De Amicitia, Scipios Dream | Page 3

was
singled out by him in dying for the most sacred charge that he left on
the earth, while at the same time that disciple shows in his Gospel that
he had obtained an inside view so to speak, of his Master's spiritual life
and of the profounder sense of his teachings which is distinguished by
contrast rather than by comparison from the more superficial narratives
of the other evangelists.
But Christianity has done even more than this for friendship. It has
superseded its name by fulfilling its offices to a degree of perfectness
which had never entered into the ante-Christian mind. Man shrinks
from solitude. He feels inadequate to bear the burdens, meet the trials,
and wage the conflicts of this mortal life, alone. Orestes always needed
and craved a Pylades, but often failed to find one. This inevitable
yearning, when it met no human response found still less to satisfy it in
the objects of worship. Its gods, though in great part deified men, could
not be relied on for sympathy, support or help. The stronger spirits did
not believe in them, the feebler looked upon them only with awe and
dread. But Christianity, in its anthropomorphism, which is its strongest

hold on faith and trust, insures for the individual man in a Divine
Humanity precisely what friends might essay to do yet could do but
imperfectly for him. It proffers the tender sympathy and helpfulness of
Him who bears the griefs and carries the sorrows of each and all; while
the near view that it presents of the life beyond death inspires the sense
of unbroken union with friends in heaven, and of the fellow- feeling of
"a cloud of witnesses" beside. Thus while friendship in ordinary life is
never to be spurned when it may be had without sacrifice of principle,
it is less a necessity than when man's relations with the unseen world
gave no promise of strength, aid, or comfort.
Experience has deepened my conviction that what is called a free
translation is the only fit rendering of Latin into English; that is, the
only way of giving to the English reader the actual sense of the Latin
writer. This last has been my endeavor. The comparison is, indeed,
exaggerated; but it often seems to me, in unrolling a compact Latin
sentence, as if I were writing out in words the meaning of an algebraic
formula. A single word often requires three or four as its English
equivalent. Yet the language is not made obscure by compression. On
the contrary, there is no other language in which it is so hard to bury
thought or to conceal its absence by superfluous verbiage.
I have used Beier's edition of the De Amicitia, adhering to it in the very
few cases in which other good editions have a different reading. There
are no instances in which the various readings involve any considerable
diversity of meaning.
LAELIUS.
Caius Laelius Sapiens, the son of Caius Laelius, who was the life-long
friend of Scipio Africanus the Elder, was born B.C. 186, a little earlier
in the same year with his friend Africanus the Younger. He was not
undistinguished as a military commander, as was proved by his
successful campaign against Viriathus, the Lusitanian chieftain, who
had long held the Roman armies at bay, and had repeatedly gained
signal advantages over them. He was known in the State, at first as
leaning, though moderately and guardedly, to the popular side, but after
the disturbances created by the Gracchi, as a strong conservative. He

was a learned and accomplished man, was an elegant writer,--though
while the Latin tongue retained no little of its archaic rudeness,--and
was possessed of some reputation as an orator. Though bearing his part
in public affairs, holding at intervals the offices of Tribune, Praetor,
and Consul, and in his latter years attending with exemplary fidelity to
such duties as belonged to him as a member of the college of Augurs,
he yet loved retirement, and cultivated, so far as he was able, studious
and contemplative habits. He was noted for his wise economy of time.
To an idle man who said to him, "I have sixty years" [_Sexaginta annos
habeo._] (that is, I am sixty years old), he replied, "Do you mean the
sixty years which you have not?" His private life was worthy of all
praise for the virtues that enriched and adorned it; and its memory was
so fresh after the lapse of more than two centuries, that Seneca, who
well knew the better way which he had not always strength to tread,
advises his young friend Lucilius to "live with Laelius;" [_Vire cum
Laelio._] that is, to take his life as a model.
The friendship of Laelius and the younger Scipio Africanus well
deserves the commemoration