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[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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