23 Cicero, De Amicitia 79–81 (continued)
Humans need to transfer that feeling of self-love to friendship, since friends are essentially “another self.” Animals love themselves and seek out others like themselves. Then, how much more suitable is it to the nature of humans to do the same (this is called an “argument from degree”).
| 1 | Quod nisi idem in amīcitiam trānsferētur, vērus amīcus numquam reperiētur; est enim is, quī est tamquam alter īdem. |
| 2 | [81] Quodsī hoc appāret in bēstiīs, volucribus, nantibus, agrestibus, cicuribus, ferīs, prīmum ut sē ipsae dīligant |
| 3 | (id enim pariter cum omnī animante nāscitur), deinde ut requīrant atque adpetant, ad quās sē adplicent ēiusdem generis animantis, |
| 4 | idque faciunt cum dēsīderiō et cum quādam similitūdine amōris hūmānī, quantō id magis in homine fit nātūrā! |
| 5 | quī et sē ipse dīligit et alterum anquīrit, cūius animum ita cum suō misceat, ut efficiat paene ūnum ex duōbus. |
| 1 | idem: i.e. the same love, feeling, self-affection just mentioned.
quod: another example of the connecting relative. trānsferētur, what kind of condition? |
| 2 | ut: both this ut and the one in line 3 are noun clauses amplifying the meaning of the hoc. |
| 3 | ipsae: feminine due to bestiīs in line 2.
id: refers to that feeling of loving something of the same type just described. adplicent: what kinds of relative clauses take the subjunctive? which makes sense here? (AG 534) ēiusdem generis animantis: a genitive of quality (AG345a) with either quās or its understood antecedent. |
| 4 | quantō: what kind of ablatives might one expect in association with a comparative like magis? (AG 414).
nātūrā: this is probably best understood as an ablative of cause (AG 404); again, the idea of Nature as the guide and reference for human behavior is key for Stoic thinking; (and wasn’t that a very loooong conditional sentence!) |
| 5 | quī: has as its antecedent homine.
cūius: another relative clause with its verb in the subjunctive; here it functions just like quās…adplicent in line 3. suō: what do you think you need to understand with this reflexive adjective? ut: there is a triggering ita in the preceding clause, so what kind of ut? (AG 568) |
Interrogata
- Do you think that true friends are rare?
- Do you think that animals form friendships? Or are humans exceptional in that capacity?
- Do you think you need to love yourself to be a real friend?
