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← ExitStobaeus, Volume II

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Book II Chapter 33

Chapter 33

That similarity of character produces friendship.¹⁴⁷³

Euripides

As for a man who enjoys keeping bad company, I have never inquired, knowing that he is like those whose company he enjoys.¹⁴⁷⁴

Euripides, Bellerophon

Yet a good man never hates a good man; pleasures fuse a bad man with the bad; and what is of like kind tends to draw people.¹⁴⁷⁵

Euripides, Daughters of Pelias

For ⟨the⟩ man you associate with, if he happens ⟨indeed⟩ to be bad,¹⁴⁷⁶ trains his companions to be like himself; while a good man trains them to be good. So, young men, make it your concern to seek out noble company.¹⁴⁷⁷

Menander

Choosing those who are alike, more than anything perhaps, brings concord to life’s mingling.¹⁴⁷⁸

Euripides, Antigone

The young share the follies of the young.¹⁴⁷⁹

Menander, The Woman with Her Hair Shorn

⟨So⟩ desirable is a friend of like character.¹⁴⁸⁰

Menander

No one is a stranger to me, if he is good; nature is one for all, but character establishes kinship.¹⁴⁸¹

Homer

How a god always leads like to like!¹⁴⁸²

Democritus

Like-mindedness makes friendship.¹⁴⁸³

When Diogenes was asked what a friend is, ⟨he said,⟩ “One soul residing in two bodies.”¹⁴⁸⁴

⟨Thucydides⟩

Knowing that neither friendship between individuals nor partnership between cities becomes secure unless they should deal with one another with apparent virtue and be alike in other respects as well.¹⁴⁸⁵ For differences in action, too, arise where judgment differs.¹⁴⁸⁶

Aristotle

As wine is blended to suit the drinkers’ dispositions, so is friendship to suit the characters of those who engage in it.¹⁴⁸⁷

When Pythagoras was asked what a friend is, he answered, “Another I.”¹⁴⁸⁸

He said that friendship is equality.¹⁴⁸⁹

Iamblichus to Macedonius, On Concord

Concord, as its very name seeks to indicate, embraces within itself a bringing together of like mind, fellowship and union.¹⁴⁹⁰ Starting from this, it extends to cities and households, to all public and private gatherings, and ranges over all natures and relationships, public and private alike.¹⁴⁹¹ It also includes each individual’s agreement with himself. For someone governed by a single thought and a single judgment is at concord with himself; but someone divided in judgment within himself and reasoning inconsistently is at variance. The person who holds to the same understanding throughout is full of like-mindedness; but one whose reasoning is unstable, who is carried now to one opinion and now to another, is unsteady and at war with himself.¹⁴⁹²

⟨Plato⟩

Friendship arising from opposites is fierce and wild, and does not often afford us a shared bond; friendship arising from those who are alike is gentle and shared throughout life.¹⁴⁹³

Plato, from the Phaedrus

For it is ⟨not⟩ ever ordained that a bad person be a friend to a bad person, or that a good person be no friend to a good person.¹⁴⁹⁴

1473.Τρόποι are dispositions or ways of behaving. The chapter develops similarity of character through excerpts about companionship, shared pleasures, kinship and concord. Its surviving text begins immediately below this heading.

1474.Wachsmuth cites Euripides, fragment 809 in Nauck’s numbering, without naming a play in the heading. The precise question remains unexpressed; the following comparison indicates that the inquiry concerns the man’s character. No dramatic speaker is identified.

1475.Bellerophon, fragment 298 in Nauck. Συντέτηκεν pictures the bad as melted or fused together through pleasures. Θοὐμόφυλον combines τὸ ὁμόφυλον, what is of like kind; φιλεῖ with the infinitive means tends or is accustomed to, rather than loves in this construction.

1476.The printed supplements ⟨Ὁ⟩ and ⟨μὲν⟩ are reflected by ⟨the⟩ and ⟨indeed⟩. The particle marks the first side of the contrast between a bad companion and a good one.

