52
It will be our duty, then, not to listen to those besotted men of pleasurei.e. Epicureans and Cyrenaics, referred to in § 46when they argue about friendship, of which they understand neither the practice nor the theory. For what person is there, in the name of gods and men! who would wish to be surrounded by unlimited wealth and to abound in every material blessing, on condition that he love no one and that no one love him? Such indeed is the life of tyrants—a life, I mean, in which there can be no faith, no affection, no trust in the continuance of goodwill; where every act arouses suspicion and anxiety and where friendship has no place.
53
For can anyone love either the man whom he fears, or the man by whom he believes himself to be feared? Yet tyrants are courted under a pretence of affection, but only for a season. For when by chance they have fallen from power, as they generally do, then is it known how poor they were in friends. And this is illustrated by the remark said to have been made by Tarquin as he was going into exile: I have learned what friends of mine are true and what are false, now that I am no longer able to reward or punish either.
