moser's edition of the _De
Republica_.
CICERO DE AMICITIA
* * * * *
1 Quintus Mucius, the Augur, used to repeat from memory, and in the most
pleasant way, many of the sayings of his father-in-law Caius Laelius,
never hesitating to apply to him in all that he said his surname of The
Wise. When I first put on the robe of manhood [Footnote: In the earliest
time a boy put on the _toga virilis_ when he had completed his sixteenth
year, in Cicero's time pupilage ceased a year earlier and by Justinin's
code the period at which it legally ceased was the commencement of the
fifteenth year. The Scaevola to whom Cicero was thus taken was Quintus
Mucius (Scaevola) the Augur, already named.] my father took me to
Scaevola and so commended me to his kind offices, that thenceforward, so
far as was possible and fitting I kept my place at the old man's side.
[Footnote: It was customary for youth in training for honorable
positions in the State to attach themselves especially to men of
established character and reputation, to attend them to public places,
and to remain near them whenever anything was to be learned from their
conversation, their legal opinions, their public harangues, or their
pleas before the courts. Distinguished citizens deemed themselves
honored by a retinue of such attendants. Cicero, in the _De Officiis_,
says that a young man may best commend himself to the early esteem and
confidence of the community by such an intimacy.] I thus laid up in my
memory many of his elaborate discussions of important subjects, as well
as many of his utterances that had both brevity and point, and my
endeavor was to grow more learned by his wisdom. After his death I stood
in a similar relation to the high-priest Scaevola, [Footnote: As Cicero
says, the most eloquent of jurists, and the most learned jurist among
the eloquent. He was at the same time pre-eminent for moral purity and
integrity. It was he, who, as Cicero (_De Officiis_, iii. 15) relates,
insisted on paying for an estate that he bought a much larger sum than
was asked for it, because its price had been fixed far below its actual
value.] whom I venture to call the foremost man of our city both in
ability and in uprightness. But of him I will speak elsewhere. I return
to the Augur. While I recall many similar occasions, I remember in
particular that at a certain time when I and a few of his more intimate
associates were sitting with him in the semicircular apartment
[Footnote: Latin, _hemicyclio,_ perhaps, a semicircular seat.] in his
house where he was wont to receive his friends, the conversation turned
on a subject about which almost every one was then talking, and which
you, Atticus, certainly recollect, as you were much in the society of
Publius Sulpicius; namely, the intense hatred with which Sulpicius, when
Tribune of the people, opposed Quintus Pompeius, then Consul, [Footnote:
The quarrel arose from the zealous espousal of the Marian faction by
Sulpicius, who resorted to arms, in order to effect the incorporation of
the new citizens from without the city among the previously existing
tribes. Hence a series of tumults and conflicts, in one of which a son
of Pompeius lost his life.] with whom he had lived in the closest and
most loving union,--a subject of general surprise and regret. Having
incidentally mentioned this affair, Scaevola proceeded to give us the
substance of a conversation on friendship, which Laelius had with him
and his other son-in-law, Caius Fannius, the son of Marcus, a few days
after the death of Africanus. I committed to memory the sentiments
expressed in that discussion, and I bring them out in the book which I
now send you. I have put them into the form of a dialogue, to avoid the
too frequent repetition of "said I" and "says he," and that the
discussion may seem as if it were held in the hearing of those who read
it. While you, indeed, have often urged me to write something about
friendship, the subject seems to me one of universal interest, and at
the same time specially appropriate to our intimacy. I have therefore
been very ready to seek the profit of many by complying with your
request. But as in the _Cato Major_, the work on Old Age inscribed to
you, I introduced the old man Cato as leading the discussion, because
there seemed to be no other person better fitted to talk about old age
than one who had been an aged man so long, and in his age had been so
exceptionally vigorous, so, as we had heard from our fathers of the
peculiarly memorable intimacy of Caius Laelius and Publius Scipio, it
appeared appropriate to put into the mouth of Laelius what Scaevola
remembered as having been said by him when friendship was the subject in
on the authority of men of an earlier generation, and illustrious in
their time, seems somehow to be of specially commanding influence on the
reader's mind. Thus, as I read my own book on Old Age, I am sometimes so
affected that I feel as if not I, but Cato, were talking. But as I then
wrote as an old man to an old man about old age, so in this book I write
as the most loving of friends to a friend about friendship. [Footnote:
In the Latin we have here two remarkable series of assonances,
rhythmical to the ear, and though translatable in sense not so in
euphony. "Ut tum _senex_ ad _senem_ de _senectute,_ sic hoc libro ad
_amicum amicissimus_, de _amicitia_ scripsi."] Then Cato was the chief
speaker, than whom there was in his time scarcely any one older, and no
one his superior in intellect, now Laelius shall hold the first place,
both as a wise man (for so he was regarded), and as excelling in all
that can do honor to friendship. I want you for the while to turn your
mind away from me, and to imagine that it is Laelius who is speaking.
