"not so far as to incur absolute dishonor," and "virtue is by no means
to be sacrificed," seem saving clauses. But Cicero certainly has a
right to be his own interpreter since in the _De Officiis_ as I think,
he explains in full and in accordance with the highest moral principle,
what he means here, and we have a double right to insist on this
interpretation first, because the _De Officiis_ was written so very
little while after the _De Amicitia_, and both at so ripe an age, that a
change of opinion on important matters was improbable and secondly,
because in the later treatise he expressly refers to the former as
giving in full his views on friendship, and thus virtually sanctions
that treatise. Now in the _De Officiis_ he says A good man will do
nothing against the State, or in violation of his oath of good faith,
for the sake of his friend, not even if he were a judge in his friend's
case. . . . He will yield so far to friendship as to wish his friend's
case to be worthy of succeeding, and to accommodate him as to the time
of trial, within legal limits. But inasmuch as he must give sentence
upon his oath, he will bear it in mind that he has "God for a witness."
In another passage of the _De Officiis,_ Cicero asserts, somewhat
hesitatingly, yet on the authority of Panaetius as the strictest of
Stoics, the moral rightfulness of "defending on some occasions a guilty
man, if he be not utterly depraved and false to all human relations." As
in the passage on which I am commenting special reference is made to the
peril of life or reputation, what Cicero contends for, as it seems to
me, is the right of defending a guilty friend as advocate, or of
favoring him as to time and mode of trial as a judge. Aulius Gellius, in
connection with this passage in _De Amicitia,_ tells the following story
of Chilo, who was on some of the lists of the seven wise men. Chilo, on
the last day of his life, said that the only thing that gave him uneasy
thought, and was burdensome to his conscience, was that once when he and
two other men were judges in a case in which a friend of his was tried