68
But new friendships are not to be scorned if they offer hope of bearing fruit, like green shoots of corn that do not disappoint us at harvest-time; yet the old friendships must preserve their own place, for the force of age and habit is very great. Nay, even in the case of the horse just now referred to, everybody, nothing preventing, would rather use one to which he has grown accustomed than one that is untrained and new. And habit is strong in the case not only of animate, but also of inanimate things, since we delight even in places, though rugged and wild, in which we have lived for a fairly long time.
69
But it is of the utmost importance in friendship that superior and inferior should stand on an equality. For oftentimes a certain pre-eminence does exist, as was that of Scipio in what I may call our set. But he never affected any superiority over Philus, or Rupilius, or Mummius, or over his other friends of a lower rank. For example, his brother Quintus Maximus, a distinguished man, no doubt, though by no means his equal, was treated by him as a superior, because he was older than himself. Indeed Scipio desired that he might be the cause of enhancing the dignity of all his friends.
