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[26]
8. LAELIUS. Really you are employing violence;
for what matters it what means you take of forcing
me? Forcing me you certainly are. For it is not
only hard, but not even right, to withstand the
earnest requests of one's sons-in-law, particularly in
a good cause.
The oftener, therefore, I reflect on friendship the
more it seems to me that consideration should be
given to the question, whether the longing for
friendship is felt on account of weakness and want,
so that by the giving and receiving of favours one
may get from another and in turn repay what he
is unable to procure of himself; or, although this
[p. 139]
mutual interchange is really inseparable from
friendship, whether there is not another cause,
older, more beautiful, and emanating more directly
from Nature herself. For it is love (amor), from
which the word “friendship” (amicitia) is derived,
that leads to the establishing of goodwill. For
while it is true that advantages are frequently
obtained even from those who, under a pretence of
friendship, are courted and honoured to suit the
occasion; yet in friendship there is nothing false,
nothing pretended; whatever there is is genuine
and comes of its own accord.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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