On Friendship (De Amicitia) by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Liberty Fund, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-07T23:00:00+00:00

as Terence, whom I have just quoted, says; but he says it in the person of Gnatho, — a sort of friend which only a frivolous mind can tolerate. But as there are many like Gnatho, who stand higher than he did in place, fortune, and reputation, their subserviency is the more offensive, because their position gives weight to their falsehood.

But a flattering friend may be distinguished and discriminated from a true friend by proper care, as easily as everything disguised and feigned is seen to differ from what is genuine and real. The assembly of the people, though consisting of persons who have the least skill in judgment, yet always knows the difference between him who, merely seeking popularity, is sycophantic and fickle, and a firm, inflexible, and substantial citizen. With what soft words did Caius Papirius steal into the ears of the assembly a little while ago, when he brought forward the law about the re-election of the tribunes of the people! I opposed the law. But, to say nothing of myself, I will rather speak of Scipio. How great, ye immortal gods, was his dignity of bearing! What majesty of address! So that you might easily call him the leader of the Roman people, rather than one of their number. But you were there, and you have copies of his speech. Thus the law was rejected by vote of the people. But, to return to myself, you remember, when Quintus Maximus, Scipio’s brother, and Lucius Mancinus were Consuls, how much the people seemed to favor the law of Caius Licinius Crassus about the priests. The law proposed to transfer the election of priests from their own respective colleges to the suffrage of the people; and he on that occasion introduced the custom of facing the people in addressing them. Yet under my advocacy the religion of the immortal gods obtained the ascendency over his plausible speech. That was during my praetorship, five years before I was chosen Consul. Thus the cause was gained by its own merits rather than by official authority.

26. But if on the stage, or — what is the same thing — in the assembly of the people, in which there is ample scope for false and distorted representations, the truth only needs to be made plain and clear in order for it to prevail, what ought to be the case in friendship, which is entirely dependent for its value on truth, — in which unless, as the phrase is, you see an open bosom and show your own, you can have nothing worthy of confidence, nothing of which you can feel certain, not even the fact of your loving or being loved, since you are ignorant of what either really is? Yet this flattery of which I have spoken, harmful as it is, can injure only him who takes it in and is delighted with it. Thus it is the case that he is most ready to open his ear to flattery, who flatters himself and finds supreme delight in himself.

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