these facts from the analogy of boyhood, since the warmest
affections between boys are often laid aside with the boyish toga;
and even if they did manage to keep them up to adolescence, they
were sometimes broken by a rivalry in courtship, or for some other
advantage to which their mutual claims were not compatible.
Even if the friendship was prolonged beyond that time, yet it
frequently received a rude shock should the two happen to be
competitors for office. For while the most fatal blow to friendship
in the majority of cases was the lust of gold, in the case of the best
men it was a rivalry for office and reputation, by which it had
often happened that the most violent enmity had arisen between
the closest friends.

Again, wide breaches and, for the most part, justifiable ones were
caused by an immoral request being made of friends, to pander to
a man's unholy desires or to assist him in inflicting a wrong. A
refusal, though perfectly right, is attacked by those to whom they
refuse compliance as a violation of the laws of friendship. Now the
people who have no scruples as to the requests they make to their
friends, thereby allow that they are ready to have no scruples as to
what they will do for their friends; and it is the recriminations of
such people which commonly not only quench friendships, but
give rise to lasting enmities. " In fact," he used to say, "these
fatalities overhang friendship in such numbers that it requires not
only wisdom but good luck also to escape them all."

11. With these premises, then, let us first, if you please, examine
the question-how far ought personal feeling to go in friendship?
For instance: suppose Coriolanus to have had friends, ought they to
have joined him in invading his country? Again, in the case of