De Amicitia, Scipios Dream | Page 6

in Cicero's time pupilage ceased a year earlier and by
Justinin's code the period at which it legally ceased was the
commencement of the fifteenth year. The Scaevola to whom Cicero
was thus taken was Quintus Mucius (Scaevola) the Augur, already
named.] my father took me to Scaevola and so commended me to his
kind offices, that thenceforward, so far as was possible and fitting I
kept my place at the old man's side. [Footnote: It was customary for

youth in training for honorable positions in the State to attach
themselves especially to men of established character and reputation, to
attend them to public places, and to remain near them whenever
anything w«as to be learned from their conversation, their legal
opinions, their public harangues, or their pleas before the courts.
Distinguished citizens deemed themselves honored by a retinue of such
attendants. Cicero, in the De Officiis, says that a young man may best
commend himself to the early esteem and confidence of the community
by such an intimacy.] I thus laid up in my memory many of his
elaborate discussions of important subjects, as well as many of his
utterances that had both brevity and point, and my endeavor was to
grow more learned by his wisdom. After his death I stood in a similar
relation to the high-priest Scaevola, [Footnote: As Cicero says, the
most eloquent of jurists, and the most learned jurist among the eloquent.
He was at the same time pre-eminent for moral purity and integrity. It
was he, who, as Cicero (De Officiis, iii. 15) relates, insisted on paying
for an estate that he bought a much larger sum than was asked for it,
because its price had been fixed far below its actual value.] whom I
venture to call the foremost man of our city both in ability and in
uprightness. But of him I will speak elsewhere. I return to the Augur.
While I recall many similar occasions, I remember in particular that at a
certain time when I and a few of his more intimate associates were
sitting with him in the semicircular apartment [Footnote: Latin,
hemicyclio, perhaps, a semicircular seat.] in his house where he was
wont to receive his friends, the conversation turned on a subject about
which almost every one was then talking, and which you, Atticus,
certainly recollect, as you were much in the society of Publius
Sulpicius; namely, the intense hatred with which Sulpicius, when
Tribune of the people, opposed Quintus Pompeius, then Consul,
[Footnote: The quarrel arose from the zelous espousal of the Marian
faction by Sulpicius, who resorted to arms, in order to effect the
incorporation of the new citizens from without the city among the
previously existing tribes. Hence a series of tumults and conflicts, in
one of which a son of Pompeius lost his life.] with whom he had lived
in the closest and most loving union,--a subject of general surprise and
regret. Having incidentally mentioned this affair, Scaevola proceeded
to give us the substance of a conversation on friendship, which Laelius

had with him and his other son-in-law, Caius Fannius, the son of
Marcus, a few days after the death of Africanus. I committed to
memory the sentiments expressed in that discussion, and I bring them
out in the book which I now send you. I have put them into the form of
a dialogue, to avoid the too frequent repetition of "said I" and "says
he," and that the discussion may seem as if it were held in the hearing
of those who read it. While you, indeed, have often urged me to write
something about friendship, the subject seems to me one of universal
interest, and at the same time specially appropriate to our intimacy. I
have therefore been very ready to seek the profit of many by complying
with your request. But as in the Cato Major, the work on Old Age
inscribed to you, I introduced the old man Cato as leading the
discussion, because there seemed to be no other person better fitted to
talk about old age than one who had been an aged man so long, and in
his age had been so exceptionally vigorous, so, as we had heard from
our fathers of the peculiarly memorable intimacy of Caius Laelius and
Publius Scipio, it appeared appropriate to put into the mouth of Laelius
what Scaevola remembered as having been said by him when
friendship was the subject in on the authority of men of an earlier
generation, and illustrious in their time, seems somehow to be of
specially commanding influence on the reader's mind. Thus, as I read
my own book on Old Age, I am sometimes so affected that I feel as if
not I, but Cato, were talking. But as I then wrote as