ivelling boy go to my school to learn history and understand the books
which I did not understand before, and, if it should happen so, to
explain them also to others? Man, you have had a fight in the house with
a poor slave, you have turned the family upside down, you have
frightened the neighbors, and you come to me as if you were a wise man,
and you take your seat and judge how I have explained some word, and how
I have babbled whatever came into my head. You come full of envy, and
humbled, because you bring nothing from home; and you sit during the
discussion thinking of nothing else than how your father is disposed
towards you and your brother. What are they saying about me there? now
they think that I am improving, and are saying, He will return with all
knowledge. I wish I could learn everything before I return; but much
labor is necessary, and no one sends me anything, and the baths at
Nicopolis are dirty; everything is bad at home, and bad here.

* * * * *

ON FRIENDSHIP.--What a man applies himself to earnestly, that he
naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly to the things
which are bad? By no means. Well, do they apply themselves to things
which in no way concern themselves? Not to these either. It remains then
that they employ themselves earnestly only about things which are good;
and if they are earnestly employed about things, they love such things
also. Whoever then understands what is good can also know how to love;
but he who cannot distinguish good from bad, and things which are
neither good nor bad from both, how can he possess the power of loving?
To love, then, is only in the power of the wise.

For universally, be not deceived, every animal is attached to nothing so
much as to its own interests. Whatever then appears to it an impediment
to this interest, whether this be a brother, or a father, or a child, or
beloved, or lover, it hates, spurns, curses; for its nature is to love
nothing so much as its own interests: this is father, and brother, and
kinsman, and country, and God. When then the gods appear to us to be an
impediment to this, we abuse them and throw down their statues and burn
their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Aesculapius to be
burned when his dear friend died.

For this reason, if a man put in the same place his interest, sanctity,
goodness, and country, and parents, and friends, all these are secured:
but if he puts in