Caius Fannius and Quintus Mucius come to their father-in-law after the
death of Africanus. They commence the conversation, Laelius answers
them. In reading all that he says about friendship, you will recognize
the picture of your own friendship for me.
2 FANNIUS It is as you say, [Footnote: The reference is to what Laelius
is supposed to have said already. The dialogue, as given here, is made
to commence in the midst of a conversation.] Laelius, for there never
was a better man, or one more justly renowned, than Africanus, But you
ought to bear it in mind that the eyes of all are turned upon you at
this time, for they both call you and think you wise. This distinction
has been latterly given to Cato, and you know that in the days of our
fathers Lucius Atilius [Footnote: The first Roman known to have borne
the surname of Sapiens He was one of the earliest of the juriconsults
who took pupils.] was in like manner surnamed The Wise, but both of them
were so called for other reasons than those which have given you this
name,--Atilius, for his reputation as an adept in municipal law, Cato,
for the versatility of his endowments for there were reported to his
honor many measures wisely planned and vigorously carried through in the
Senate, and many cases skilfully defended in the courts, so that in his
old age The Wise was generally applied to him as a surname. But you are
regarded as wise on somewhat different grounds, not only for your
disposition and your moral worth, but also for your knowledge and
learning, and not in the estimation of the common people, but in that of
men of advanced culture, you are deemed wise in a sense in which there
is reason to suppose that in Greece--where those who look into these
things most discriminatingly do not reckon the seven who bear the name
as on the list of wise men--no one was so regarded except the man in
Athens whom the oracle of Apollo designated as the wisest of
men.[Footnote: Socrates.] In fine, you are thought to be wise in this
sense, that you regard all that appertains to your happiness as within
your own soul, and consider the calamities to which man is liable as of
no consequence in comparison with virtue. I am therefore asked, and so,
I believe, is Scaevola, who is now with us, how you bear the death of
Africanus; and the question is put to us the more eagerly, because on
the fifth day of the month next following, [Footnote: Latin, _proxumis
nonis_. The _nones_, the ninth day before the _ides_, fell on the fifth
of the month, except in March. May, July, and October, when the _ides_
were two days later. We have elsewhere intimation that the Augurs held
a meeting for business on the _nones_ of each month.] when we met, as
usual, in the garden of Decimus Brutus the Augur, to discuss our
official business, you were absent, though it was your habit always on
that day to give your most careful attendance to the duties of your
office.
SCAEVOLA. As Fannius says, Caius Laelius, many have asked me this
question. But I answered in accordance with what I have seen, that you
were bearing with due moderation your sorrow for the death of this your
most intimate friend, though you, with your kindly nature, could not
fail to be moved by it; but that your absence from the monthly meeting
of the Augurs was due to illness, not to grief.
LAELIUS. You were in the right, Scaevola, and spoke the truth; for it
was not fitting, had I been in good health, for me to be detained by my
own sad feeling from this duty, which I have never failed to discharge;
nor do I think that a man of firm mind can be so affected by any
calamity as to neglect his duty. It is, indeed, friendly in you,
Fannius, to tell me that better things are said of me than I feel worthy
of or desire to have said; but it seems to me that you underrate Cato.
