Cicero: Laelius de amicitia

Cicero's last dialogue, De amicitia, is a work of stylistic brilliance containing the fullest examination of the values and problems of friendship to survive from the Greco-Roman world. How do we make (and lose) friends? If a conflict arises between personal affection and ethical behavior, how do we decide what is right? What kinds of people make the most suitable friends? Written in 44 BCE, De amicitia provides both a striking analysis of the conflicts between personal and civic loyalty and a strong statement about the close links between friendship, wisdom, and virtue. In the first full commentary on De amicitia in more than a century, Katharina Volk and James Zetzel provide an illuminating guide to the dialogue, explaining language and style, philosophy, and historical context. An appendix contains a text with commentary of Cicero's famous correspondence with Matius about political and personal loyalty after the assassination of Caesar.

KATHARINA VOLK is Professor of Classics at Columbia University. She is a Latinist specializing in the late Republic and early Empire, with a particular interest in intellectual history and the history of philosophy. In addition to numerous articles, she has published books on Latin didactic poetry, Manilius, and Ovid, as well as most recently The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (2021), which was awarded the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit by the Society for Classical Studies.

JAMES E. G. ZETZEL is Anthon Professor Emeritus of Latin at Columbia University. He has written extensively on Latin literature and the history of classical scholarship. A leading Ciceronian scholar, he has, in addition to numerous articles, published a commentary on Cicero's De re publica (Cambridge, 1995), a translation of On the Commonwealth and On the Laws (2nd edition, Cambridge, 2017), and a translation of ten Ciceronian speeches (2009).