mean and contemptible can of
course raise their eyes to nothing lofty, to nothing grand and divine.
Such persons indeed let us leave out of the present question. And let
us accept the doctrine that the sensation of love and the warmth of
inclination have their origin in a spontaneous feeling which arises
directly the presence of probity is indicated. When once men have
conceived the inclination, they of course try to attach themselves to
the object of it, and move themselves nearer and nearer to him. Their
aim is that they may be on the same footing and the same level in regard
to affection, and be more inclined to do a good service than to ask a
return, and that there should be this noble rivalry between them.
Thus both truths will be established. We shall get the most important
material advantages from friendship; and its origin from a natural
impulse rather than from a sense of need will be at once more dignified
and more in accordance with fact. For if it were true that its material
advantages cemented friendship, it would be equally true that any change
in them would dissolve it. But nature being incapable of change, it
follows that genuine friendships are eternal.

So much for the origin of friendship. But perhaps you would not care to
hear any more.

_Fannius_. Nay, pray go on; let us have the rest, Laelius. I take on
myself to speak for my friend here as his senior.

_Scaevola_. Quite right! Therefore, pray let us hear.

10. _Loelius_. Well, then, my good friends, listen to some conversations
about friendship which very frequently passed between Scipio and myself.
I must begin by telling you, however, that he used to say that the most
difficult thing in the world was for a friendship to remain unimpaired
to the end of life. So many things might intervene: conflicting
interests; differences of opinion in politics; frequent changes in
character, owing sometimes to misfortunes, sometimes to advancing years.
He used to illustrate these facts from the analogy of boyhood, since
the warmest affections between boys are often laid aside with the boyish
toga; and even if they did manage to keep them up to adolescence, they
were sometimes broken by a rivalry in courtship, or for some other
advantage to which their mutual claims were not compatible. Even if the
friendship was prolonged beyond that time, yet it frequently received a
rude shock should the two happen to be competitors for office. For while
the most fatal b