Absence and Desire in Cicero's "De Amicitia" Author(s): Eleanor Winsor Leach Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical

World, Vol. 87, No. 2 (Nov. - Dec., 1993), pp. 3-20 Published by: Classical Association of the Atlantic States Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4351452 . Accessed: 12/04/2012 01:19
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Classical Association of the Atlantic States is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Classical World.

http://www.jstor.org

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'S

' DE AMICITIA
The celebratedaristocraticfriendshipbetween Scipio Aemilianus and Laeliusprovidesthe foundation for the ideas Cicero develops in the De Amicitia.2Becauseof Cicero's frequentlyexpressedregardfor these two personageswhom he had made the chief speakersin his earlierDe Re Publica,3the historicalscenarioof the dialogueis often characterized an ideal past.4 It is hard to see why, since the first as thing we hear about the occasion is that it follows only a few days after Scipio's untimelydeath. All Romansnow turn their eyes toward Laelius, wondering how his renowned wisdom will sustain him in performinghis accustomedcivic responsibilities after the loss of his closest friend (2.6). Laelius admits human longing (3.10: desiderium) for Scipio and the sense of deprivationresultingfrom his loss (3.10: moveor enim tali amico orbatus qualis ut arbitror nemo umquam
erit), and yet he also denies separation in the name of ideal

friendshipwhose bonds can restore presence (absentes adsunt) and

even return the dead once more to life (7.23: quod difficilius dictu est, mortui vivunt) through the potency of memory and desire (7.23: tantus eos honos, memoria, desiderium prosequitur amicorum). The dialogue, as a discourse of memory, takes rise from Scipio's absence. Interweaving Laelius' personal experience of friendship with

remembered ideas and phrases, it pays homage to Scipio's auctoritas and concludeswith an assertionof his enduring,remembered presence (27.100). Paradoxically, however, this presence is a product of
l A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of CAMWS in April 1992. An invitation to address Robert Rabel's seminar on Cicero's philosophical essays in February 1993 at the University of Kentucky provided the occasion for this expanded version, and my tenure as a Fellow of the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle Park afforded me the free time needed for completion. I want to express my appreciation to Professor Rabel and his students for the stimulating discussion which provided both impetus and new thoughts for revision, and also to Professor Rabel for his comments on the final version. Thanks are also owing to Professor Stephen L. Dyson, SUNY Buffalo and my colleague at the National Humanities Center, Professor Edwin Duvall of the Yale University French department. Professor Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland, offered several useful suggestions in her capacity as editorial reader for CW, and Professor David Konstan, Brown University, has generously supplied me with a copy of his forthcoming essay on Greek Friendship. 2 Citations from the De Amicitia and De Senectute follow the Teubner text of K. Simbeck, M. Tullius Cicero: Fasc. 47, Cato maior; Laelius (1917, rpt. 1980). 3 A.E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford 1967) 7-10, discusses Cicero's regard for Scipio and his idealization of his career. ' Elizabeth Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (London, 1975) 275-76; but also Thomas Habinek, "Towards a History of Friendly Advice: The Politics of Candor in Cicero's De Amicitia," Apeiron 23 (1990) 167.

ELEANORWINSOR LEACH

language, whose very nature, when seen as the expressive instrument of desire, is to corroborate absence. Words mean that the signified is not there. Along these lines Derrida has recently pronounced, "When there is friendship there is no friend," explaining that the ideal definition of friendship obviates the possibility of a human friend.5 As a self-conflicting acknowledgement and denial of deprivation, Cicero's treatment of longing for an ideal friend is involved within this paradox. Thus Derrida further observes, "the great canonical meditations on friendship.. .are linked to the experience of mourning, to the moment of loss."6 But it is no accident that this tradition originates with Cicero and in the particular circumstances he describes. As a dramatic setting for the De Amicitia, he has chosen a moment when, psychologically speaking, the self suffers a critical separation from the ideal-a separation that Cicero's own experience had made him feel keenly, and in no area more keenly than the desire for friendship.7 In this paper I shall consider the way in which the historical perspective of the dialogue enforces this crisis of separation and its implications for the structure and consistency of Cicero's argument. The introductory passages of the dialogue establish its dramatic moment within a complex temporal perspective. Writing to Atticus, Cicero explains that the ideas he is about to advance have been transmitted through two previous speakers. The opening paragraphs are narrative. Cicero remembers how his first teacher and political role-model, Q. Mucius Scaevola the Augur, often conversed pleasingly about his father-in law Gaius Laelius. He professes to recreate a conversation that he when a young man (circa 90-88 B.C.) once heard at Scaevola's house (1.1). But Scaevola figures in this mise-en scene as the reporter of an earlier conversation in which he, likewise as a younger man, had participated and in which Laelius himself was the

s Jacques Derrida, "The Politics of Friendship," Journal of Philosophy, Law and Society (1988) 632-44. I am grateful to George Nishikawa, a graduate student at the University of Kentucky, who facilitated my request to obtain a copy of this essay for the seminar. 6 Derrida (above, n.5) 643. As he continues: ". . through the irreplaceable element of the name, they always advance into the testamentary shadow in order to entrust and refuse the death of the unique one to a universalizable discourse [". . my friends, there is no friend" (Aristotle-Montaigne). . .1, if they thereby found and destabilize at the same time, if, because they menance them, they restore a great number of oppositions (singular/universal, private/public, familial/political, secret/phenomenal, etc.) and I would be tempted to say all oppositions, the relative invariance of this model fractures itself and opens itself onto its own abyss." ' An analogous consideration of the social significance of historical fictionalizing in the De Senectute appears in Judith P. Hallett, "Heeding Our Native Informants: The Uses of Latin Literary Texts in Recovering Elite Roman Attitudes towards Age, Gender and Social Status," Echos du monde classique: Classical Views 36, n.s. II (1993) 333-55. Hallett argues for the importance of recovering the full historical context of classical texts and for the applicability of "innovative literary approaches" when one examines these texts with an eye to "asking and answering questions of a 'socialhistorical' nature."

