3 January 2020 - Cicero on Friendship
“’Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship'--such is the high value put upon this great human relationship by the most famous orator of Rome.” (Cicero born Jan. 3, 106 B. C.)
Read from Cicero On Friendship .......... Vol. 9, pp. 16-26
I actually started out reading the introduction on Cicero before the essay. In all honesty, as much as I know the name, I really knew nothing about Cicero. I did not realize that he was an advocate, politician, and overall orator in the time of Caesar. I did not know that he died after Antony got to power in large part due to a number of essays he penned against him. The books said that much of his rhetoric involves a lot of contextual knowledge to properly understand, which is why they included the two original essays in the volume, the one I’m reading entitled On Friendship.
This essay seems to be in the form of a letter to a friend. At the beginning, Cicero explains how he will discuss friendship through a story of dialogue, and as Cato was the main narrator in On Old Age, Laelius would be written as the narrator on friendship due to his wisdom in life. The scene is set that Scaevola and Fannius are talking to Laelius after the death of his friend Africanus. Apparently he missed a meeting, and the talk was about whether it had been due to grief or illness, which Scaevola had told the questioners that Laelius had too much character to miss it for anything other than ill health. Laelius confirmed this and went on to talk about grief and friendship.
One part that really stood out to me was this:
Affected of course I am by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before. But I stand in no need of medicine. I can find my own consolation, and it consists chiefly in my being free from the mistaken notion which generally causes pain at the departure of friends. To Scipio I am convinced no evil has befallen: mine is the disaster, if disaster there be; and to be severely distressed at one’s own misfortunes does not show that you love your friend, but that you love yourself.
This is a really interesting way to look at grief. Many people have said that funerals are not for the deceased; they are for those left behind. This follows a similar vein in saying that letting loss and grief overtake your life does nothing for the one lost.
Laelius then goes on to talk about the great deeds his friend had done, and how old age inevitably saps strength and vigor.
We may conclude therefore that his life, from the good fortune which had attended him and the glory he had obtained, was so circumstances that it could not be bettered, while the suddenness of his death saved him the sensation of dying.
His version of friendship can only seldom happen, and only between “good” people: those of the highest character, not as would be determined by a philosopher, but through a realistic look at people and what they are capable of. Laelius states that true friendship is a harmony of souls and the greatest divine gift humanity has received.
In fact, friendship is what makes life worth living.
What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself....In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend’s strength is his; and in his friend’s life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished. This last is perhaps the most difficult to conceive. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance, and the regret of friends which follow us to the grave. While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.
I loved this. Friendship is our legacy; it is what allows us to live on past our time. Our friends live forever through us, so there is little point in excessive grief, because we need to continue living for our friend, who is inside of us.
I am now definitely past the point where I was supposed to stop for my 15 minutes of reading, but I am hooked and continuing on! I think I will just point out some interesting parts as I continue reading. There is a lot of quotable wisdom concluding very contextually specific examples.
I conclude, then, that the plea of having acted in the interests of a friend is not a valid excuse for a wrong action. For, seeing that a belief in a man’s virtue is the original cause of friendship, friendship can hardly remain if virtue be abandoned.
He then goes on to talk about the wealthy and friendship. Essentially, those who are wealthy BUT ALSO VIRTUOUS are often the most giving. Even two wealthy people who are completely self-sufficient want to feel needed by each other. But, for those who are not virtuous, they will never know if the friends they have are real or not, going on to give an example of a man named Tarquin who was in exile and did not know his true friends until he was poor and could not repay those he thought were his friends.
Though what surprises me is that a man of his proud and overbearing character should have a friend at all. And as it was his character that prevented his having genuine friends, so it often happens in the case of men of unusually great means--their very wealth forbids faithful friendships. For not only is Fortune blind herself; but she generally makes those blind also who enjoy her favours. They are carried, so to speak, beyond themselves with self-conceit and self-will; nor can anything be more perfectly intolerable than a successful fool. You may often see it. Men who before had pleasant manners enough undergo a complete change on attaining power of office. They despise their old friends: devote themselves to new.
In two thousand years, friendship and class differences do not seem to have changed very much...
Also, those in politics have seemingly always had issues maintaining friendships since it is difficult to wish someone to advance past you in that style of competitive profession. Also, it is difficult to find people willing to share in political disaster for friendship.
And though what Ennius says is quite true,--”the hour of need shews the friend indeed,”--yet it is in these two ways that most people betray their untrustworthiness and inconstancy, by looking down on friends when they are themselves prosperous, or deserting them in their distress. A man, then, who has shewn a firm, unshaken, and unvarying friendship in both these contingencies we must reckon as one of a class the rarest in the world, and all but superhuman.
I was starting to get tired and worried that I could not finish when I came across the following gems that are often referred to, to such an extent that I do not even know if it is know that they are referring back to Cicero.
This part made me think of the Grinch and his dog, Max:
For friendship, in one way or another, penetrates into the lives of us all, and suffers no career to be entirely free from its influence. Though a man be of so churlish and unsociable a nature as to loathe and shun the company of mankind, as we are told was the case with a certain Timon at Athens, yet even he cannot refrain from seeking some one in whose hearing he may disgorge the venom of his bitter temper.
He even talks of a theory that if a man could go to heaven and see and understand all of the wonders of the world, it would be a very small pleasure if he could not tell anyone of what he had seen.
So true it is that Nature abhors isolation, and ever leans upon something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most pleasing form in our closest friend.
But, people often do not listen to Nature and abuse their friendships. Others hate to hear the truth and ruin friendships that are honest with them instead of meekly compliant.
This remark of Cato’s, as so many of his did, shews great acuteness: “There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often speak the truth, the latter never.”
This is all I had to say on friendship. One piece of advice on parting. Make up your minds to this: Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship.
Conclusion: I was supposed to read pages 16-26 today. Instead, I read the introduction on Cicero and then the entirety of his essay On Friendship, which ran from pages 9-44. The most difficult part was how often he referenced people and events that his reader (since this was a letter he wrote) would know, but that I could only infer a basic knowledge of. As you can tell by how much I wrote and quoted, though, I did enjoy the letter. I am now putting his other letter-essay On Old Age onto my list of additional readings from the Harvard Classics to pursue.
