FANNIUS. It was indeed easy for the man pre-eminently just to defend
justice.

SCAEVOLA. As to friendship, then, is not its defence easy for him who
has won the highest celebrity on the ground of friendship maintained
with pre-eminent faithfulness, consistency, and probity?

8. LAELIUS. This is, indeed, the employing of force; for what matters
the way in which you compel me? You at any rate do compel me; for it is
both hard and unfair not to comply with the wishes of one's sons-in-law,
especially in a case that merits favorable consideration.

In reflecting, then, very frequently on friendship, the foremost
question that is wont to present itself is, whether friendship is craved
on account of conscious infirmity and need, so that in bestowing and
receiving the kind offices that belong to it each may have that done for
him by the other which he is least able to do for himself, reciprocating
services in like manner; or whether, though this relation of mutual
benefit is the property, of friendship it has yet another cause; more
sacred and more noble, and derived more genuinely from the very nature
of man. Love, which in our language gives name to friendship, [Footnote:
_Amor,--amicitia._] bears a chief part in unions of mutual benefit; for
a revenue of service is levied even on those who are cherished in
pretended friendship, and are treated with regard from interested
motives. But in friendship there is nothing feigned, nothing pretended,
and whatever there is in it is both genuine and spontaneous. Friendship,
therefore, springs from nature rather than from need,--from an
inclination of the mind with a certain consciousness of love rather than
from calculation of the benefit to be derived from it. Its real quality
may be discerned even in some classes of animals, which up to a certain