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'SDE AMICITIA

principalspeaker (1.3). Both conversationshad been occasioned by disturbingcontemporaryevents. Scaevola was prompted to tell his story with referenceto a bitter hatred that had dividedtwo one-time amici, Publius Sulpicius, a plebian tribune, and the consul Quintus Pompeius, and had producedfirst the death of Pompeius' son and then of Sulpiciushimself. Likewisethe conversation with Laeliusthat Scaevolareportstook place shortly after the death of his close friend Scipio Aemilianus-a death that Cicero inferentially attributes to politicallygeneratedhatred.8 As author/transmitter the dialogue, Cicero claims to have of committed to memory the main points of Scaevola's repeated discourse, whichhe promiseshe will now reinfusewith animationso that his charactersappear to conversebefore the reader'sown eyes (1.3: ut tamquam a praesentibuscoram haberi sermo videretur).When the dialogue proper begins, Scaevola the intermediary speaker turns himself into a memberof Laelius'audienceso that the fictive date of 129 is collapsedinto the actual date of writingin 44 B.C. This Chinese box introductionhighlightsthe deliberateness with which Cicero has fixed the moment of his dialogue.9Although he makes no furtherinterventions his authorialvoice, nonethelesshe in does clearlyrelatethis dramaticmomentto his own previouswritings. In the passagedirectlyfollowingthe one I have cited (4.14), he makes Laeliusmentionthe occasion when Scipio, only a few days before his suddendeath, had conversedfor three days about the commonwealth, endingwith a vision-the SomniumScipionis-concerningthe immortality of virtuous souls. The immediateeffect of the referenceis to draw the dramaticmoment of the De Amicitia firmly into Cicero's own fictive constructionof history, since the conversation Laelius mentionsdid not really occur in 129 B.C., but only duringthe years 54 and 51 B.C. when Cicero himself createdit in the De Re Publica. By this cross-reference his own work of ten years earlier, to Cicero createscontinuitywithin the space of his own intellectualand personalhistory;but he also establishesthe dramaticcoloring of his new essay. In placingthe De Amicitia after Scipio's death, he has by no means situated his study of friendshipin an ideal moment, but ratherone when idealityhas been damagedby the murderof a model Roman that interrupts friendshiprepresenting best in senatorial a the interassociation.In the Somnium, Cicero had shown grandfather
8 3.12:quo de genere mortis djfficile dictu est, quid homines suspicentur videtis. Astin (above, n.3) 241-42 discusses the genuinely mysterious death and various rumors circulated about it. 9 Possibly Cicero had in mind Plato's Timaeus 20C-21D, where Critias' fable of Atlantis is represented as a memory preserved by oral transmission from Solon to his great-grandfather Dropides to Critias' namesake grandfather. Like the De Amicitia, the Timaeus is explicitly connected with a conversation fictionalized in its author's earlier writings (Plato's Republic); the story of Atlantis serves to renew inquiry about the state. For the suggestion I thank Professor Harry Berger, Jr. of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

ELEANOR WINSOR LEACH

Scipio Africanuswarningyoung Aemilianusof a potentialthreat "at the impioushands of kinsmen"(Rep. 6.12: "si impiaspropinquorum manus effugeris")to come at the height of his career.When Laelius cries out protesting,Aemilianussmilinglycautions him not to interrupt the dream. Thus Cicero indicates a belief that Scipio was murdered. Commentsin other works (Har. 19.4; Leg. 3.9.20) make it clear that he regarded agitationsof the Gracchias a pivotal point the in the decline of the Republic ("when daggers were cast into the
forum").

Already in the Somnium Scipionis, Cicero had adumbratedhis perceptionsof analogies between Scipio's guidance of the state in crisis and his own.'0 Africanuspredictsto Scipio the violence of the Gracchi,and the moment when all eyes will turn to him as a leader who might have been made dictator had he lived (Rep. 6.12: in te unum atque in tuum nomen se tota convertetcivitas: te senatus, te omnes boni, te socii, te Latini intuebuntur). Scipio's cause appeared rightto Cicero,just as he believedthat his own oppositionto Catiline and Clodius was right. The languageof the Catilinarian affair echoes in such familiarphrasesas (6.29) sunt autem optimaecuraede salute patriae. Certainlythese memorieslingeredin the late 50's as Cicero
pondered how Pompey's disappointing gravitation towards Caesar

affected his career." One may sense their provocationbehind such of references the De Re Publica as that to the tribuneship Tiberius in Gracchusand its divisionof the state (6.11). By the year 44 B.C., however,these evils perceivedwhile writing in the De Re Publica, but now becomepast history, are mild-seeming
comparison with the civil war that has culminated in Antony's present rise. Once more Cicero's position stands in question.'2 Thus returning to the scene, if not the subject of his earlier dialogue, Cicero interlocks two fictionalized conversations located in 129 B.C. to make them frame a turbulent moment of the past with a bearing on his personal history. Behind the "few days" of fictive time that separates these two dialogues may be seen a far longer intervention of autobiographical time during which, one may think, Cicero's relationship to the signifying status of his principal speakers will even have
'0 As Astin (above, n.3) 7 observes, Cicero also contrasts the conduct of Scipio, who, to his way of thinking, had remained content with a position of honor and leadership, with those successful generals of his own day who had used their successes to attempt dominatio. " His letter to L. Lucceius of 4 April 55 (ad Fam. 5.12) soliciting an historical monograph certainly indicates that his public and private scores with the past were not settled. In a letter to P. Lentulus Spinther dated December 54 (ad Fam. 1.9.3) he mentions that he is writing a poem De temporibus meis along with his De Oratore. 12 J.E.G. Zetzel, "Cicero and the Scipionic Circle," HSCP 76(1972) 173-81, fixes the date of completion with reference to the clearly documented terminus ante quem of November 44, noting that the composition belongs to summer 44: "a middle period when Cicero was vacillating between his despondency over the incompetence of Brutus and Cassius and his deep-seated hope that the Republic might return and he could take the position of senior statesman which was rightly his."