1477.Daughters of Pelias, fragment 612 in Nauck. These verses also occur at II.31.4 and are retained again in their second place in the anthology. Association there illustrates education; here it develops the chapter’s concern with character and friendship.

1478.Wachsmuth cites Com. IV, p. 324, unassigned fragment 468, without naming a play. The English understands τῶν ὁμοίων as those alike whom one chooses. Σύγκρασις is a blending or mingling; the image presents shared life as a mixture brought into concord. Πως qualifies the assertion.

1479.Antigone, fragment 160 in Nauck. Συννοσοῦσι, from συννοσέω, pictures those involved as sharing another’s sickness: here the shared condition is folly. Τἄφρονα combines τὰ ἄφρονα, foolish things. The isolated verse identifies no speaker or particular offense.

1480.Wachsmuth cites Com. IV, p. 185, fragment 1. Only the initial ⟨Οὕ⟩ of οὕτω, so, is supplied in Greek; the English marks the resulting whole word ⟨So⟩. Ὁμότροπος describes someone whose character or disposition is like one’s own.

1481.Wachsmuth cites fragment 2 at the same comic-fragment location as the preceding excerpt, while the heading again names Menander alone. Ἀλλότριος, a stranger or outsider, contrasts with τὸ οἰκεῖον, what is one’s own or akin. Kinship here renders the closeness established by character, rather than asserting a blood relationship.

1482.Odyssey 17.218. Melanthius speaks this line scornfully about the swineherd and Odysseus, who appears as a beggar; the anthology isolates it as a saying about likeness. The second ὡς is directional, to, and is retained in the Greek.

1483.Ὁμοφροσύνη is agreement of mind or outlook. The Ionic forms φιλίην and ποιέει correspond to Attic φιλίαν and ποιεῖ; they are retained in the Greek.

1484.The source attributes this answer to Diogenes. Usener’s supplied ⟨ἔφη⟩, he said, restores the reporting verb and is marked in the English as well.

1485.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Thucydides, identifying III.10. The excerpt begins with a participle, knowing, whose governing construction lies outside this selection. The conditional wording retains the hypothetical force of γίγνοιντο and εἶεν.

1486.The printed δοκούσης means seeming or apparent: the passage requires virtue as it appears to the parties, without asserting that this appearance guarantees genuine virtue. Similarity in other respects is also an explicit condition.

1487.Κίρναται means is mixed or blended; the same verb is understood in the second half. The comparison makes the participants’ character determine the form of friendship, as the drinkers’ dispositions determine the blending of wine.

1488.Ἄλλος ἐγώ literally means another I: the friend is described as another self. The wording is kept distinct from the image of one soul in two bodies in II.33.10.

1489.He continues the attribution to Pythagoras in the preceding excerpt. The brief saying gives no further specification of what kind of equality is meant.

1490.The explanation connects ὁμόνοια, concord, with likeness or agreement of νοῦς, mind. The passage then extends this agreement from relationships among people to agreement within a single person.

1491.The second [οἴκους], households, is rejected in the printed Greek and omitted from the English. Wachsmuth records Meineke’s deletion. Public and private are then applied to both gatherings and the following natures and relationships.

1492.The account of inward concord contrasts governance by one thought and judgment with divided judgment and shifting opinions. The translation retains the local ἐπ’ ἄλλην δόξην, toward another opinion, rather than adopting an alternative from the apparatus.

1493.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution to Plato, Laws VIII, 837B, and separates this excerpt from the preceding Iamblichus passage. The contrast is between friendship from opposites and from those who are alike; τὸ κοινόν is what they hold in common.

1494.Supplied ⟨Οὐ⟩, not, governs both alternatives. The second alternative includes μὴ φίλον, no friend; the translation retains both negations rather than turning this into a claim that good people cannot be friends.