The key ideas

On Friendship

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44 BC

A friend asks for your support, and you think he is wrong. Would saying no be a betrayal? Cicero answers bluntly: friendship is possible only between good people, and it rests on the virtue of both. From this he works out how to choose and test friends, how to tell them the truth, and how to part ways without a war.

Who it is for

For anyone who wants to be a reliable friend but will not agree to everything just to stay close.

What could be sweeter than to have someone you can talk to about everything as freely as you talk to yourself?

Two men give the same name

The king does not know which of his two prisoners is Orestes. Pylades says he is Orestes, so that he can die in his friend's place, and the real Orestes insists that he is the one. In the Roman theatre the audience rises to its feet and applauds. The scene was written by the playwright Pacuvius, and Cicero recalls it in his dialogue On Friendship. It was fiction, he notes, and still people cheered. Even those who would never find the nerve for such an act can see how beautiful it is.

The dialogue was written in 44 BC. Cicero says that as a young man he heard this conversation from Scaevola the Augur, remembered the heart of it and arranged it in his own way, bringing the speakers on stage as if in a play. A few days after the death of the general Scipio, his closest friend, Gaius Laelius, is visited by his two sons-in-law. Scaevola and Fannius ask how he is bearing the loss.

Laelius answers honestly. To say it does not hurt would be a lie. But nothing bad has happened to Scipio: he lived a life that could not have been made any better. The misfortune, if it is one, has fallen on Laelius himself. And to grieve bitterly over your own loss, he says, is to show love for yourself, not for your friend. He counts his own life happy because he lived it beside Scipio.

Out of this grief grows a conversation about what friendship is, who can have it, where loyalty ends and how not to be wrong about people. Laelius gives harder answers than we are used to today: he does not promise friendship to everyone, and he excuses nothing for its sake. If you want a demanding companion rather than a comforter, you take friendship seriously.

Friendship is possible only between good people

At the very start Laelius sets a condition he will hold to until the end: friendship exists only between good people. Near the close he will say it once more, now as the conclusion of everything that has been said.

But he takes the word “good” in its everyday sense. Philosophers insist that only the wise man is good, and no mortal has ever reached that kind of wisdom. Laelius waves this away: let them keep the word for themselves. He calls good those whose actions and lives leave no doubt about their honesty, decency, justice and generosity. They are free of greed, lust and violence, and they have the courage to stand by their convictions.

From this comes his definition. Friendship is complete agreement in all things human and divine, joined with goodwill and affection. Apart from wisdom, the gods have given people nothing better. Wealth, health and power depend on the whims of fortune. The foundation of friendship is virtue, and without it friendship cannot exist.

Laelius compares friendship with kinship. You can take affection out of kinship and it remains, if only in name. You cannot take it out of friendship: without affection there is simply no friendship. That is why its circle is so small: usually two people, a handful at most.

Laelius does not deny that there is also an ordinary, everyday friendship that brings pleasure and benefit as well. But he is talking about the true and complete kind. That one he promises to no one who has not become a good person.

Read in Livria

About the author

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman orator, statesman and philosopher. In the dialogue On Friendship, written in 44 BC, he explored the clash between personal loyalty and moral duty.

All books by this author: Marcus Tullius Cicero

Terms from the book

  • Republic
  • Gracchus
  • Cato
  • virtue
  • Troy
  • Orestes: A hero of Greek myth, the son of Agamemnon. His friendship with Pylades became a model of devotion.
  • Pylades: The friend of Orestes in Greek myth. In the stage scene Cicero recalls, he is ready to die in his place.
  • Pacuvius: Marcus Pacuvius, a Roman playwright of the second century BC. Cicero recalls a scene from one of his tragedies.
  • Scipio: Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman general who destroyed Carthage. He died in 129 BC, and his friendship with Laelius is the main example in the book.
  • Scaevola: Quintus Mucius Scaevola the Augur, a Roman jurist and the son-in-law of Laelius. Cicero studied with him as a young man and says he heard from him the conversation retold in the dialogue.
  • Fannius: Gaius Fannius, the son-in-law of Laelius, a Roman politician and historian. One of the two listeners in the dialogue.
  • Laelius: Gaius Laelius, called the Wise, a Roman statesman of the second century BC and Scipio's closest friend. The main speaker in Cicero's dialogue.
  • Ennius: Quintus Ennius, a Roman poet of the third and second centuries BC, called the father of Roman poetry.
  • Archytas: Archytas of Tarentum, a Greek Pythagorean philosopher and mathematician of the fourth century BC.
  • Tarquin: Tarquin the Proud, by tradition the last king of Rome, driven out by the Romans for his cruelty and tyranny.
  • Blossius: Gaius Blossius of Cumae, a philosopher and supporter of Tiberius Gracchus. In the dialogue his unconditional devotion to his friend is shown as dangerous.
  • Capitol: One of the hills of Rome, the religious and political centre of the ancient city.
  • Bias: Bias of Priene, a Greek sage of the sixth century BC, one of the so-called Seven Sages.
  • Rupilius: Publius Rupilius, Roman consul in 132 BC and a friend of Scipio.
  • Lycomedes: A mythical king of the island of Scyros. In Cicero's account he raised Neoptolemus and tried to keep him from going to war.
  • Neoptolemus: The son of Achilles in Greek myth, one of those who took Troy.
  • Terence: Publius Terentius Afer, a Roman writer of comedies in the second century BC. Cicero quotes his characters when he takes flattery apart.
  • Gnatho: A character in Terence's comedy The Eunuch, a fawning hanger-on who agrees with everything for his own gain.
  • Metellus: Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, a Roman general and politician of the second century BC and a political opponent of Scipio.

All terms

Similar books