r at us in the same way, as being afraid, when we
have not yet one firm friendship, that we shall without knowing it fall
upon an abundance of friends? It is very much the same as if a man
maimed and blind should be afraid of becoming hundred-handed like
Briareus or all eyes like Argus. And yet we wonderfully praise the young
man in Menander, who said that he thought anyone wonderfully good, if he
had even the shadow of a friend.[322]

Sec. II. But among many other things what stands chiefly in the way of
getting a friend is the desire for many friends, like a licentious woman
who, through giving her favours indiscriminately, cannot retain her old
lovers, who are neglected and drop off;[323] or rather like the
foster-child of Hypsipyle, "sitting in the meadow and plucking flower
after flower, snatching at each prize with gladsome heart, insatiable in
its childish delight,"[324] so in the case of each of us, owing to our
love of novelty and fickleness, the recent flower ever attracts, and
makes us inconstant, frequently laying the foundations of many
friendships and intimacies that come to nothing, neglecting in love of
what we eagerly pursue what we have already possession of. To begin
therefore with the domestic hearth,[325] as the saying is, with the
traditions of life that time has handed down to us about constant
friends, let us take the witness and counsel of antiquity, according to
which friendships go in pairs, as in the cases of Theseus and Pirithous,
Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Phintias and Damon,
Epaminondas and Pelopidas. For friendship is a creature that goes in
pairs, and is not gregarious, or crow-like,[326] and to think a friend
a second self, and to call him companion as it were second one,[327]
shows that friendship is a dual relation. For we can get neither many
slaves nor many friends at small expense. What then is the
purchase-money of friendship? Benevolence and complaisance conjoined
with virtue, and yet nature has nothing more rare than these. And so to
love or be loved very much cannot find place with many persons; for as
rivers that have many channels and cuttings have a weak and thin stream,
so excessive love in the soul if divided out among many is weakened.
Thus love for their young is most strongly implanted in those that bear
only one, as Homer calls a beloved son "the only one, the child of old
age,"[328] that is, when the parents neither have nor are likely to have
anothe