HKB
ON FRIENDSHIP.
Whereinsoever a man is zealous, this, it is fair to suppose, he loveth. Are men, then, zealous for evil things? Never.[1] Or, perchance, for things which do not concern them? Nor for them either. It remaineth, then, that they are zealous about good things only; and that if they are zealous about them, they also love them. Whosoever, then, hath understanding of good things, the same would know how to love. But he who is not able to distinguish good things from evil, and things that are neither from both, how could this man yet be capable of loving? To love, then, is a quality of the wise alone.
And how is this, saith one, for I am foolish, and none the less do I love my child. By the Gods! I wonder, then, how you have begun by confessing yourself to be foolish. For wherein do you lack? Do you not use your senses? do you not judge of appearances? do you not bring to the body the nourishment it needeth, and the covering and habitation? Wherefore, then, confess yourself to be a fool? Because, forsooth, you are often perplexed by appearances, and troubled, and you are vanquished by their plausibility; and you take the same things to be now good, and now evil, and then indifferent; and, in a word, you grieve and fear and envy, and are troubled, and changed--for these things you confess yourself a fool.
But do you never change in love? But is it wealth, and pleasure, and, in short, things, alone that you sometimes take to be good and sometimes evil? and do you not take the same men to be now good, now evil? and sometimes you are friendly disposed towards them, and sometimes hostile? and sometimes you praise them, and sometimes you blame?
----"Yea, even so I do."
What then? a man who hath been deceived about another, is he, think you, his friend?
----"Assuredly not."
And one who hath taken a friend out of a humor for change, hath he good-will towards him?
----"Nor he either."
And he who now reviles another, and afterwards reveres him?
----"Nor he."
What then? Sawest thou never the whelps of a dog, how they fawn and sport with each other, that you would say nothing can be more loving? But to know what friendship is, fling a piece of flesh among them, and thou shalt learn. And cast between thee and thy child a scrap of land, and thou shalt learn how the child will quickly wish to bury thee, and thou wilt pray that he may die. And then thou wilt say, What a child have I nourished! this long time he is burying me! Throw a handsome girl between you, and the old man will love her, and the young too;[2] and if it be glory, or some risk to run, it will be on the same fashion. You will speak the words of the father of Admetus[3]:--
"Day gladdens thee; think'st thou it glads not me? Thou lovest light; think'st thou I love the dark?"
Think you this man did not love his own child when it was little? nor was in agony if it had a fever? nor said many a time, Would that I had the fever rather than he! Then when the trial cometh and is near at hand, lo, what words they utter! And Eteocles and Polyneices,[4] were they not children of the same mother and the same father? were they not brought up together, did they not live together, drink together, sleep together, and often kiss one another? So that any one who saw them, I think, would have laughed at the philosophers, for the things they say perversely about friendship. But when royalty, like a piece of flesh, hath fallen between them, hear what things they speak:--
"Pol. Where wilt thou stand before the towers?"
"Et. Wherefore seekest thou to know?"
"Pol. There I too would stand and slay thee."
"Et. Thou hast spoken my desire."