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[75]
This rule also may properly be prescribed in
friendship: Let not a sort of ungoverned goodwill
(as very frequently happens) hinder your friends'
advantage in important matters. For indeed, if I
may go back to legends, Neoptolemus could not have
taken Troy if he had been willing to listen to Lyco-
[p. 185]
medes, by whom he had been reared and who
endeavoured with many tears to hinder him from
setting out. Often, too, important duties arise
which require the temporary separation of friends;
and he who would hinder the discharge of those
duties because he cannot easily bear his grief at
the absence of his friends, is not only weak and
effeminate, but, on that very account, is far from
reasonable in his friendship.
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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