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'S DE AMIcITIA

changed. Where formerly he had idealized an heroic Scipio, now circumstances have left open the quieter position of Laelius. Far from representing an ideal moment in Cicero's conceptualization of history, the dramatic situation of the De Amicitia should be understood as a moment of passage when Roman political affairs were taking the decisive turn towards the climactic disorders of his own time. By thus writing himself into the structure of the introductory speeches made by his characters, Cicero also imposes a sense of historical memory upon his reader, so positioned that he cannot ignore the influence of past upon present time. This historical perspective is of course not confined to the introduction, but figures throughout the dialogue in the many events and personages that Laelius invokes to illustrate his points. Since the chief value of friendship as maintained both by Laelius and by Cicero is the society of common purpose in the political arena, its bonds are constantly being tested by the pressure of events in which friends are involved. Its equilibrium can be unbalanced by rivalry; its harmonies can be disordered by changes in character; its loyalties may be subjected to unethical demands and its mutuality of trust risks exploitation. The progress of the dialogue incorporates these darker perceptions into its structure, contrasting them with philosophically based ideals of friendship. Understanding that Cicero does not idealize the moment of the De Amicitia but rather contextualizes it within a progression of negative events sharpens our attention to these declinations. From an historical perspective one might see them linked with the decline of the republic. The range of interpretive vision that Cicero assigns to Laelius in his presentation of these historical examples places them in a series of superimposed temporal perspectives, as e.g. the proleptic analysis of events involving the Gracchi. Citing Tiberius Gracchus as his archexample of a man whose violent methods of securing his policies posed ethical difficulties for his friends, Laelius deplores the perversely trusting loyalty that led C. Blossius Cumanus to indiscriminating endorsement of his projects, and he dramatizes his own remonstrances with this short-sighted man (11.37): Tum ego: 'etiamne si te in Capitolium faces ferre vellet?' 'Numquam' inquit, 'voluisset is quidem, sed si voluisset, paruissem.' Videtis quam nefaria vox! This topic leads Laelius also to express his anxieties for the current moment in which he fears the tribuneship of Gaius Gracchus amid an atmosphere where people and senate are divided and the judgment of the multitude governs affairs (12.41). To the reader equipped with historical hindsight Cicero must appear to be representing this prudent statesmen as clairvoyant.'3 He even makes Laelius remark that the
13 Cicero's particular emphasis on the political outrage of the incident and on Laelius' future prognostications stands out even more clearly when one compares Valerius Maximus' expanded version of the anecdote (4.7.3) in which Blossius is assigned a self-justificatory defense of friendship. Martin Bloomer, Valerius Maximus

ELEANOR WINSOR LEACH

state of the res publica after his death is of no less concern to him than in the present day (12.42). All this indicates that Cicero expects his reader, by sharing his historical vantage point, to recognize the De Amicitia as an instrument for the inferential evaluation of present times and experience.'4 This double perspective that Cicero creates by superimposing historical time on dramatic is not merely an invitation to sympathize with his critical views of specific persons and events of the declining republic; it is actually a set of conditions imposed upon friendship itself. Scholars have debated, both from a philosophical and from a practical point of view, the status of his principles as representations of the construction and ideology of amicitia in the late Republic, but the questions raised are not easily resolved. Certainly the most idealistic view is that taken by P.A. Brunt, who argues from a positivistic standpoint that Cicero's vision of mutual compatibility and shared interests describes Roman personal interassociation at its best.'5 In this he is at pains to refute certain earlier historians' more pragmatic interpretations of the semantics of amicitia as a code of reciprocal obligations contracted both with dependent clientelae and influential peers to facilitate the contest for power.'6 Opposing Ronald Syme's characteristically harsh definition of amicitia as 'a weapon of politics, not a sentiment based upon congeniality,' Brunt argues that amicitia is, to the contrary, so far from designating an operational code that the nuances of this multivalent term must in every individual set of circumstances be determined "with tact and discrimination".'7 Such circumstances range from personal loyalties strong enough to
and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility (Chapel Hill 1992) 4449, discusses the shift in rhetorical emphasis. Konstan (above, n.1) also points to Valerius' more charitable allowances for the emotional bond of friendship. " Concerning the De Re Publica, he had remarked to Quintus (Q.fr. 3.5.2) that his historical scenario prevented his touching upon his great disturbances of the state. " P.A. Brunt, "Amicitia in the Late Roman Republic," rpt. in The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford 1988) 351-81. He insists upon restoring fiendly sentiments to amicitia as he attempts to mediate between Cicero's philosophical ideals and the evidence for aristocratic personal relationships within the sphere of political action. He accepts the originality of Cicero's essay as a transformation of Greek theory into terms of Roman experience, noting its appropriateness both to Cicero's own intellectual pursuits and to the cultivated aristocratic discourse of the day. Furthermore, he argues on the basis of Cicero's correspondence that a kind of genuine intellectual and spiritual affinity united him with such powerful friends as Hortensius, Pompey, even Caesar. He shows how Cicero was at great pains to pretend in correspondence that Caesar had not really opposed him (363). 16 Brunt (above, n.15) 350-51 summarizes these views, which depart from Sallust's famous phrase, Haec inter bonos amicitia, inter malos factio est (BJ 31.15). Hellegouarc'h's book on Roman political vocabulary assigns this word a special set of meanings within a language of alliance and negotiation. These are generally supported by Lily Ross Taylor's explanation in Party Politics in the Age of Caesar of amicitia ("the good old word for party relationship") as designating a network of formalized relationships among political figures shaped by the Roman principle of do ut des. '' Brunt (above, n.15) 367.

