Laelius de amicitia

Title: Laelius de amicitia
Work type: Cicero - I - Works
Description:

Philosophical work in dialogue form, dedicated by Cicero to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus (Lael. 3-4), composed in 44 BC after De senectute and before De officiis. [F. Pagnotta, trans. Tom Frazel]


Keywords: Éditions - Edizioni - Editions, Histoire - Storia - History, Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy
Historical references:

Philosophical work in dialogue form,
dedicated by Cicero to his friend Titus Pomponius
Atticus (Lael.
3-4), composed in 44 BC after De senectute and before De officiis. The dialogue transports the
reader to the year 129 BC, a little after the death of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, and consists of an account that Cicero claims
to have heard in his youth from one of his masters, Q. Mucius Scaevola the Augur (Lael. 1-3), who, because he was present with C. Fannius, recounted the oratio of C. Laelius, friend and counselor of Scipio, on the meaning and the value of amicitia. The dialogue offers an occasion
to Cicero himself to make his personal reflections on a concept of amicitia that,
far from resolving itself in an exclusive way in the sphere of the expedient
and the particular interest of a single individual, must be founded first of
all between the boni cives on a communion of shared ethical values (Lael. 18-19), having their hinge in the concept of virtus (Lael. 20-21, 28). For Cicero amicitia is a noble feeling that is born from mutual love for virtus and does not come from need or from a certain cogitatio
on its usefulness (Lael. 26-29, 51); it does not therefore have to be regulated according to utilitas but according to the same virtus, and that is why, for Cicero, a friend ought not to be favored if, with his behaviors, he is contrary to the same virtus or quite against the fatherland (Lael. 36-44). True amicitia founded
on virtus
must be tougher against contingent adversities (Lael. 64), a concept that Cicero
well expresses citing Ennius, when he asserts that amicus certus in
re incerta cernitur (v.
210 Vahlen, from the Scenica of Ennius).
The objective of Cicero with the Laelius de amicitia, thus like with his other philosophical works
(cfr. inv.
2,1), is prodesse multis (Lael. 4). The Laelius de amicitia also re-enters therefore in that program of safeguarding and renewing those ethical values around which Cicero hoped until the last that the Res publica freed from the dictatorship of Caesar could find new moral forces and cohesion. [F. Pagnotta – trans. Tom Frazel]


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