Note 36 — Chapter XX · LYSIS.

Plato, Lysis, 214-215. The discourse of Cicero, De Amicitiâ, is composed in a style of pleasing rhetoric; suitable to Lælius, an ancient Roman senator and active politician, who expressly renounces the accurate subtlety of Grecian philosophers (v. 18). There is little in it which we can compare with the Platonic Lysis; but I observe that he too, giving expression to his own feelings, maintains that there can be no friendship except between the good and virtuous: a position which is refuted by the “nefaria vox,” cited by himself as spoken by C. Blossius, xi. 37.