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'SDE AMICITIA

override political considerations to an outward show of courtesy between secret enemies. Ultimately, however, these premises lead the historian towards the paradoxical perception that while "amicitia always professed to be different from and superior to political allegiance and alliance, in the real world of public life it is commonly a good deal less."'8 Lurking behind Brunt's insistence on the integrity of Cicero's idealism within the category of semantic ambivalence is a contradiction Derrida makes explicit in expounding his view that the ideal name of friendship stands in the way of possessing "common friends". Commenting on the oppositions inherent in the historical tradition of discourses concerning friendship, he observes:'9 On the one hand, friendship seemsto be essentiallyforeign or unamenable the res publica and thus could not found a to politics. But, on the other hand, as one knows, from Plato to Montaigne,from Aristotleto Kant, from Ciceroto Hegel, the great philosophical and canonical discourseson friendship (but my questiongoes preciselyto the philosophical canon in this domain) will have linked friendshipexplicitlyto virtue and justice, to moral reason and to political reason. These discourseswill even have set the moral and political conditions for an authentic friendship-and vice versa. . .it is sometimesin the name of moralitythat friendshiphas been removedfrom the divisionsand criteriaof politics. In its highlighting of the dichotomous incongruity of politics and sentiment, this analysis is certainly relevant to Cicero. To him the option of removing friendship "in the name of morality . . . from the divisions and criteria of politics" did not present itself, because public life, to his way of thinking, was the context in which all virtues gained meaning by recognition and in which personal identity was validated.20
18 Brunt (above, n. 15) 361. Recent studies have tended to enforce this sense of paradox. Thus Neal Wood, Cicero's Social and Political Thought (Berkeley, 1988) 183 and n. 31, takes a middle view, citing Brunt's ideas yet also suggesting that the essay "can in part and with caution" be read to cast light on "networks of friends and associates." Habinek (above, n.4) 165-85, casts further light on the contradictions and ambiguities of Cicero's doctrine in confrontation with Realpolitik, by his arguments concerning the giving and receiving of candid advice. The maintenance of friendship among social and political equals appears as a very precarious possibility in late Republican Rome. What strongly emerges from Habinek's argument, although not as its primary concern, is that the dialogue is built upon a whole set of compromises involving questions of equality among friends. The difference between Habinek's and Brunt's perceptions, as I see it, is that Brunt finds the De Amicitia, as a document, unambiguous but actual circumstances muddled, while Habinek suggests that the convolutions of real personal interaction actually invade the dialogue to provide indirect evidence of the tensions in real social practices. 19 Derrida (above, n.5) 641-42. 20 Thus Laelius locates the happiness of friendship within a conjunction of public and private spheres (4.15): sed tamen recordatione nostrae amicitiae sic fruor ut beate vixisse videar, qui cum Scipione vixerim, quocum mihi coniuncta cura de publica re et

10

ELEANORWINSOR LEACH

Although he does not deny that persons outside the public world can appreciate friendship (23.86), all the same, to protect the personal value of amicitia by displacement into private life would render its sentiments as powerless as the domestic attentions received from wife and child.2' That the philosophical traditions he most respected offered a version of friendship grounded in civic responsibility was a confirmation of his own predilections that made it only logical for him to recast philosophical principles in a manner essentially his own, not merely by attributing Greek thoughts to Roman personalities, but also by coloring these with personal experience.22 Laelius vicariously makes this personal element clear by insisting that he will not follow the consuetudo doctorum Graecorum in disputation, but will speak instead from his own convictions (5.17). Unlike Derrida, Cicero did not set out to 'deconstruct' the traditions of friendship, yet something like deconstruction is the inevitable result of a self-undermining strain of argument that runs through the discourse, constantly reminding us that its ideals are wishful fictions when viewed in terms of the real world. Although it is possible, by taking a partial view of the essay, to view its message as unreservedly positive,23 many scholars have remarked upon its various contradictions of principle and idea. While some have thought these contradictions should be susceptible of others have thought them possibly rational reconciliation,

de privata fuit, quocum et domus fuit et militia communia et id in quo est omnis vis amicitiae, voluntatum, studiorum, sententiarum summa consensio. J.G.F. Powell, ed., Cicero: Laelius, or Friendship (Laelius, De Amicitia) and the Dream of Scipio (Somnium Scipionis) (Warminster 1990) 84, ad 15, remarks that sharing a household seems unusual, yet concludes on the strength of Horace Sat. 2.1.71-74, that it may be true. 21 Atit. 1.18.1. 22 Powell (above, n.20) 16-23, discusses originality in accordance with contemporary consensus, noting the "self-consciously Roman construction of Laelius' character." As scholars have always acknowledged, missing links in the philosophical tradition to account for some of Cicero's unattributed ideas might well have existed in the many lost Hellenistic treatises on friendship, and especially that of Theophrastus to which Gellius (1.3.9) refers as Cicero's source for his remarks on friendship, honor and the state. Just how important Theophrastus' treatise may have been is suggested by Konstan (above, n.I), who proposes that it reflected a major change in the relationship between friendship and other obligations effected by the manner in which the emergent Hellenistic state superimposed its powers and duties upon citizens. In 5th century Athens, social relationships were not separated from political because the distinction between society and the state was in itself inchoate. Thus, "While in the classical period friendship was perceived to be continuous with civic responsibility, after Theophrastus it caime to be represented in potential conflict with duty and, more specifically, with one's obligations to the state." 23 E.g. Rawson (above, n.4) 275-76; but also Ross Kilpatrick, The Poetry of Friendship: Horace's Epistles I (Alberta, 1986) xvii, 88, 106-08 et passim, who stresses particularly the humanitas that will have recommended Cicero's treatment of friendship to Horace.

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'SDE AMICITIA

11

involuntary.24 About this we obviously cannot know, but from a deconstructionist point of view the contradictions must be considered integral to the significance of Cicero's treatment. Although one must grant that the balancing of negative and positive perspectives creates the strength of the dialogue, bringing it out of the realms of pure theory into those of Realpolitik, nevertheless Cicero does not let us forget that this would not be requisite in the best of possible Republics. It is time to consider certain instances in greater detail. In fact the problems addressed by the De Amicitia would be simpler if friends were allowed to choose between public and private values. The reason Cicero cannot separate the emotional gratification of friendship from its exercise in political interassociation is because politics, as the activity that absorbed all his thought and attention, was also that in which he placed his primary investment of emotion. The particular intensity of this emotional engagement might be attributed to the social circumstances surrounding Cicero's construction of his career; however, his effort in the De Amicitia is to reinforce personal inclinations with philosophical reasoning. Thus he explains his civic contextualization of friendship as natural to the human condition. It is the best part of man's instinct for sharing community focussed within a single relationship. Yet this intensification also involves emotional craving: friendship lends strength and sustains spirits (7.23: nec debilitari animos aut cadere patitur). The pressures of the political world create the conditions amidst which the desire for the fides, the caritas, and the benevolentia of friendship is most keenly felt. Cicero's decisive refutation of the notion that close friendships should be avoided reveals readiness to venture into a high degree of emotional risk (13.44-46).25 The craving for support within friendship is highlighted by the dialogue's somewhat paradoxical treatment of the question whether friendship can be cemented by need. At one moment Laelius confesses having asked himself if the longing for friendship proceeds from weakness or poverty of resources (8.26: utrum propter imbecillitatem atque inopiam desiderata sit amicitia). His answer is an insistent denial (9.31): Quid enim? Africanus indigens mei? Minime hercule! Later he appears even consciously to contradict himself in conceding that Scipio not only welcomed, but also needed his support and advice (14.51): ubi enim studia nostra viguissent, si numquam consilio, numquam opera nostra nec domi nec militiae Scipio eguisset? But Scipio seems exceptional among men of power in not rejecting the benefits of friendship. Cicero entertains the rather peculiar idea that
24 Maria Bellincioni, Struttura e pensiero del Laelius Ciceroniano (Brescia 1970) 33-34, reviews and summarizes; Powell (above, n.20) 15 describes the logic of the argument as a "rough alternation between philosophical and practical sections." 25 For this idea, vaguely attributed to "certain men considered wise in Greece," Powell (above, n.20) 102-03 notes the difficulty of finding a genuinely philosophical source. He cites a parallel in Euripides' Hippolytus.

