Quotation
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“Friendship was given to us by nature as the handmaid of virtue, not as a comrade of vice.”
Cicero · Academic philosophy · Ancient · 44 BCE
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a limit on friendship: it is natural, and it is for helping virtue along, not a licence to share in whatever a friend wants. A competing reading hears a cold rule that friends may only discuss duty, which the dialogue does not say. Laelius has already called a friend another self. The sentence comes after he rejects the idea that friendship opens the door to every passion. It sits in a work written in 44 BCE, after Caesar's death, in the voice of a man remembering Scipio. Nature gives the bond. Virtue is what the bond is for. A comrade of vice would be a partner in the thing friendship is supposed to restrain.
Did Cicero really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Falconer's English of a sentence in the dialogue. Section numbers differ by edition, so no paragraph number is asserted here. The Latin contrast is adiutrix of the virtues, not a companion of vices. Cicero is reporting a Stoic-coloured view in Laelius's voice.
Where it comes from
De Amicitia (Laelius), in W. A. Falconer's Loeb translation
Approximate date: 44 BCE.
How to use it
A group chat in Bristol that calls itself loyal because nobody in it will say that the plan is a fraud has chosen the comrade of vice. The sentence does not ask you to drop a friend at the first mistake. It asks whether the friendship makes the next honest act easier or harder. Covering for someone and calling it loyalty fails the test he states.
A mindset reading
When loyalty and honesty pull apart, do not assume loyalty is the moral one. The habit is to ask what the friendship is helping you become. Cicero is not inventing a police of private life. He is refusing the excuse that affection suspends judgement. A friend who cannot hear a warning has been given the wrong office.
Understand the philosophy
De Amicitia is a dialogue, not a statute. Laelius is the speaker, and he draws on Stoic ethics while remaining a Roman talking about real men. The key terms are nature, virtue, and vice. Friendship is natural, he argues, and still not a blank cheque. Earlier he defines it as agreement in human and divine things joined with goodwill. This sentence is the moral edge of that definition.
- love
- virtue
- ethics
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading is a limit on friendship: it is natural, and it is for helping virtue along, not a licence to share in whatever a friend wants. A competing reading hears a cold rule that friends may only discuss duty, which the dialogue does not say. Laelius has already called a friend another self. The sentence comes after he rejects the idea that friendship opens the door to every passion. It sits in a work written in 44 BCE, after Caesar's death, in the voice of a man remembering Scipio. Nature gives the bond. Virtue is what the bond is for. A comrade of vice would be a partner in the thing friendship is supposed to restrain.
Did Cicero really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Falconer's English of a sentence in the dialogue. Section numbers differ by edition, so no paragraph number is asserted here. The Latin contrast is adiutrix of the virtues, not a companion of vices. Cicero is reporting a Stoic-coloured view in Laelius's voice.
Which work is it in?
De Amicitia (Laelius), in W. A. Falconer's Loeb translation Approximate date: 44 BCE.