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[74]
As a rule decisions about friendships should be
formed after strength and stability have been reached
in mind and age; nor should men who in boyhood
were devoted to hunting and games of ball, keep
as their intimates those whom they loved at that
period simply because they were fond of the same
pursuits. For on that principle nurses and the
slaves who attended us to and from school, will, by
right of priority of acquaintance, claim the largest
share of our goodwill. I admit that they are not
to be neglected, but they are to be regarded in an
entirely different way; under no other conditions
can friendship remain secure.1 For difference of
character is attended by difference of taste and it is
this diversity of taste that severs friendships; nor
is there any other cause why good men cannot be
friends to wicked men, or wicked men to good men,
except that there is the greatest possible distance
between them in character and in taste.
1 i.e. only by forming friendships when we are mature in mind and in age.
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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