ess; in it too a
means of spending my leisure with unalloyed delight. Never, to the best
of my knowledge, did I offend him even in the most trivial point; never
did I hear a word from him I could have wished unsaid. We had one house,
one table, one style of living; and not only were we together on foreign
service, but in our tours also and country sojourns. Why speak of
our eagerness to be ever gaining some knowledge, to be ever learning
something, on which we spent all our leisure hours far from the gaze of
the world? If the recollection and memory of these things had perished
with the man, I could not possibly have endured the regret for one so
closely united with me in life and affection. But these things have not
perished; they are rather fed and strengthened by reflexion and memory.
Even supposing me to have been entirely bereft of them, still my time
of life of itself brings me no small consolation: for I cannot have much
longer now to bear this regret; and everything that is brief ought to be
endurable, however severe.

This is all I had to say on friendship. One piece of advice on parting.
Make up your minds to this. Virtue (without which friendship is
impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of
all things is Friendship.

ON OLD AGE

1. And should my service, Titus, ease the weight
Of care that wrings your heart, and draw the sting
Which rankles there, what guerdon shall there he?

FOR I may address you, Atticus, in the lines in which Flamininus was
addressed by the man,

who, poor in wealth, was rich in honour's gold,

though I am well assured that you are not, as Flamininus was,

kept on the rack of care by night and day.

For I know how well ordered and equable your mind is, and am fully aware
that it was not a surname alone which you brought home with you from
Athens, but its culture and good sense. And yet I have an idea that you
are at times stirred to the heart by the same circumstances as myself.
To console you for these is a more serious matter, and must be put off
to another time. For the present I have resolved to dedicate to you an
essay on Old Age. For from the burden of impending or at least advancing
age, common to us both, I would do something to relieve us both though
as to yourself I am fully aware that you support and will support it,
as you do everything else, with calmness and philosophy. But directly I
resolved to write o