Precarity of Friendship in Times of Crisis: Amicitia After Caesar

This chapter considers the intense negotiations around the meaning of friendship, or rather the Latin concept of amicitia, in the aftermath of the assassination of Julius Caesar in March 44 BCE. Among the many consequences of this event, the fact that among the assassins were several close and long-standing associates of the dictator occasioned discussions of amicitia and, in particular, when it was appropriate to discontinue an existing relationship and when to reconcile after a rupture. We have partial, and no doubt skewed, access to these discussions through a number of treatments in the contemporary texts in different genres composed by Marcus Tullius Cicero, who himself participated in such relationships with a number of the main players. The challenges to the rather superficial amicitia between Cicero and Marc Antony are apparent in the First Philippic, a speech in which Cicero addresses Antony's accusation that his behavior constituted a breach of amicitia between the two men, as the well as in the letters they exchanged. The correspondence between Cicero and the Caesarian Gaius Matius, who was apparently widely criticized for his continuing adherence to Caesar's memory, tackles the limits of the obligations of amicitia where they come into conflict with the interests of the state. Finally, the short ethical treatise Laelius, On Friendship explores many of the same issues on a number of different levels, from the pragmatic to the philosophical. The treatise might appear at first glance to be of universal, rather than topical interest, and that is certainly the way in which many later readers generally received it. The undeniable appeal of Cicero's treatment is well attested by the work's influence and lasting popularity. The dedication of the work to Cicero's closest friend Atticus seems to mark it as a work arising out of personal rather than political concerns. My goal in this chapter is to read the exchange between Cicero and Matius as a window onto contemporary issues and contemporary debates and then use what we learn from the letters to understand how Cicero treats the same questions in the more generalized context of the treatise, and how the topical concerns affects his literary, rhetorical, and philosophical choices.