How to be a friend with Cicero

Part XV of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Be a Friend: An Ancient Guide to True Friendship, by Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman. Full book series here.]

Hopefully, you have a best friend. Or, even better a few people you consider your best friends. If so, you are both lucky and virtuous, and in possession of a treasure that you ought to guard carefully and cultivate assiduously. (There is ample scientific evidencefor this advice.)

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the first century BCE Roman orator, public advocate, statesman, and philosopher, had many friends and acquaintances, but one stood far above everyone else: Atticus, so nicknamed because he spent much of his life in Athens, and whose real name was Titus Pomponius. Titus and Marcus met when they were very young, and remained intimate friends until Marcus’s death in 43 BCE.

We are fortunate to have a large number of letters written by Cicero to Atticus, and they are a pleasure to read not just because they shed much light on the thinking of one of history’s most consequential figures, as well as on the turbulent times in which he lived, but because they are a moving testimony — two millennia later — to the depth and tenderness of their relationship.