WorkCicero

On Friendship

Laelius, speaking a few days after his closest friend's funeral, on why friendship worth the name is far rarer than anybody wants to admit.

by Cicero69 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: De Amicitia
First published: 44 BCE(aged 62)
Original language: Latin

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Overview

Gaius Laelius — consul in 140 BCE, remembered chiefly for his closeness to Scipio Aemilianus — is made to speak here to his two sons-in-law, a few days after Scipio's funeral, about what he has just lost. The distance does real work: an old Roman of the generation Cicero admired says the things Cicero wants said, and the grief on the page is genuine without being the author's own. Friendship in the full sense, Laelius argues, is possible only between people of good character, because what holds them together is what the other is and not what the other gives — which makes it far rarer than the word suggests, since most of what passes for friendship is a trade in usefulness that ends when the usefulness does. Against the Epicurean case, that friends are sought for the security they supply, he sets a test: whether the person would still be wanted with nothing left to gain. Then he works through the hard cases — what may be asked of a friend, what must be refused him, whether one follows a friend into treason, how to let a friendship end when it must without turning it into an enmity. Medieval schools taught it with On Old Age, and the pairing held all the way into print: the English Of Friendship that William Caxton issued at Westminster in August 1481, in John Tiptoft's translation, came in the same volume as the English Of Old Age, and between them they were the first works of classical antiquity printed in England. Cicero wrote it in 44 BCE for Atticus, with whom he had by then been exchanging letters for about a quarter of a century. Scipio had been dead eighty-five years.

Key concepts

Why does Cicero make good character the condition of true friendship?

True friendship requires good character because it attaches one person to what another is, not to what that person supplies. A decent act may win gratitude, but Cicero reserves friendship for a bond in which each recognizes and loves the other's moral character. That standard excludes alliances built chiefly on security, service, or convenience.

Why does utility resemble friendship so closely in Cicero's account?

The Epicurean account mistakes the benefit friendship produces for the reason friendship begins. It says people seek companions because companions provide security; Laelius answers with a sharper test: would the person still be wanted if nothing remained to gain? Utility can accompany friendship, but it cannot explain the bond Cicero means by the word.

Why does Cicero treat friendship as natural rather than contractual?

Cicero treats friendship as natural because human beings are drawn toward one another before they calculate an exchange. The bond therefore does not begin as a contract for mutual advantage. Its natural beginning still needs moral direction: only good character can keep affection from becoming dependence, flattery, or a bargain.

How does Scipio's death shape Laelius's account of friendship?

Scipio's death makes Laelius's definition answer to an actual loss rather than an abstract puzzle. Speaking a few days after the funeral, he presents friendship as a bond whose value remains when its practical benefits have vanished. The grief is genuine, while Cicero uses the older Roman's voice to examine what such grief means.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Friendship Beyond Utility

A few days after Scipio's funeral, Laelius asks what remains when companionship offers no advantage and what a friend may rightly demand. The answer decides whether friendship joins people through character or merely trades security for service.

Laelius distinguishes friendship from the bargains that usefulness makes: a good person values a friend for what that person is, not for benefits supplied. Against the Epicurean account, he asks whether the bond would survive when nothing remained to gain. Yet affection does not cancel judgment; one must refuse a friend's wrongdoing, including treason, and end a failing friendship without making it an enemy. Written in 44 BCE for Atticus, the dialogue makes character its safeguard.

friendship
virtue
integrity
ethics
loyalty
human nature
soul
nature
duty
trust
utility
truth
flattery
character
generosity
love
grief
reciprocity
wisdom
cosmology

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Within this work

passages held: 69
distinct concepts: 152
by passages held, corpus-wide: #581

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “friendship” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 77 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
friendship	virtue	18
friendship	reciprocity	6
friendship	grief	4
friendship	wisdom	4
grief	virtue	3
reciprocity	virtue	3
virtue	wisdom	3
cosmology	soul	2
duty	friendship	2
duty	grief	2
soul	virtue	2
cosmology	duty	1
duty	reciprocity	1
duty	virtue	1
duty	wisdom	1
grief	soul	1
grief	wisdom	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

-70 Orations
Four volumes of the speeches themselves — some delivered, some, like the case against Verres, only published. The philosophical books that fill the rest of the shelf came later, most of them once he had been shut out of that life.
EN
-54 The Republic (De re publica)
Plato wrote a Republic and then a Laws; Cicero set out to do both, and the treatise on law is this book's companion — begun a couple of years later and left unfinished.
EN
-52 Treatise on the Laws (De legibus)
Unfinished, unpublished, and on the available evidence never released at all. For centuries it travelled as the lesser half of a pair whose better half had gone missing.
EN
-46 Brutus or History of Famous Orators (Brutus; Orator)
Not the speeches but the account of them, made when the courts had stopped sitting. The edition carries Orator with it, the portrait of the ideal speaker written for the same dedicatee in the same year.
EN
-45 A Treatise on the Chief Good and Evil (De finibus bonorum et malorum)
Cicero's fullest treatment of ethics: three conversations, set years apart and in different places, bound into one survey of what the leading schools said a life is for.
EN
-45 On the Nature of the Gods (De natura deorum)
Finished after the Tusculan Disputations, it opened a run of three books on religion: On Divination and On Fate followed in 44 BCE.
EN
-45 The Academic Questions (Academica)
Readers who wondered why Cicero sided with the sceptical Academy were sent here by On the Nature of the Gods, written later the same year: this is where he defends arguing every side of a question and settling for the probable.
EN
-45 The Tusculan Disputations (Tusculanae Disputationes)
The practical sequel to the treatise on the chief good, written next: that book compares what the schools say the good is, and this one puts the answer to work against fear and grief.
EN
-44 On Friendship (De Amicitia) you are here EN
-44 On Moral Duties (De officiis)
The last of his philosophical books, and the one that travelled furthest: for centuries afterwards it was simply the standard book of conduct.
EN
-44 On Old Age (Cato Maior de Senectute)
Written alongside On Friendship and sent to the same friend, Atticus; the later book refers back to this one by name.
EN

— or open another of their works