12

ELEANORWINSOR LEACH

unusually ambitious or exceptionally successful men will not feel the desire for friendship. It is not so much that ambition dominates friendly concerns as that it renders them negligible (17.63). Likewise the material abundance surrounding tyrants induces them to neglect friendship; yet no political life can be lonelier than that situated at the center of power but deprived of fides, caritas, stabilis benevolentiae fiducia (15.52). Thus while amicitia may not be founded upon the desire for compensating deficiencies, its emotional component clearly thrives upon the desire to be needed. The conflict between real and ideal embodiments of friendship takes rise from the philosophical concept of the ideal friend as another self. Although this idea scarcely pretends to originality, and was doubtless to Cicero's contemporaries a familiar post-Aristotelian commonplace, its emotional value can be considered apart from its intellectual status.26 Cicero's use of the idea betrays his awareness that the desire for consensus is a desire for self-completion. As a recurrent motif that carries the theme of self-discovery and self-validation in friendship, it occurs at every level of argument and in a variety of forms. In its first appearance resemblance is a virtual test of recognition made explicit by the visual image of mirroring (7.23: verum enim amicum qui intuetur, tamquam exemplar aliquod intuetur sui). Translated into an anecdote, the idea serves to focus a popular perception of friendship, as witnessed by the applause greeting Pacuvius' drama when Pylades and Orestes claimed one and the same identity in the face of death (7.24). Both the rewards and the utility of friendship are founded upon this principle of replication. Harking back to this idea in one after another context throughout the course of the essay, Cicero sometimes uses language of resemblance (similitudo), sometimes of doubling (alter idem). Insofar as these words can be differentiated, similitudo represents a primary qualification for friendship. Natural kinship gives birth to resemblance which, even within the animal kingdom, is a recognizable basis for affection (8.27: quae ex se natos ita amant). Among men resemblances are perceived on a higher plane of similis sensus, with congruity of nature and habits. Mutual attraction proceeds from similitudo because nature so greedily seeks and seizes its own likeness (14.50: nihil est enim appetentius similium sui nec rapacius quam natura). Conversely it is dissimilitudines caused by dispares mores or disparia studia which dissolve friendships. The natural instinct for self-replication that drives men to seek after the alter idem of an intimate friendship can be represented as a proper sense of self26 For the philosophical development of the topos in the Peripatetic tradition see Powell (above, n.20) 19, 91 ad 23. The problematic relationship between Aristotelian principles and Roman realities that this tenet exemplifies might profitably be considered in the light of Konstan's suggestion (above, n. 1) that the ideal of affectionate, co-operative friendship was comfortably at home within the earlier Athenian state.

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'S DE AMICITIA

13

valuation, a transfer of the esteem one has for oneself (21.80: . . quod per se sibi quisque carus est. quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem). By this mode of projection, the minds of two become one (21.81). Virtue appears as a lumen that recognizes its counterpart in another (27.100: ostendit suum lumen et idem aspexit adgnovitque in alio). Also Laelius articulates the loneliness experienced by a person lacking such a counterpart. Unfortunately, however, since politics creates the circumstances that drive friends apart, this craving for reinforcement within the reciprocal interactions of friendship is also the most vulnerable aspect of the ideal. No sooner has Laelius proclaimed the blessedness of lasting friendship than he suddenly recalls, in the manner of an afterthought, what Scipio himself often said about the many ways in which the vicissitudes of political life could imperil the continuity of friendship, especially when circumstances place friends in competition with each other (10.33-34). Thus, paradoxically, that alter idem whom Laelius has constructed into a symbol for the eternity of friendship comes on stage to declare its practical and temporal limitations.27 Occurring at the beginning of the third section (the praecepta) of Laelius' discourse, this depressive reminder of discidium signals a major change in the dialogue, opening the door to a harsher vision of Roman life that restrains and cautions the remainder of his speech.28 It is not merely a danger of being led astray by bad influences, as was the case with Tiberius Gracchus' devotee Blossius, or even the calamitas of breaking off with undesirable friends (21.77). Bad company may be pernicious, but can be avoided (24.89). The real problem is that the world has so few equals to be found. Laelius
27 Powell (above, n.20) 15 comments that the practical opinions are generally given to Scipio, while Laelius takes the more theoretical position. But this neat division does not really hold true: Laelius, for example, is responsible for the historical examples given at 46. 28 The structure of the dialogue has always seemed rather loosely composed, especially when contrasted with that of the nearly contemporary De Senectute whose clearly delineated rhetorical scheme proceeds from Cato's successive refutation of four commonly given reasons for considering old age as unhappy. But the generally accepted view is that the structure of the presentation does follow a tripartite divisio proposed by Fannius (4.16): si quem ad modum soles de ceteris rebus quom ex te quaeruntur, sic de amicitia disputaris quid sentias, qualem existumes, quae proecepta des. Laelius' discourse, only briefly interrupted by conversational interchanges with his interlocutors, thus includes two sections of definition, quid sentias (17-24) and qualis existumes (26-33), before he launches into the praecepta which run from 34-100. This obviously comprises a disproportionately long portion-virtually two thirds-of the dialogue. It has been defended as an alternation of theoretical and practical observations, and somewhat clarified by subdivision under various topical headings, but the fact remains that it nowhere includes a clearly articulated rationale for the order in which the praecepta unfold. Powell (above, n.20) 12-15 does not accept the divisio as a valid outline, while Singh (Paul MacKendrick with the assistance of Karen Singh, The Philosophical Books of Cicero [London 1989]) 216 places the commencement of the praecepta later, at 62-100.

