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--[“Opinions differ as to the truth of this fact. Livy thinks he has good authority for rejecting it because it does not appear in history that Posthumious was branded with it, as Titus Manlius was, about 100 years after his time; for Manlius, having put his son to death for the like cause, obtained the odious name of Imperiosus, and since that time Manliana imperia has been used as a term to signify orders that are too severe; Manliana Imperia, says Livy, were not only horrible for the time present, but of a bad example to posterity. And this historian makes no doubt but such commands would have been actually styled Posthumiana Imperia, if Posthumius had been the first who set so barbarous an example (Livy, lib. iv. cap. 29, and lib. viii. cap. 7). But, however, Montaigne has Valer. Maximus on his side, who says expressly, that Posthumius caused his son to be put to death, and Diodorus of Sicily (lib. xii. cap. 19).”--Coste.]

Xerxes, (a vain and a foolish prince) when he made war upon Greece, one told him, “It would never come to a battle”;another, “That he would find only empty cities and countries, for they would not so much as stand the very fame of his coming;” others soothed him in the opinion of his prodigious numbers; and they all concurred to puff him up to his destruction; only Damaratus advised him not to depend too much upon his numbers, for he would rather find them a burden to him than an advantage: and that three hundred men in the straits of the mountains would be sufficient to give a check to his whole army; and that such an accident would undoubtedly turn his vast numbers to his confusion. It fell out afterward as he foretold, and he had thanks for his fidelity. A miserable prince, that among so many thousand subjects had but one servant to tell him the truth!

It is usual with princes to reproach the living by commending the dead, and to praise those people for speaking truth from whom there is no longer any danger of hearing it. This is Augustus’s case: he was forced to banish his daughter Julia for her common and prostituted impudence; and still upon fresh informations, he was often heard to say, “If Agrippa or Mecenas had been now alive, this would never have been.” But yet where the fault lay may be a question; for perchance it was his own, that had rather complain for the want of them than seek for others as good. The Roman losses by war and by fire, Augustus could quickly supply and repair; but for the loss of two friends he lamented his whole life after.

Temporary friends will never stand the test. One man is forsaken for fear of profit, another is betrayed. It is a negotiation, not a friendship, that has an eye to advantages; only, through the corruption of times, that which was formerly a friendship is now become a design upon a booty: alter your testament, and you lose your friend. But my end of friendship is to have one dearer to me than myself, and for the saving of whose life I would cheerfully lay down my own; taking this along with me, that only wise men can be friends, others are but companions; and that there is a great difference also betwixt love and friendship; the one may sometimes do us hurt, the other always does us good, for the one friend is hopeful to another in all cases, as well in prosperity as in affliction. We receive comfort, even at a distance, from those we love, but then it is light and faint; whereas, presence and conversation touch us to the quick, especially if we find the man we love to be such a person as we wish.

But let us have a care, above all things, that our kindness be rightfully founded; for where there is any other invitation to friendship than the friendship itself, that friendship will be bought and sold. He derogates upon the majesty of it that makes it only dependent upon good fortune. It is a narrow consideration for a man to please himself in the thought of a friend, “because,” says he, “I shall have one to help me when I am sick, in prison, or in want.” A brave man should rather take delight in the contemplation of doing the same offices for another. He that loves a man for his own sake is in an error. A friendship of interest cannot last any longer than the interest itself, and this is the reason that men in prosperity are so much followed, and when a man goes down the wind, nobody comes near him.

