Dining with Friends

Recently the Emperor was invited to dine with a friend.

I was reminded of a letter from that most famous of statesman, Cicero, written  to his fiend Papirius Paetus in 44 BC:

"I am sorry to hear that you have given up dining out. You have deprived yourself of a great deal of amusement and pleasure. Furthermore (you will not mind me being so candid), I am afraid that you will unlearn what little you used to know, and forget how to give little dinner-parties. ..."

"And really my dear Paetus, all joking apart I advise you, as something which I regard as relevant to happiness, to spend time in honest, pleasant, and friendly company. Nothing becomes life better, or is more in harmony with its happy living. I am not thinking of physical pleasure, but of community of life and habit and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner-parties. In this respect our countrymen are wiser than the Greeks. They use words literally meaning 'co-drinkings' or 'co-dinings', but we say 'co-livings', because at dinner-parties more than anywhere else life is lived in company. You see how I try to bring you back to dinners by philosophising!"

"Take care of your health - which you will most easily compass by constantly dining abroad." 

[Cicero, Letter to Papirius Paetus]

Caesar on Friends

"His friends he treated at all times with so great courtesy and tender respect, that when Caius Oppius, who accompanied him in his journey through a wild forest, fell suddenly ill, he gave him the only place there was to shelter them at night, and lay upon the ground in the open air. Moreover, when he became sovereign lord of all, he advanced some of his faithful followers, though of humble origin, to the highest place of honour. And when he was reproached for this partiality, he professed openly, that if he had used the help of robbers, of cutters and pirates in maintaining his own dignity, he would not fail to requite them for their services."

[Suetonius, Caesar, 72]

Augustus on Friends

"He did not easily or quickly form friendships with any person, but maintained them with great constancy; not only honouring the virtue and merits of his friends as they deserved, but bearing likewise with their faults and vices provided that they did not overpower the good in them."

[Suetonius, Augustus, 66]