aversion, also, springs up when anything morally wrong is required of a
friend; as when he is asked to aid in the gratification of impure
desire, or to render his assistance in some unrighteous act,--in which
case those who refuse, although their conduct is highly honorable, are
yet charged by the persons whom they will not serve with being false to
the claims of friendship, while those who dare to make such a demand of
a friend profess, by the very demand, that they are ready to do anything
and everything for a friend's sake. By such quarrels, not only are old
intimacies often dissolved, but undying hatreds generated. So many of
these perils hang like so many fates over friendship, that to escape
them all seemed to Scipio, as he said, to indicate not wisdom alone, but
equally a rare felicity of fortune.

11. Let us then, first, if you please, consider how far the love of
friends ought to go. If Coriolanus had friends, ought they to have
helped him in fighting against his country, or should the friends of
Viscellinus [Footnote: Spurius Cassius Viscellinus, the author of the
earliest agrarian law, passed, but never carried into execution. He was
condemned to death,--probably a victim to the rancorous opposition of
the patrician order, of which he was regarded as a recreant member by
virtue of his advocacy of the rights or just claims of the _plebs_.
Cicero in early life was by no means so hostile to the principle
underlying the agrarian laws, and to the memory of the Gracchi, as he
was after he had reached the highest offices in the gift of the people.]
or those of Spurius Maelius [Footnote: Maelius, of the equestrian order,
but of a plebeian family, obtained unbounded popularity with the _plebs_
by selling corn at a low price, and giving away large quantities of it,
in a time of famine. He was charged with seeking kingly power, and, on
account of his alleged movements with that purpose, Cincinnatus was
appointed dictator, and Maelius, resisting a summons to his tribunal,