ities and factions? This may
teach you the immense advantage of friendship.

They say that a certain philosopher of Agrigentum, in a Greek poem,
pronounced with the authority of an oracle the doctrine that whatever in
nature and the universe was unchangeable was so in virtue of the binding
force of friendship; whatever was changeable was so by the solvent power
of discord. And indeed this is a truth which everybody understands and
practically attests by experience. For if any marked instance of loyal
friendship in confronting or sharing danger comes to light, every one
applauds it to the echo. What cheers there were, for instance, all
over the theatre at a passage in the new play of my friend and guest
Pacuvius; where the king, not knowing which of the two was Orestes,
Pylades declared himself to be Orestes, that he might die in his stead,
while the real Orestes kept on asserting that it was he. The audience
rose _en masse_ and clapped their hands. And this was at an incident in
fiction: what would they have done, must we suppose, if it had been in
real life? You can easily see what a natural feeling it is, when men
who would not have had the resolution to act thus themselves, shewed how
right they thought it in another.

I don't think I have any more to say about friendship. If there is any
more, and I have no doubt there is much, you must, if you care to do so,
consult those who profess to discuss such matters.

_Fannius_. We would rather apply to you. Yet I have often consulted
such persons, and have heard what they had to say with a certain
satisfaction. But in your discourse one somehow feels that there is a
different strain.

_Scaevola_. You would have said that still more, Fannius, if you had
been present the other day in Scipio's pleasure-grounds when we had
the discussion about the State. How splendidly he stood up for justice
against Philus's elaborate speech.

_Fannius_. Ah! it was naturally easy for the justest of men to stand up
for justice.

_Scaevola_. Well, then, what about friendship? Who could discourse on
it more easily than the man whose chief glory is a friendship maintained
with the most absolute fidelity, constancy, and integrity?

8. _Laclius_. Now you are really using force. It makes no difference
what kind of force you use: force it is. For it is neither easy nor
right to refuse a wish of my sons-in-law, particularly when the wish is
a creditable one in itself.

Well, then, it has ver