14

LEACH ELEANOR WINSOR

laments the great want (17.62: magna penuria) of men possessing the firmness, stability and constancy demanded by friendship. As the dialogue continues, the very supply of good men worthy of friendly affection appears to diminish: "Those who have in their nature qualities worth cherishing are a rarum genus" (21.79). Under the aspect of a privation by which even the possibility of friendship is severely restricted, resemblance and replication become forms of absence and desire rather than presence. For this reason Cicero's concept of self-reflection can be compared with Lacan's mirror stage where the child's conceptualization of identity through the recognition of himself in a visual image becomes the obstacle he must deal with in relating his identity to the world.29 The illusory sense of wholeness and spatial domination created by reflection can appear in the predilection for conceiving relationships as doublings. Throughout the essay Cicero struggles with this mirroring compulsion to which the Roman system of rank and status is essentially hostile. This struggle is among the most interesting aspects of the essay. Habinek proposes that many of the tensions to be seen within the De Amicitia are focused by its remarks on the giving and receiving of candid advice. That Laelius should privilege wise counsel as being the talent for which he himself was most honored is both natural and congruent with the ideals of mutual exchange he professes; yet, as Habinek argues, the actuality of Roman competitive society posed conflicts of interest as obstacles to honesty when equals attempted to offer each other critical advice.30 But in fact the problems of achieving equality in amicitia extend far deeper than this single item. Where equality does not exist, the compromise solution is to fabricate it, and on this topic the dialogue has much to say. Under the heading fines et quasi termini diligendi (16.56), Laelius refutes three ideas that bear upon the question of self-reflection in friendship: 1.) That we should exhibit towards friends the same disposition as towards ourselves; 2.) that we should expect the exchanges of friendship to be equal; and 3.) that we should value friends as ourselves. All three positions appear to him ungenerous because, as he argues in each case, a friend should be
29 Jacques Lacan, "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as A revealed in psychoanalytic experience," in Alan Sheridan, trans. ?Ocrits: Selection (New York/London 1977) 1-7. 30 Habinek (above, n.4) 166-69 points out that the need to give advice (44) and the need to accept it (88) are balanced, but that this formulation misrepresents the actual conditions of Roman political society where criticism is not easily exchanged between equals but paradoxically can be given by an inferior to a superior. In support of this point he cites examples both from literature (Ennius Annales 7.278-285) and from Cicero's own life. The misunderstandings that resulted from his disapproval of Appius Claudius' conduct of the Cilician proconsulship stands in contrast with the advice he himself willingly accepted from his young prot6g6 Caelius Rufus. Because the idealism of the De Amicitia runs counter to this principle, Habinek (170) finds an imbalance in the dialogue where "prerogatives associated with unequal relationships are to be applied to relationships between equals" as a "pooling of resources (ethical as well as material) to ensure Rome's dominant position."

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'SDE AMICITIA

15

willing to bestow more rather than less. While this recommendation, within the realm of sentiment, may appear as pure altruism, it has a more pragmatic manifestation in the political discussion of forms of exchange. In view of Laelius' earlier repudiation of weakness as a viable pretext for friendship, his comments in this context are surprising. Can friendship be defined by an equality of obligations and favors (16.58: paribus officiis ac voluntatibus)? No, this balance is too calculating. True affluence in friendship consists in giving more than is received. This imbalance becomes even more explicit when Laelius recommends that great men (following Scipio's example) should make themselves equal to inferiors (19.69), and also should attempt to make inferiors equal to themselves (20.71). But also inferiors should not resent being surpassed. An intractable situation, however, is exemplified by Scipio's inability to influence a consular election on behalf of L. Rupilius (20.74). Combining this recognition with the tenet that seems partially contradicted by it, that friendship should not be desired to remedy weakness, we can see that the essay is effectively conceptualized from the socially stronger point of view representing the person who has greater benefits to bestow than to gain. From this angle friendship is clearly self-replication, but scarcely in a reciprocal mode. Yet desiderium denies the emptiness of this inequality, creating an expedient confusion between resemblance and self-projection as manifestations of strength. In view of this confusion it is not surprising that readers have derived different messages from the dialogue, some considering it as the articulation of an ideal, others as the codification of a system. Seen from the first point of view the gradations of equality in friendship can be regarded as the varying returns of emotional investment; from the second as complexities of political intrigue. In Laelius' language the term vulgares amici enters the dialogue to discriminate between the ordinary and the ideal (22.74). Yet the ultimate effect of this separation, as good men and other selves come to appear scarcer, is that true equals are the creation of this dialogue, driven by unsatisfied desiderium, while the vulgares are the product of everyday political negotiation. When treating the subject of flattery-the insidious instrument of opportunism-in the final section of his discourse, Laelius attempts a final separation between sapientes and vulgares. His comments look back to a point made earlier that sentiments could not be feigned in true friendship (8.26) In the context of problems arising from candid criticism, flattery is a strategy for the avoidance of painful truth. At the same time flattery evidences deficiency: it proceeds from a lack of stability in the character of the flatterer and a lack of self-knowledge in the recipient. In its extreme form, which amounts to hypocrisy, it produces feigned relationships wholly devoid of genuine friendship. Under this heading, similitudo gives way to simulatio (25.91). Comparisons with the parasite and braggart soldier in Terence's Eunuchus,

