7. And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this
certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the
future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true
friend a man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend
is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his
friend's strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second
life after his own is finished. This last is perhaps the most difficult
to conceive. But such is the effect of the respect, the loving
remembrance, and the regret of friends which follow us to the
grave. While they take the sting out of death, they add a glory to
the life of the survivors. Nay, if you eliminate from nature the tie
of affection, there will be an end of house and city, nor will so
much as the cultivation of the soil be left. If you don't see the
virtue of friendship and harmony, you may learn it by observing
the effects of quarrels and feuds. Was any family ever so well
established, any State so firmly settled, as to be beyond the reach
of utter destruction from animosities and factions? This may teach
you the immense advantage of friendship.

They say that a certain philosopher of Agrigentum, in a Greek
poem, pronounced with the authority of an oracle the doctrine that
whatever in nature and the universe was unchangeable was so in
virtue of the binding force of friendship; whatever was changeable
was so by the solvent power of discord. And indeed this is a truth
which everybody understands and practically attests by experience.
For if any marked instance of loyal friendship in confronting or
sharing danger comes to light, every one applauds it to the echo.
What cheers there were, for instance, all over the theatre at a
passage in the new play of my friend and guest Pacuvius; where
the king, not knowing which of the two was Orestes, Pylades