For either there never was a wise man (and so I am inclined to think),
or if there has been such a man, Cato deserves the name. To omit other
things, how nobly did he bear his son's death! I remembered Paulus,
[Footnote: Paulus Aemilius, who lost two sons, one a few days before,
the other shortly after, the triumph decreed to him for the conquest of
the Macedonian King Perseus.] I had seen Gallus,[Footnote: Gaius
Sulpicius Gallus, mentioned as an astronomer by Cicero, _De Officiis_,
i. 6, and _De Senectute_, 14.] in their bereavements. But they lost
boys; Cato, a man in his prime and respected by all.[Footnote: The
younger Cato had won fame as a soldier and distinguished eminence as a
jurist. At the time of his death he was praetor elect.] Beware how you
place in higher esteem than Cato even the man whom Apollo, as you say,
pronounced superlatively wise; for it is the deeds of Cato, the sayings
of Socrates, that are held in honor. Thus far in reply to Fannius. As
regards myself, I will now answer both of you.
3. Were I to deny that I feel the loss of Scipio, while I leave it to
those who profess themselves wise in such matters to say whether I ought
to feel it, I certainly should be uttering a falsehood. I do indeed feel
my bereavement of such a friend as I do not expect ever to have again,
and as I am sure I never had beside. But I need no comfort from without,
I console myself, and, chief of all, I find comfort in my freedom from
the apprehension that oppresses most men when their friends die, for I
do not think that any evil has befallen Scipio. If evil has befallen, it
is to me. But to be severely afflicted by one's own misfortunes is the
token of self-love, not of friendship. As for him, indeed who can deny
that the issue has been to his pre-eminent glory? Unless he had
wished--what never entered into his mind--an endless life on earth what
was there within human desire that did not accrue to the man who in his
very earliest youth by his incredible ability and prowess surpassed the
highest expectations that all had formed of his boyhood, who never
sought the consulship, yet was made consul twice, the first time before
the legal age,[Footnote: He left the army in Africa B.C. 147 for home to
offer himself as a candidate for the aedileship, for which he had just
reached the legal age of thirty seven; but such accounts of his ability
efficiency, and courage had preceded him and followed him from the army,
that he was chosen Consul, virtually by popular acclamation.] the second
time in due season as to himself, but almost too late for his
country,[Footnote: The war in Spain had been continued for several
years, with frequent disaster and disgrace to the Roman army, when
Scipio, B.C. 134, was chosen Consul with a special view to this war,
which he closed by the capture and destruction of Numantia, in connection
with which, it must be confessed, his record is rather that of a
relentless and sanguinary enemy than of a generous and placable
antagonist.] who by the overthrow of two cities implacably hostile to
the Roman empire put a period, not only to the wars that were but to
wars that else must have been? What shall I say of the singular
affability of his manners, of his filial piety to his mother, [Footnote:
He was the son of Paulus Aemilius, and the adopted son of Publius
Cornelius Scipio Africanus. His mother, divorced for no assignable
reason, was left very poor, and her son, on the death of the widow of
his adopting father, gave her the entire patrimony that came into his
possession.] of his generosity to his sisters, [Footnote: After his
mother's death, law and custom authorized him to resume what he had
given her, but he bestowed it on his sisters, thus affording them the
means of living comfortably and respectably.] of his integrity in his
relations with all men? How dear he was to the community was shown by
the grief at his funeral. What benefit, then, could he have derived from
a few more years? For, although old age be not burdensome,--as I
remember that Cato, the year before he died, maintained in a
conversation with me and Scipio, [Footnote: The _De Senectute_]--it yet
impairs the fresh vigor which Scipio had not begun to lose. Thus his
life was such that nothing either in fortune or in fame could be added
to it, while the suddenness of his death must have taken away the pain
of dying. Of the mode of his death it is hard to speak with certainty,
you are aware what suspicions are abroad. [Footnote: He retired to his
sleeping apartment apparently in perfect health, and was found dead on
his couch in the morning,--as was rumored, with marks of violence on his
neck. His wife was Sempronia, the sister of the Gracchi whose agrarian
schemes he had vehemently opposed. She was suspected of having at least
given admission to the assassin, and even her mother, the Cornelia who
has been regarded as unparelleled among Roman women for the virutes
appertaining to a wife and mother, did not escape the charge of
complicity. Her son Caius was also among those suspected, but the more
probable opinion is that Papirius Carbo was alone answerable for the
crime. Carbo had been Scipio's most bitter enemy and had endeavoured to
inflame the people against him as their enemy.] But this may be said
with truth that of the many days of surpassing fame and happiness which
Publius Scipio saw in his lifetime, the most glorious was the day before
his death when on the adjournment of the Senate he was escorted home by
the Conscript Fathers, the Roman people, the men of Latium and the
allies, [Footnote: Scipio had at that session of the senate proposed a
measure in the utmost degree offensive to Caius Gracchus and his party.
