antages of friendship are almost
more than I can say. To begin with, how can life be worth living, to use
the words of Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the
mutual good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to
have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute
confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if
you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes
would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more
acutely than yourself. In a word, other objects of ambition serve for
particular ends--riches for use, power for securing homage, office for
reputation, pleasure for enjoyment, health for' freedom from pain and
the full use of the functions of the body. But friendship embraces
innumerable advantages. Turn which way you please, you will find it at
hand. It is everywhere; and yet never out of place, never unwelcome.
Fire and water themselves, to use a common expression, are not of more
universal use than friendship. I am not now speaking of the common
or modified form of it, though even that is a source of pleasure and
profit, but of that true and complete friendship which existed
between the select few who are known to fame. Such friendship enhances
prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing
it.

7. And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this
certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the
future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend a
man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is;
if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend's
strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second life
after his own is finished. This last is perhaps the most difficult to
conceive. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving remembrance,
and the regret of friends which follow us to the grave. While they take
the sting out of death, they add a glory to the life of the survivors.
Nay, if you eliminate from nature the tie of affection, there will be an
end of house and city, nor will so much as the cultivation of the soil
be left. If you don't see the virtue of friendship and harmony, you may
learn it by observing the effects of quarrels and feuds. Was any family
ever so well established, any State so firmly settled, as to be beyond
the reach of utter destruction from animos