The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius - College of Stoic Philosophers

AN ESSAY ON FRIENDSHIP 273
tion and the most tender regret in the bosom of the
survivor, a circumstance which renders the former happy
in death, and the latter honoured in life.
If that benevolent principle which thus intimately
unites two persons in the bands of amity were to be
struck out of the human heart, it would be impossible
that either private families or public communities should
subsist
even the land itself would lie waste, and desolation
overspread the earth. Should this assertion stand in
need of a proof, it will appear evident by considering the
ruinous consequences which ensue from discord and
dissension ;
for what family
is so securely established, or
what government fixed upon so firm a basis, that it would
not be overturned and utterly destroyed were a general
spirit of enmity and malevolence to break forth amongst
its members ? a sufficient argument, surely, of the in
estimable benefits which flow from the kind and friendly
affections.
I have been informed that a certain learned bard of
Agrigentum published a philosophic poem in Greek, in
which he asserted that the several bodies which compose
the physical system of the universe preserve the consistence
of their respective forms, or are dispersed into their
primitive atoms, as a principle of amity, or of discord,
becomes predominant in their composition. It is certain,
at least, that the powerful effects of these opposite agents
in the moral world is universally perceived and acknow
ledged.
Agreeable to this general sentiment, who is there,
when he beholds a man generously exposing himself to
certain danger, for the sake of rescuing
his distressed
friend, that can forbear expressing the warmest appro
bation ? Accordingly, what repeated acclamations lately
echoed through the theatre at the new play of my host
and friend Pacuvius, in that scene where Pylades and
Orestes are introduced before the king ; who being
ignorant which of them was Orestes, whom he had