16

LEACH WINSOR ELEANOR

which are very appropriate for Laelius as one of Terence's patrons, carry the action off the political stage and set it on the festival stage. Acting, as we are graphically shown, is the opposite of friendship. The total falsehood that bolsters this unequal form of interchange is focused by Laelius' mention of its perverted reciprocity: comic parasites like Gnatho would not be fawning if there were no braggart soldiers for them to expose (25.93). In the concluding passages Laelius triumphantly reiterates his earlier denial of Scipio's absence in death (27.102): Mihi quidem Scipio, quamquam est subito ereptus, vivit tamen semperque vivet. He goes on to speak of the immortality a great man wins as an exemplar, to which the dialogue, as we now see, has in no small manner contributed. By this act of preservation Laelius bids to fulfill that ambition he had expressed at the beginning of the conversation that the memory of his friendship might be eternal. Speaking of that lasting fama every Roman aristocrat strove to attain, he reposes his hope of immortality in his role as one of history's great pairs of

friends (4.15: quod ex omnibus saeculis vix tria aut quattuor nominantur paria amicorum;quo in generesperarevideorScipioniset
Laeli amicitiam notam posteritati fore). To this end he is willing to defer his independent reputation for wisdom. By this same token, however, the fictive quality of the dialogue is foregrounded as a product of absence and desire. Memory alone now sustains Scipio's image alive within Laelius, and tempers the otherwise unbearable pain of desire (27.104): quarum rerum recordatio et memoria si una cum illo occidisset, desiderium coniunctissimi atque amantissimi viriferre nullo modo possem. But, in contrast to public remembrance, mortal memory is frail.3' Should this consolation fail, Laelius' only remaining solacium would be his certain knowledge of death approaching to terminate a bereaved life. Again we are reminded how paradoxically one-sided the reciprocal exchange here celebrated as the very life of friendship has become. A desire to recapture the absent has empowered the dialogue; the alternative mode of resolving such a longing is death. But of course the act of transmission which is the legacy of friendship stands as an act of completion within this fictional world. Laelius underlines the concept of Scipio's legacy by reaching across the generations to emphasize productive relationships of old and young. Inequality of age is one condition of unequal association that Laelius' ideals of friendship can tolerate without reservations, since it is imposed by the accidents of a mortal condition that removes peers, rather than by any deficiency in the men themselves. For this reason the search for friendship is never ending: men are ever seeking those
3' Professor Robert Rabel (letter of 7 May 1993) remarks how the epilogue of the speech (102-103) places great emphasis on memory and loss, suggesting that these verbal echoes recall the repeated references to memory in Cicero's introduction (1.1; 1.2; 1.3) to round off the dialogue with ring composition.

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'S DE AMICITIA

17

whom they can esteem and whose esteem they can receive in return (27.103: semper aliqui anquirendi sunt quos diligamus et a quibus diligamur). If the frailty of human life creates this urgency, a compensatory benefit is the fostering of continuity in the traditions of civic virtue through its promotion of such colleagueships as Scaevola now enjoys with his two sons-in-law. Thus negative and positive are truly inseparable; but on this note we must turn from the essay's abrupt conclusion back to its beginning to consider how Laelius' sense of deprivation also pertains to the relationship between Cicero's authorship and his doctrine. As Laelius has said, friendship depends upon truthfulness (26.97), yet even his perfect friendship has lost its truthfulness because death has made it one-sided. A kind of self-conscious untruth also characterizes Cicero's manner of representing his essay as a written discourse imitating orality which fictionalizes all its participants, including the author. One can instructively compare this dialogue with the closely contemporary De Senectute, where Laelius and Scipio function together as auditors while Cato outlines an ideally productive aristocratic old age. In that dialogue Cicero has made his creative fictionalizing transparent: for the sake of auctoritas, he has borrowed Cato's persona. One must, he says, imagine this revered old man speaking; yet the ideas he articulates are shared by Cicero and Atticus, even as the onus of old age has now become common to both (1.2). By contrast in the De Amicitia, Cicero does not claim ownership of the ideas he had once heard, but only instrumental authorship based upon his capacity to reconstruct memories. This disclaimer creates an apparent ambiguity as we wonder: Did Cicero or Laelius really generate the doctrine expounded here?32 Such highlighting of an externally received message points to deficiencies Cicero seems to acknowledge both in his personal circumstances and in his world. Although Atticus may indeed have asked Cicero to write something concerning friendship (1.4), the effective inspiration does not spring either from within himself or his own relationship with his friend. Here again it is useful to compare the preface of the De Senectute which, in spite of its theoretically less personal topic, adumbrates a far more intimate relationship between the two men. Declaring that the very idea of writing about old age brought Atticus to mind, Cicero characterizes the dialogue as a gift to be mutually enjoyed (1.2: tu occurrebas dignus eo munere quo uterque nostrum communiter uteretur). The De Amicitia, on the other hand, comes to Atticus in the form of a reflection or portrait (1.5: . . .tota disputatio est de amicitia, quam legens te ipse cognosces), but its
32 The answer appears clear. That Cicero entertained a clearly formulated concept of fictional characterization and attribution as the basis for his dialogues is demonstrated by a letter sent to Varro (Fam. 9.8) warning him that he will, in the dialogue he is about to receive, find himself saying things that he knows he never said, but, as he knows, this is how dialogues operate (sed nosti morem dialogum).

