§ 1. The friendship of citizens, like the harmonious adjustment of members in a body, is necessary for the safety of the commonwealth; for there is no gathering, no assembly, without friendship. Friendship, I say, that is gratuitous, not venal, not a cunning observer of its own advantage. But true friendship does not exist without virtue and cannot exist without it; therefore neither can the commonwealth.
Friendship ought first to be entrusted through practice, weighed by proofs, and free from suspicions. Its most tenacious bond is similarity of morals; it is fostered by conversation and services. But if each person does all things for his own sake, if each one’s end is his own advantage, the most beautiful thing of all after the virtues falls—namely, friendship. Cicero rightly teaches that the Epicureans, who said that they did all things for the sake of their own pleasure, removed friendship altogether. Plato therefore taught excellently that to lack friends and faithful men is a greater sign of vice than any other can be, and that to abound in friends is an indication of virtue, Epistle 7.
But the rich, and those who are in principate and power, have the greatest need of friendships, as Aristotle admonishes in Ethics 8, chapter 4. So great is the necessity of friendship that even the wise person seems to need it; certainly everyone desires to possess very many friends. But true friendship is that toward which no advantage or natural propensity carries a human being, but an honorable reason for deserving well of another. The sweetness of friendship is innate in us, and nature has implanted a certain stimulus toward loving and joy concerning friendship.
None of these things can exist in a commonwealth of atheists. If a tyrant plunders and rages; if wisdom, the examiner of true affection, is absent; if justice is neglected; if each person measures all things by his own pleasure, no one will love another. A new poison will permeate households and the families of the powerful, and will stir the natural affections of parents and children mutually against one another. The judgment of Epicurus and of political atheists is that friendship is not the reward of virtue and that each person does all things for his own sake. The words of Epicurus in Laertius are: ἕνεκα γίγνεσθαι τὴν φιλίαν διὰ τὰς χρείας, “friendship comes about because of needs.” So much so that Plutarch, in his book On Affection for Offspring, testifies that this disgraceful doctrine of Epicurus was refuted by a shout from the theater:
Μισθῷ γὰρ ἀνθρώπου τίς ἄνθρωπον φιλεῖ;
For who loves a human being for a human being’s payment?
He says that this was an object of admiration in the theaters; but according to Epicurus a father and mother love a son in this way, and the children themselves love their parents in this way.
Seneca speaks with much greater wisdom, Epistle 9: “The wise person, even if content with himself, nevertheless wishes to have a friend—if for no other reason, so that he may exercise friendship, lest so great a virtue lie idle. Not for the reason which Epicurus stated in this very epistle: that he may have someone to sit beside him when sick, or assist him when cast into chains and in need; but that he may have someone beside whom he himself may sit when that man is sick, someone whom he himself may free when surrounded by an enemy guard. He who looks to himself and for this reason comes to friendship thinks badly; as he began, so will he end.
“He has prepared a friend who will bring aid against chains; as soon as the chain rattles, he will depart. These are the friendships which the people call temporary. He who was adopted for the sake of utility will please as long as he is useful. For this reason a crowd of friends sits around the flourishing; around the fallen there is an immense solitude, and friends flee from the place where they are tested. For this reason there are so many impious examples, some abandoning through fear, others betraying through fear. It is necessary that beginnings and ends agree with one another. He who began to be a friend because it is expedient will be pleased by some price against friendship, if any price in it pleases him beyond friendship itself. For what do I prepare a friend? That I may have one for whom I can die, that I may have one whom I may follow into exile, to whose death I may oppose and devote myself. That which you describe is commerce, not friendship: it approaches for advantage and considers what it will obtain.”
Friendship is therefore necessary, but that friendship which, as the philosophers establish as certain, can exist only among the good. The Stoics say: φιλίαν ἐν μόνοις τοῖς σπουδαίοις εἶναι διὰ τὴν ὁμοιότητα. “It exists among the good alone, and this because of similarity.” But since among the wicked there is no love of a friend, nor anything in which one approves the other, it is necessary that through the vices of the wicked the commonwealth utterly perish, because all plead their own private cause and no one the public cause.