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[4]
For while
you were pleading with me again and again to write
something on friendship, the subject appealed to
me as both worthy of general study, and also well
fitted to our intimacy. Therefore I have not been
unwilling to benefit the public at your request.
But, as in my Cato the Elder, which was written to
you on the subject of old age, I represented Cato,
when an old man, as the principal speaker, because
I thought no one more suitable to talk of that
period of life than he who had been old a very
long time and had been a favourite of fortune in
old age beyond other men; so, since we had learned
from our forefathers that the intimacy of Gaius
Laelius and Publius Scipio was most noteworthy,
[p. 113]
I concluded that Laelius was a fit person to expound
the very views on friendship which Scaevola remembered that he had maintained. Besides, discourses
of this kind seem in some way to acquire greater
dignity when founded on the influence of men of
ancient times, especially such as are renowned; and,
hence, in reading my own work on Old Age I am at
times so affected that I imagine Cato is the speaker
and not myself.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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