--[“Montaigne would here give us to understand, upon the authority of Diodorus Siculus, that Pausanias’ mother gave the first hint of the punishment that was to be inflicted on her son. ‘Pausanias,’ says this historian, ‘perceiving that the ephori, and some other Lacedoemonians, aimed at apprehending him, got the start of them, and went and took sanctuary m Minerva’s temple: and the Lacedaemonians, being doubtful whether they ought to take him from thence in violation of the franchise there, it is said that his own mother came herself to the temple but spoke nothing nor did anything more than lay a piece of brick, which she brought with her, on the threshold of the temple, which, when she had done, she returned home. The Lacedaemonians, taking the hint from the mother, caused the gate of the temple to be walled up, and by this means starved Pausanias, so that he died with hunger, &c. (lib. xi. cap. 10., of Amyot’s translation). The name of Pausanias’ mother was Alcithea, as we are informed by Thucydides’ scholiast, who only says that it was reported, that when they set about walling up the gates of the chapel in which Pausanias had taken refuge, his mother Alcithea laid the first stone.”--Coste.]

It goes a great way toward the making of a man faithful, to let him understand that you think him so: and he that does but so much as suspect that I will deceive him gives me a kind of right to cozen him. When I am with my friend, methinks I am alone, and as much at liberty to speak anything as to think it, and as our hearts are one, so must be our interest and convenience; for friendship lays all things in common, and nothing can be good to the one that is ill to the other. I do not speak of such a community as to destroy one another’s propriety; but as the father and the mother have two children, not one apiece, but each of them two.

Lucilius tells me, that he was written to by a friend, but cautions me withal not to say anything to him of the affair in question; for he himself stands upon the same guard. What is this but to affirm and to deny the same thing in the same breath, in calling a man a friend, whom we dare not trust as our own soul? For there must be no reserves in friendship: as much deliberation as you please before the league is struck, but no doubtings or jealousies after. It is a preposterous weakness to love a man before we know him, and not to care for him after. It requires time to consider of a friendship, but the resolution once taken, entitles him to my very heart. I look upon my thoughts to be as safe in his breast as in my own: I shall, without any scruple, make him the confidant of my most secret cares and counsels.

Some people make it a question, whether is the greatest delight, the enjoying of an old friendship, or the acquiring of a new one? but it is in the preparing of a friendship, and in the possession of it, as it is with the husbandman in sowing and reaping; his delight is the hope of his labor in the one case, and the fruit of it in the other. My conversation lies among my books, but yet in the letters of a friend, methinks I have his company; and when I answer them, I do not only write, but speak: and, in effect, a friend is an eye, a heart, a tongue, a hand, at all distances. When friends see one another personally, they do not see one another as they do when they are divided, where the meditation dignifies the prospect; but they are effectually in a great measure absent even when they are present. Consider their nights apart, their private studies, their separate employments, and necessary visits; and they are almost as much together divided as present. True friends are the whole world to one another; and he that is a friend to himself is also a friend to mankind. Even in my very studies, the greatest delight I take in what I learn is the teaching of it to others; for there is no relish, methinks, in the possession of anything without a partner; nay, if wisdom itself were offered me upon condition only of keeping it to myself, I should undoubtedly refuse it.

The great difficulty rests in the choice of him; that is to say, in the first place, let him be virtuous, for vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together; and he ought to be a wise man too, if a body knew where to find him; but in this case, he that is least ill is best, and the highest degree of human prudence is only the most venial folly. That friendship where men’s affections are cemented by an equal and by a common love of goodness, it is not either hope or fear, or any private interest, that can ever dissolve it: but we carry it with us to our graves, and lay down our lives for it with satisfaction. Paulina’s good and mine (says our author) were so wrapped up together, that in consulting her comfort I provided for my own; and when I could not prevail upon her to take less care for me, she prevailed upon me to take more care for myself.

But we are not to number our friends by the visits that are made us; and to confound the decencies of ceremony and commerce with the offices of united affections. Caius Gracchus, and after him Livius Drusus, were the men that introduced among the Romans the fashion of separating their visitants; some were taken into their closet, others were only admitted into the antechamber: and some, again, were fain to wait in the hall perhaps, or in the court. So that they had their first, their second, and their third rate friends; but none of them true: only they are called so in course, as we salute strangers with some title or other of respect at a venture. There is no depending upon those men that only take their compliment in their turn, and rather slip through the door than enter at it. He will find himself in a great mistake, that either seeks for a friend in a palace, or tries him at a feast.