e them; but
because nature can never change, therefore true friendships are
eternal....

Listen, then, my excellent friends, to the discussion which was very
frequently held by me and Scipio on the subject of friendship; altho
he indeed used to say that nothing was more difficult than that
friendship should continue to the end of life; for it often happened
either that the same course was not expedient to both parties or that
they held different views of politics; he remarked also that the
characters of men often changed, in some cases by adversity, in
others by old age becoming oppressive; and he derived an authority
for such notions from a comparison with early life, because the
strongest attachments of boys are constantly laid aside with the
praetexta; even if they should maintain it to manhood, yet sometimes it
is broken off by rivalry, for a dowried wife, or some other advantage
which they can not both attain. And even if men should be carried on
still further in their friendship, yet that feeling is often
undermined should they fall into rivalry for preferments; for there is
no greater enemy to friendship than covetousness of money, in most
men, and even in the best, an emulous desire of high offices and
glory, in consequence of which the most bitter enmities have often
arisen between the dearest friends. For great dissensions, and those
in most instances justifiable, arise when some request is made of
friends which is improper, as, for instance, that they should become
either the ministers of their lust or their supporters in the
perpetration of wrong; and they who refuse to do so, it matters not
however virtuously, yet are accused of discarding the claims of
friendship by those persons whom they are unwilling to oblige; but
they who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem
to imply that they would do anything for the sake of that friend; by
the complaining of such persons, not only are long-established
intimacies put an end to, but endless animosities are engendered. All
these many causes, like so many fatalities, are ever threatening
friendship, so that, he said, to escape them all seemed to him a proof
not merely of wisdom, but even of good fortune....

Let this, therefore, be established as a primary law concerning
friendship, that we expect from our friends only what is honorable,
and for our friends' sake do what is honorable; that we should not
wait till we are asked; that zeal be ev