18

ELEANORWINSOR LEACH

chief stated purpose is the instruction of a wider audience. Cicero calls the subject worthy not only of nostra familiaritas but also omnium cogitatio. Atticus' alleged request makes him a catalyst for the general advantage (1.4: itaque feci non invitus, ut prodessem multis rogatu tuo.). Aside from these mentions Atticus does not conspicuously figure in Cicero's introduction. Especially one may notice that Cicero has bypassed any opportunity to make their friendship explicitly parallel with that of Scipio and Laelius (1.5). Although Atticus and Cicero may be linked by many personal ties and common sentiments, a realistic view of their association must acknowledge that it does not fulfill the condition of political equality that united Scipio and Laelius. Consequently any gesture toward equating the two pairs of friends could only have foregrounded their political inequality, not to mention the great differences separating either from Scipio or Laelius.33 At this point I find it instructive to consider an occasion long before when Cicero had cast himself rhetorically in the posture of Laelius (Fam. 5.7.3). After the termination of his consulship in 62 B.C., he was writing a diplomatic letter to Pompey in anticipation of his imminent return from the Mithradatic campaign. By virtue of his role in sponsoring the Mithradatic command four years earlier, Cicero seems to have seen himself in a specially privileged relationship with Pompey whose previous letters have disappointed him on this count. He voices this disappointment because, as he puts it, both his own nature and friendship required open speech (scribam aperte, sicut et mea natura et nostra amicitia postulat). Pompey has failed to offer expected congratulations on Cicero's conduct of the Catilinarian conspiracy, and the awkwardness of the omission requires Cicero to supply what he should have said: Sed scito ea, quae nos pro salute patriaegessimus,orbis terraeiudicio ac testimoniocomprobari; quae, cum veneris, tanto consilio tantaque animi magnitudinea me gesta esse cognosces,ut tibi multo maiori,quamAfricanusfuit, me non et multo minoremquam Laelium facile et in re public-a in esse patiare. amicitiaadiunctum But be certainthat those matterswhichI myselfcarriedout for the safety of our countryare approvedby the judgment and witnessof all the world;which, when you have arrived,
33 Considering the equal, but unequal relationship between Cicero and Atticus as a framework for advice, Habinek (above, n.4) 177-81 points out the absurdity underlying Cicero's profession of equality in a letter (Alt. 1.17) written in December 61. Between these two there was, according to Habinek, a productive difference in mode of life that enabled the giving and reciving of advice. Cicero can present Atticus as an equal because the "mutually exclusive paths the two have chosen allows Atticus to be treated as one of the family-not in competition." A fraternal quality in the relationship is precisely what Cornelius Nepos perceives when he remarks on its particular closeness (Atticus 16): . . .eum praecipue dilexit Cicero, ut ne frater quidem ei Quintus carior fuerit aut familiarior.

ABSENCE AND DESIRE IN CICERO'SDE AMIcITIA you will know that I executed with so much sagacity and with so much greatness of spirit that you, who are a much greater man than was Africanus, will readily permit me, who am not far inferior to Laelius, to be joined with yourself, both in public life and in friendship.

19

The situation is relevant because Cicero so clearly seeks a rapprochement of similitude or alter idem based upon the equation of Pompey's success with his own. And, since this has not been forthcoming, he proceeds to emphasize the inequality Pompey's slight has created by destabilizing the balance between Scipio and Laelius.34 Implicitly he allows Scipio's military prowess to outweigh Laelius' reputation for wisdom. Then he ranks Pompey above Scipio, while placing himself below Laelius, yet "not by much."35 The artificiality of this arrangement, as demonstrated even by its oddly contrived grammar,36betrays the tension even as the comparison indicates the hopes that Cicero had been cherishing for his own future as a received partner in the guidance of the state. Perhaps it seems unfair to bring this passage to bear on the De Amicitia when Cicero, at the time of writing the dialogue, had probably forgotten it himself. Yet he had clearly not forgotten the situation it betokens and the disappointments for the course of his career.37The comment has the effect of reminding us that the concept of friendship based upon mutual equality developed in the De Amicitia, no matter whether we consider it idealistic or practical, was one that Cicero maintained all his life. But in view of the more exalted persons with whom Cicero might have hoped to share both influence and power, Atticus, the actual, vicarious sharer of his written experience and audience of his voiced disappointments, falls short.38 He falls short by virtue of that choice of life which Cicero, at a still early stage of their mutual careers, had called his honestum otium (Att. 1.17.5), a choice that, paradoxically, may also be seen as the

Brutus 83-84 presents a meticulously detailed balance sheet ascribing to each figure successes within the other's sphere of excellence. 3 Generally Cicero appears to have favored the affinity between himself and Laelius with reference to the reputation for wisdom that he celebrates most fully in Brutus 83-84. He must have felt much more at ease socially with the person of Laelius, who was only a generation removed from being a novus homo, than he ever did with the aristocratic Scipio. In early letters to Atticus (2.19 and 20), he proposes Laelius as a nom a clef, noting in the second of these that Atticus does not need his name concealed. 36 David Stockton, Thirty-five letters of Cicero, selected and edited (Oxford 1969, rpt. 1980) 84 ad 26-27, points out the syntactical inconsistency within the comparative clause where Africanus functions as subject but with Laelius attracted into the accusative. 37 Beryl Rawson, The Politics of Friendship: Cicero and Pompey (Sydney 1978) 75-97, treats the specific disappointment of hopes in the months following this letter. 38 Notably when Cicero, writing to Atticus in July 59 (ad Att. 2.19), proposes to adopt Laelius as his own pseudonymn in letters discussing sensitive political issues, the complementary pseudonym that he assigns to Atticus is not Scipio, but Furius.

20

ELEANORWINSOR LEACH

condition that enabled lifelong friendship.39 Atticus' political deficiency contributes to Cicero's unfulfilled desire. The friendship between these men lacks the erotic undertones of that perfect male bonding attributed to Scipio and Laelius.40 His presence is that of a stand-in for those who are absent and desired. In friendship also Cicero is frustrated by his world. His own real love is the Republic. His Oedipal desire, as shadowed by the lament for Scipio's loss, is a desire to be completed and made perfect. This cannot happen to Cicero because the Republic that should have nurtured him has failed. The occasion of mourning with which the essay commences marks the loss of a desired world. His ever-active desire continually generates mere recreations of the past. Like Laelius' desire for Scipio, that of Cicero must continue unsatisfied save by its own verbal construction of virtue. Indiana University, Bloomington CW 87.2 (1993) ELEANOR WINSOR LEACH

39 Nepos (Atticus 15-18) defines Atticus' role as behind-the-scenes facilitator and audience for his senatorial acquaintances when he pays tribute to his capacity for friendship, his energetic support of business interests and his adaptability to such different personalities as Sulla and Brutus. Hortensius and Cicero were his closest friends. He was a great admirer of past figures about whom he wrote eloquently. The quality of privileged detachment in Atticus' life is brought out especially by Lily Ross Taylor, "Republican and Augustan Writers Enrolled in the Equestrian Centuries," TAPA 99(1968) 469-73. 40 Derrida (above, n.5) 372 observes how, in later tradition, the concept of friendship excludes feminine participants and "confers upon friendship the essential and essentially sublime figure of virile homosexuality."

FOREIGNBOOKS and PERIODICALS

CURRENT OR OUT-OF-PRINT SPECIALTIES: Search Service IrregularSerials
International Congresses

BuildingSpecial Collection

ALBERTJ. PHIEBIGINC.
Box 352, White Plains, N.Y. 10602-0352 (914) 948-0138 FAX No. 914.948-0784