ancient tongues, as in our own or even more than in our own, a word is
often better defined by its use than in the dictionary.] whether at any
time new friends worthy of our love are to be preferred to the old, as
we are wont to prefer young horses to those that have passed their
prime. Shame that there should be hesitation as to the answer! There
ought to be no satiety of friendships, as there is rightly of many other
things. The older a friendship is, the more precious should it be as is
the case with wines that will bear keeping, [Footnote: Some of the best
Italian wines will not "bear keeping," and it was probably true of more
of them in Cicero's time than now that wines are so often vitiated by
strong alcoholic mixtures in order to preserve them. Cato, in his _De Re
Rustica_, prescribes a method of determining whether the wine of any
given vintage will "keep".] and there is truth in the proverb that many
pecks of salt must be eaten together to bring friendship to perfection.
[Footnote: Aristotle quotes this as a proverbial saying, so that it must
be of very great antiquity.] If new friendships offer the hope of fruit,
like the young shoots in the grain-field that give promise of harvest,
they are not indeed to be spurned, yet the old are to be kept in their
place. There is very great power in long habit. To recur to the horse
there is no one who would not rather use the horse to which he has
become accustomed, if he is still sound, than one unbroken and new. Nor
has habit this power merely as to the movements of an animal, it
prevails no less as to inanimate objects. We are charmed with the places
though mountainous and woody, [Footnote: Therefore uninviting, for
mountain and forest had not in early time the charm which we find in
them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the
most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But
what is most remarkable in friendship is that it puts a man on an
equality with his inferior. For there often are in a circle of friends
those who excel the rest, as was the case with Scipio in our flock, if I