Friendship In Julius Caesar's De Amicitia

“De Amicitia” (on friendship) was a dialogue written by a stoic philosopher known as Cicero during Julius Caesar’s most successful time as an emperor around 45 B.C. The dialogue focused on what Cicero felt aside from wisdom was the “[best thing that has ever] been given to man by the immortal gods.” Throughout the dialogue there are signs of contradiction about the friendship Cicero discusses. Normally friendship is not seen as a way of mutual profit but to Cicero this was one of the main reasons to befriend certain men. In the dialogue he expresses his views on friendship by using Scipio and Laelius’ friendship. Cicero conceived friendship as a high-order relationship that was more meaningful and intense than any other relationship.
Cicero urges that people put friendship before everything else, but this is where the contradiction in his words and thoughts lie. If friendship was said to be the greatest gift given aside from wisdom, then why did men only befriend those who benefit him? By befriending someone who subsidizes the friend, money, wealth, power and status is being put before friendship. Greed seems to be the common theme in each view on what a friendship should be. Although Cicero has good intentions in this dialogue, there are
Being an optimates, or in the ruling classes, automatically gives an upper hand compared to the power held by the populares. The strength in numbers is what gave the populares any power at all, seeing as they were just the average man. The only real reason an optimates would befriend a man of the populares is so that they do not have a reason to revolt against the optimates. As the years kept adding on, more and more homeless people emerged in Rome; a gap was opening between the people, which made it harder to keep control of leadership and government. Soldiers became hard to come by and class tensions broke down social