Cicero on Friendship

The de Amicitia is something like a hymn to friendship, although Cicero takes pains to advise us, repeatedly, to choose well: friends are (or should be) for life.

I'll probably also put the Latin onsite at some point, but not urgently: it's already online at Forum Romanum.

Edition Used, Copyright

Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, vol. XX, 1923; Latin text with facing English translation by W. A. Falconer. It is in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U.S. Copyright Code. Copyright has lapsed because it was not renewed at the appropriate time, which would have been in 1950 or 1951. (Details here.)

Proofreading

As usual, I've retyped the text rather than scanning it: not only to minimize errors prior to proofing, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise which I heartily recommend. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if successful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

The transcription has been minutely proofed. The table of contents above is therefore shown on blue backgrounds indicating that I believe the text of it to be completely errorfree. As elsewhere on this site, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme. Should you spot an error, however . . . please do report it.

Chapter and Section Numbering, Local Links

Both chapters (large numbers) and sections (small numbers) mark local links, according to a consistent scheme; you can therefore link to any passage directly.

Wherever I have both the original text and the translation onsite: in the Latin text, each American flag is a link to the corresponding section of the English translation, opening in another window; in the English text, each Vatican flag is a link to the corresponding section of the Latin text, opening in another window.

Notes, Apparatus Criticus

The notes in the translation are included here; and although on the Latin side, the Loeb edition provides no comprehensive apparatus criticus, it occasionally marks a variant or a crux: I'll be including these as well.