worthiest part of it, predominant and exercising her offices (they say the most availful commodity did thereby redound both to the private and public). That it was the force of countries received the use of it, and the principal defence of equity and liberty: witness the comfortable loves of Hermodius and Aristogiton. Therefore name they it sacred and divine, and it concerns not them whether the violence of tyrants, or the demisness of the people be against them: To conclude, all can be alleaged in favour of the Academy, is to say, that it was a love ending in friendship, a thing which hath no bad reference unto the Stoical definition of love: ‘Amorem conatum esse amicitiæ faciendæ ex pulchritudinis specie’ (Cic., ibid.). That love is an endeavour of making friendship, by the shew of beauty.
How friendships are to be judged
I return to my description in a more equitable and equal manner. ‘Omnino amicitiæ corroboratis jam confirmatisque ingeniis et ætatibus judicandæ sunt’ (Cic., Amic.). Clearly friendships are to be judged by wits, and ages already strengthened and confirmed. As for the rest, those we ordinarily call friends and amities, are but acquaintances and familiarities, tied together by some occasion or commodities, by means whereof our minds are entertained. In the amity I speak of, they intermix and confound themselves one in the other, with so universal a commixture, that they wear out, and can no more find the seam that hath conjoined them together. If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed, but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
A preordained friendship
There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatal power, a mean and Mediatrix of this indissoluble union. We sought one another, before we had seen one another, and by the reports we heard one of another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason of reports may well bear: I think by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we embraced one another by our names. And at our first meeting, which was by chance at a great feast, and solemn meeting of a whole township, we found ourselves so surprized, so known, so acquainted, and so combinedly bound together, that from thence forward, nothing was so near unto us, as one unto another. He writ an excellent Latin Satire; since published; by
A first meeting
which he excuseth and expoundeth the precipitation of our acquaintance, so suddenly come to her perfection; Sithence it must continue so short a time, and begun so late (for we were both grown men, and he some years older than myself) there was no time to be lost. And it was not to be modelled or directed by the pattern of regular and remiss friendship, wherein so many precautions of a long and preallable conversation are required. This hath no other Idea than of itself, and can have no reference but to itself. It is not one especial consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand: It is I wot not what kind of quintessence, of all this commixture, which having seized all my will, induced the same to plunge and lose itself in his, which likewise having seized all his will, brought it to lose and
Gracchus and Blosius
plunge itself in mine, with a mutual greediness, and with a semblable concurrence. I may truly say, lose, reserving nothing unto us, that might properly be called our own, nor that was either his, or mine. When Lelius in the presence of the Roman Consuls, who after the condemnation of Tiberius Gracchus, pursued all those that had been of his acquaintance, came to enquire of Caius Blosius (who was one of his chiefest friends) what he would have done for him, and that he answered, All things. What? All things? replied he: And what if he had willed thee to burn our Temples? Blosius answered, He would never have commanded such a thing. But what if he had done it? replied Lelius: The other answered, I would have obeyed him: If he were so perfect a friend to Gracchus, as Histories report, he needed
Gracchus and Blosius