ON HAVING MANY FRIENDS (DE AMICORUM MULTITUDINE)
INTRODUCTION
Plutarch's essay on friendship may possibly have been offered on some
occasion as a lecture, but there is nothing to prove or disprove this
assumption. From what we know of Plutarch's relations to his friends we can
well believe that he was singularly happy in his friendships, and hence well
fitted to speak on the subject. He was familiar, too, with the literature
dealing with friendship, and the result is an essay well worth reading.
Cicero's essay on friendship (De amicitia) may profitably be compared with
Plutarch's.
Two or three emendations of a more radical nature have been adopted in the
text, in the effort to make it intelligible: for example, in 96 a the
translation probably gives the right sense of the passage, as Wyttenbach
seemed to see, but whether the emendation is right is more doubtful. Even
more doubtful is Paton's
προσεντείνειν,
based on an even more dubious emendation of
ἐντείνασθαι in the quotation from Euripides ; for Plutarch
would not be apt to refer to an aorist middle by a present active form. In
these matters Plutarch was more careful than Paton.