Sulpicius, who resorted to arms, in order to effect the incorporation of
the new citizens from without the city among the previously existing
tribes. Hence a series of tumults and conflicts, in one of which a son
of Pompeius lost his life.] with whom he had lived in the closest and
most loving union,--a subject of general surprise and regret. Having
incidentally mentioned this affair, Scaevola proceeded to give us the
substance of a conversation on friendship, which Laelius had with him
and his other son-in-law, Caius Fannius, the son of Marcus, a few days
after the death of Africanus. I committed to memory the sentiments
expressed in that discussion, and I bring them out in the book which I
now send you. I have put them into the form of a dialogue, to avoid the
too frequent repetition of "said I" and "says he," and that the
discussion may seem as if it were held in the hearing of those who read
it. While you, indeed, have often urged me to write something about
friendship, the subject seems to me one of universal interest, and at
the same time specially appropriate to our intimacy. I have therefore
been very ready to seek the profit of many by complying with your
request. But as in the _Cato Major_, the work on Old Age inscribed to
you, I introduced the old man Cato as leading the discussion, because
there seemed to be no other person better fitted to talk about old age
than one who had been an aged man so long, and in his age had been so
exceptionally vigorous, so, as we had heard from our fathers of the
peculiarly memorable intimacy of Caius Laelius and Publius Scipio, it
appeared appropriate to put into the mouth of Laelius what Scaevola
remembered as having been said by him when friendship was the subject in
on the authority of men of an earlier generation, and illustrious in
their time, seems somehow to be of specially commanding influence on the
reader's mind. Thus, as I read my own book on Old Age, I am sometimes so
affected that I feel as if not I, but Cato, were talking. But as I then
wrote as an old man to an old man about old age, so in this book I write