De Amicitia, Scipio’s Dream · 20 of 30

De Amicitia, Chapter 19

19.There occurs here a question by no means difficult,[Footnote: Latin, subdifficilis which I should render somewhat difficult had not Cicero treat that question as one that presents no difficulty. In the ancient tongues, as in our own or even more than in our own, a word is often better defined by its use than in the dictionary.] whether at any time new friends worthy of our love are to be preferred to the old, as we are wont to prefer young horses to those that have passed their prime. Shame that there should be hesitation as to the answer! There ought to be no satiety of friendships, as there is rightly of many other things. The older a friendship is, the more precious should it be as is the case with wines that will bear keeping, [Footnote: Some of the best Italian wines will not “bear keeping,” and it was probably true of more of them in Cicero’s time than now that wines are so often vitiated by strong alcoholic mixtures in order to preserve them. Cato, in his De Re Rustica, prescribes a method of determining whether the wine of any given vintage will “keep”.] and there is truth in the proverb that many pecks of salt must be eaten together to bring friendship to perfection. [Footnote: Aristotle quotes this as a proverbial saying, so that it must be of very great antiquity.] If new friendships offer the hope of fruit, like the young shoots in the grain-field that give promise of harvest, they are not indeed to be spurned, yet the old are to be kept in their place. There is very great power in long habit. To recur to the horse there is no one who would not rather use the horse to which he has become accustomed, if he is still sound, than one unbroken and new. Nor has habit this power merely as to the movements of an animal, it prevails no less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed with the places though mountainous and woody, [Footnote: Therefore uninviting, for mountain and forest had not in early time the charm which we find in them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But what is most remarkable in friendship is that it puts a man on an equality with his inferior. For there often are in a circle of friends those who excel the rest, as was the case with Scipio in our flock, if I may use the word. He never assumed superiority over Philus, never over Rupilius, never over Mummius, never over friends of an order lower than his own. Indeed he always reverenced as a superior, because older than himself, his brother Quintus Maximus [Footnote: Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the eldest son of Aemilius Paulus, and the adopted son of Fabius Maximus.] a thoroughly worthy man, but by no means his equal, and in fact he wanted to make all his friends of the more consequence by whatever advantages he himself possessed. This example all ought to imitate, that if they have attained any superiority of virtue, genius, fortune, they may impart it to and share it with those with whom they are the most closely connected; and that if they are of humble parentage, and have kindred of slender ability or fortune, they may increase their means of well-being, and reflect honor and worth upon them,—as in fable those who were long in servile condition through ignorance of their parentage and race, when they were recognized and found to be sons either of gods or of kings, retained their love for the shepherds whom for many years they supposed to be their fathers. Much more ought the like to be done in the case of real and well-known fathers; for the best fruit of genius, and virtue, and every kind of excellence is reaped when it is thus bestowed on near kindred and friends.