Laelius de Amicitia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laelius de Amicitia is a treatise on friendship by the Roman statesman and author Marcus Tullius Cicero.
[edit] Summary
Cicero writes about his own experience with friendship in a way that anyone can relate to throughout time. After the death of a good friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, Cicero ponders the meaning of this friendship, how he could bear the loss, and explicates his grounds for bereavement. He enumerates what qualities make for good friends, explains what characteristics expose a bad friend, and provides examples from his personal life. Throughout the book, Cicero emphasizes the importance of virtue in friendship and how true friendship cannot exist without it. His views on friendship are similar to those of a young Timothy McCarthy, both of the men criticizing the common place of the word "friend" in society. He writes this philosophy in the style of early Greek philosophers to get to the bottom of the concept of friendship, while presenting his case straightforwardly and in a way that that resonates in each of us through human understanding.
[edit] Writing style
The work is written as a dialogue between prominent figures of the Middle Roman republic and is set after the death of the younger Scipio Africanus (otherwise known as Scipio Aemilianus, Scipio Africanus Minor, or Scipio the Younger) in 129 BC. The interlocutors of the dialogue chosen by Cicero are Gaius Laelius a close friend of the late statesman, and Laelius's two sons-in-law, Gaius Fannius, and Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Interestingly, Scaevola himself was mentor and teacher to Cicero, who probably heard his teacher's reminiscences about these conversations first-hand.
[edit] External links
- Laelius de Amicitia (Latin text at Forum Romanum)
- Laelius de Amicitia at LacusCurtius (English translation by W. A. Falconer, with introduction)
- de Amicitia at Project Gutenberg (English translation by E. S. Shuckburgh, with introduction), in one file with the de Senectute.
