r requirements, like the sail of a ship
that we can either slacken or haul tight. But let us transfer,
Euripides, these lines of yours to enmities, and bid people make their
animosities moderate, and not hate with all their heart, that their
hatred, and wrath, and querulousness, and suspicions, may be easily
broken. Recommend rather for our consideration that saying of
Pythagoras, "Do not give many your right hand,"[340] that is, do not
make many friends, do not go in for a common and vulgar friendship,
which is sure to cause anyone much trouble; for its sharing in others'
anxieties and griefs and labours and dangers is quite intolerable to
free and noble natures. And that was a true saying of the wise
Chilo[341] to one who told him he had no enemy, "Neither," said he, "do
you seem to me to have a friend." For enmities inevitably accompany and
are involved in friendships.

Sec. VII. It is impossible I say not to share with a friend in his injuries
and disgraces and enmities, for enemies at once suspect and hate the
friend of their enemies, and even friends are often envious and jealous
and carp at him. As then the oracle given to Timesias about his colony
foretold him, "that his swarm of bees would soon be followed by a swarm
of wasps," so those that seek a swarm of friends have sometimes lighted
unawares on a wasp's-nest of enemies. And the remembrance of wrongs done
by an enemy and the kindness of a friend do not weigh in the same
balance. See how Alexander treated the friends and intimates of Philotas
and Parmenio, how Dionysius treated those of Dion, Nero those of
Plautus, Tiberius those of Sejanus, torturing and putting them to death.
For as neither the gold nor rich robes of Creon's daughter[342] availed
her or her sire, but the flame that burst out suddenly involved him in
the same fate as herself, as he ran up to embrace her and rescue her, so
some friends, though they have had no enjoyment out of their friends'
prosperity, are involved in their misfortunes. And this is especially
the case with philosophers and kind people, as Theseus, when his friend
Pirithous was punished and imprisoned, "was also bound in fetters not
of brass."[343] And Thucydides tells us that during the plague at Athens
those that most displayed their virtue perished with their friends that
were ill, for they neglected their own lives in going to visit
them.[344]

Sec. VIII. We ought not therefore to be too lavish with our virtue, binding