me kind disposition belongs also to the multitude; for
virtue is not inhuman, or cruel, or haughty, since she is accustomed
to protect even whole nations, and to adopt the best measures for
their welfare, which assuredly she would not do did she shrink from
the affection of the vulgar. And to myself, indeed, those who form
friendships with a view to advantage seem to do away with its most
endearing bond; for it is not so much the advantage obtained through a
friend as the mere love of that friend which delights; and then only
what has proceeded from a friend becomes delightful if it has
proceeded from zealous affection; and that friendship should be
cultivated from a sense of necessity is so far from being the case
that those who, being endowed with power and wealth, and especially
with virtue (in which is the strongest support of friendship), have
least need of another, are most liberal and generous. Yet I am not
sure whether it is requisite that friends should never stand in any
need; for wherein would any devotedness of mine to him have been
exerted if Scipio had never stood in need of my advice or assistance
at home or abroad? Wherefore friendship has not followed upon
advantage, but advantage on friendship.

Persons, therefore, who are wallowing in indulgence will not need to
be listened to if ever they shall descant upon friendship, which they
have known neither by experience nor by theory. For who is there, by
the faith of gods and men, who would desire, on the condition of his
loving no one, and himself being loved by none, to roll in affluence,
and live in a superfluity of all things? For this is the life of
tyrants, in which undoubtedly there can be no confidence, no
affection, no steady dependence on attachment; all is perpetually
mistrust and disquietude--there is no room for friendship. For who can
love either him whom he fears or him by whom he thinks he himself is
feared? Yet are they courted, solely in hypocrisy, for a time;
because, if perchance (as it frequently happens) they have been
brought low, then it is perceived how destitute they were of friends.
And this, they say, Tarquin[32] exprest; that when going into exile,
he found out whom he had as faithful friends, and whom unfaithful
ones, since then he could no longer show gratitude to either party;
altho I wonder that, with such haughtiness and impatience of temper,
he could find one at all. And as the character of the individual whom
I have ment