The law of Tiberius Gracchus would have disposed, at the hands of the
commissioners appointed under it, of large tracts of land belonging to
the Italian allies. Scipio's plan provided that such lands should be
taken out of the jurisdiction of the commissioners, and that matters
relating to them should be adjudged by a different board to be specially
appointed--a measure which would have been a virtual abrogation of the
agrarian law. On this account he had his honorable escort home, and on
this account, in all probability, he was mudered.]--so that from so
high a grade of honor he seems to have passed on into the assembly of
the gods rather than to have gone down into the underworld.
4 For I am far from agreeing with those who have of late promulgated the
opinion that the soul perishes with the body and that death blots out
the whole being. [Footnote: The reference here is of course to the
Epicurians. This school of philosophy had grown very rapidly, and
numbered many disciples when this essay was written; but in the time of
Laelius it had but recently invaded Rome, and Amafanius, who must have
been his contemporary, was the earliest Roman writer who expounded its
doctrine] I on the other hand attach superior value to the authority of
the ancients whether that of our ancestors who established religious
rites for the dead which they certainly would not have done if they had
thought the dead wholly unconcerned in such observances [Footnote: This
is sound reasoning as these rites were annually renewed and consisted in
great part of the invocation of ancestors--a custom which could not have
originated if those ancestors were supposed to be utterly dead. This
passage may remind the reader of the answer of Jesus Christ to the
Sadducees, who denied that the Pentateuch contained any intimation of
immortality. He quotes the passage in which God is represented as
saying, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob," and adds, "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living,"
implying that ancestors whom the writer of that record supposed to be
dead could not have been thus mentioned.] or that of the former Greek
colonists in this country who by their schools and teaching made
Southern Italy [Footnote: Latin _Magna Graecia_-the name given to the
cluster of Greek colonies that were scattered thick along the shore of
Southern Italy. At Croton in Magna Graecia Pythagoras established his
school and the colonies were the chief seat and seminary of his
philosophy which taught the immortality of the soul.]--now in its
decline, then flourishing--a seat of learning, or that of him whom the
oracle of Apollo pronounced the wisest of men who said not one thing
to-day, another to-morrow, as many do, but the same thing always,
maintaining that the souls of men are divine, and that when they go out
from the body, the return to heaven is open to them, and direct and easy
in proportion to their integrity and excellence. This was also the
opinion of Scipio, who seemed prescient of the event so near, when, a
very short time before his death, he discoursed for three successive
days about the republic in the presence of Philus, Manilius, and several
others,--you, Scaevola, having gone with me to the conferences,--and
near the close of the discussion he told us what he said that he had
heard from Africanus in a vision during sleep. [Footnote: The _De
Republica_ consists of dialogues on three successive days in Scipio's
garden, and Scipio is the chief speaker. The work was supposed to be
irrecoverably lost, with the exception of this Dream of Scipio and a few
fragments, but considerable portions of it were discovered in a
palimpsest in 1822. The Dream of Scipio will be found in the latter part
of this volume.] If it is true that the soul of every man of surpassing
excellence takes flight, as it were, from the custody and bondage of the
body, to whom can we imagine the way to the gods more easy than to
Scipio? I therefore fear to mourn for this his departure, lest in such
grief there be more of envy than of friendship. But if truth incline to
the opinion that soul and body have the same end, and that there is no
remaining consciousness, then, as there is nothing good in death, there
certainly is nothing of evil For if consciousness be lost, the case is
the same with Scipio as if he had never been born, though that he was
born I have so ample reason to rejoice, and this city will be glad so
long as it shall stand Thus in either event, with him, as I have said,
all has issued well, though with great discomfort for me, who more
fittingly, as I entered into life before him ought to have left it
before him. But I so enjoy the memory of our friendship, that I seem to
have owed the happiness of my life to my having lived with Scipio, with
whom I was united in the care of public interests and of private
affairs, who was my companion at home and served by my side in the army
[Footnote: Laelus went with Scipio on the campaign which resulted in the
destruction of Carthage.] and with whom--and therein lies the special
virtue of friendship--I was in perfect harmony of purpose, taste, and
sentiment. Thus I am now not so much delighted by the reputation for
wisdom of which Fannius has just spoken, especially as I do not deserve
it, as by the hope that our friendship will live in eternal remembrance,
and this I have the more at heart because from all ages scarce three or
four pairs of friends are on record, [Footnote: Those referred to
probably Theseus and Peirithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and
Pylades, Damon and Phintius,--all but the last, perhaps the last also,
mythical] on which list I cannot but hope that the friendship of Scipio
and Laelius will be known to posterity.
