[52]
15. It will be our duty, then, not to listen to
those besotted men of pleasure1 when they argue
about friendship, of which they understand neither
the practice nor the theory. For what person is
there, in the name of gods and men! who would
wish to be surrounded by unlimited wealth and to
abound in every material blessing, on condition that
he love no one and that no one love him? Such
indeed is the life of tyrants—a life, I mean, in which
there can be no faith, no affection, no trust in the
[p. 165]
continuance of goodwill; where every act arouses
suspicion and anxiety and where friendship has no
place.
1 i.e. Epicureans and Cyrenaics, referred to in § 46
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