FANNIUS. It cannot fail, Laelius, to be as you desire. But since you
have made mention of friendship, and we are at leisure, you will confer
on me a very great favor, and, I trust, on Scaevola too, if, as you are
wont to do on other subjects when your opinion is asked, you will
discourse to us on friendship, and tell us what you think about it, in
what estimation you hold it, and what rules you would give for it.
SCAEVOLA. This will indeed be very gratifying to me, and had not Fannius
anticipated me, I was about to make the same request. You thus will
bestow a great kindness on both of us.
5. LAELIUS. I certainly would not hesitate, if I had confidence in my
own powers; for the subject is one of the highest importance, and, as
Fannius says, we are at leisure. It is the custom of philosophers,
especially among the Greeks, to have subjects assigned to them, which
they discuss even without premeditation. [Footnote: This was the boast
and pride of the Greek sophists.] This is a great accomplishment, and
requires no small amount of exercise. I therefore think that you ought
to seek the treatment of friendship by those who profess this art. I can
only advise you to prefer friendship to all things else within human
attainment, insomuch as nothing beside is so well fitted to nature,--so
well adapted to our needs whether in prosperous or in adverse
circumstances. But I consider this as a first principle--that friendship
can exist only between good men. In thus saying, I would not be so rigid
in definition [Footnote: Latin. _Neque ut ad ilium reseco_, literally,
nor in this matter do I cut to the quick.] as those who establish
specially subtle distinctions, [Footnote: The Stoics of the more rigid
type, who maintained that the wise man alone is good, but denied that
the truly wise man had yet made his appearance on the earth.] with
literal truth it may be, but with little benefit to the common mind; for
they will not admit that any man who is not wise is a good man. This may
indeed be true. But they understand by wisdom a state which no mortal
has yet attained; while we ought to look at those qualities which are to
be found in actual exercise and in common life, not at those which exist
only in fancy or in aspiration. Caius Fabricius, Manius Curius, Tiberius
Coruncanius, wise as they were in the judgment of our fathers, I will
consent not to call wise by the standard of these philosophers. Let them
keep for themselves the name of wisdom, which is invidious and of
doubtful meaning, if they will only admit that these may have been good
men. But they will not grant even this; they insist on denying the name
of good to any but the wise. I therefore adopt the standard of common
sense. [Footnote: Latin _agamus igitur piagui (ut aiunt) Minerva_, that
is with a less refined, a grosser wisdom more nearly conformed to the
sound, if somewhat crass, common-sense of the majority.] Those who
integrity, equity, and kindness win approval, who are entirely free from
avarice, lust and the infirmities of a hasty temper, and in whom there
is perfect consistency of character, in fine men like those whom I have
named while they are regarded as good, ought to be so called, because to
the utmost of human capacity they follow Nature who is the best guide in
living well. Indeed, it seems to me thoroughly evident that there should
be a certain measure of fellowship among all, but more intimate the
nearer we approach one another. Thus this feeling has more power between
fellow-citizens than toward foreigners, between kindred than between
those of different families. Toward our kindred, Nature herself produces
a certain kind of friendship. But this lacks strength, and indeed
friendship in its full sense, has precedence of kinship in this
particular, that good-will may be taken away from kinship, not from
friendship, for when good will is removed, friendship loses its name,
while that of kinship remains. How great is the force of friendship we
may best understand from this,--that out of the boundless society of the
human race which Nature has constituted, the sense of fellowship is so
contracted and narrowed that the whole power of loving is bestowed on
the union of two or a very few friends.