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Classical World, Volume 103, Number 1, Fall 2009, pp. 88-92 (Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/clw.0.0154

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/clw/summary/v103/103.1.gruber-miller.html

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Exploring Relationships: Amicitia and Familia

in Ciceros de Amicitia
Abstract: In Ciceros de Amicitia, it is striking that Cicero utilizes
the vocabulary of family relationships to describe friendship and creates
a dialogue that focuses on interlocutors who are both friends and family
members who are joined through marriage. After brief ly introducing readers to the intersection between friendship and familial relationships in the
dialogue, a set of learning activities is presented to help students explore
the dynamics of family and friendship in Roman society, to compare Roman concepts of family and friendship to contemporary ideas, and finally
to compare Ciceros idealized version of friendship in the dialogue with
actual relationships seen in the letters.
At first glance, friendship and family appear to be mutually exclusive
categories. In fact, we might define friends as those with whom we share
bonds of trust, with whom we share joys and sorrows outside the family,
while we might define family members as those with whom we are united
by blood or marriage. Ciceros Laelius de Amicitia poses a challenge to this
simple dichotomy and offers its readers an opportunity to reexamine what
it means to be a friend and a member of a family. While Ciceros dialogue
contains Hellenistic, philosophical ideas on friendship, it is also meant to be
a particularly Roman response to the idea of friendship. 1 In the same way,
Ciceros dialogue provokes a personal response even today, 2 and offers a
wonderful opportunity for readers to compare Roman notions of friendship
and family with current attitudes, to explore not only abstract notions of
friendship and family but also examples from the lives of those we know. In
what follows I present a learning scenario, using Ciceros Laelius de Amicitia
as the locus, to help students see the interconnection of the two concepts,
and see how these terms are constructed in ways unique to each culture.
As soon as readers plunge into the dialogue, they realize that Cicero is using
the language of the household and kinship to describe relationships. Scaevola
and Fannius are acting as friends as they listen to Laelius speak about Scipio
and friendship, yet they were in fact married to Laelius daughters (de Gaio
Laelio socero suo, 1; cum altero genero Gaio Fannio, 3). The first word to
describe a friend in the dialogue is familiaris (2), a word whose root reminds
one of family. In the same section, Publius Sulpicius relationship with Q.
Pompeius is described as coniunctissime et amantissime (2) before Sulpicius
attacks Pompeius (and Sulla) in 88 over the command of Marius against
Mithridates. Later in the dialogue, Aemilius Papus and Fabricius Luscinus are
described as familiares (39), and still later friends are described as quocum
familiariter vixeris (77). Even more striking is that Laelius twice claims, both
at the beginning and at the end of the dialogue, that he shared one house,
one common way of life (una domus, idem victus isque communis 103; see
15). Even the exempla that Cicero uses to emphasize that friendship is rooted
in nature rather than in utility often refer to familial relationships (27, 50).
Familia was both broader (in that it included parents and their children
as well as slaves and dependents) and narrower (referring only to household
1
T. N. Habinek, Towards a History of Friendly Advice: The Politics of Candor
in Ciceros de Amicitia, Apeiron 23 (1990) 16585.
2
J. P. Hallett, Heeding our Native Informants: The Uses of Latin Literary
Texts in Recovering Elite Roman Attitudes Toward Age, Gender, and Social Status,
Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views 36 (1992) 33355.

P aedagogus

89

slaves) than our conception of family. In addition, it included notions of

property and inheritance, something that modern definitions do not normally
consider essential to the definition. It also overlaps with Roman notions of
patronage in that familia can include those who depend on the pater or mater
familias: slaves and freedmen and freedwomen. As Richard Saller has shown,
the Romans preferred the term domus to familia when they wanted to refer
to lineage and kinship. 3 Indeed, our understanding of a Roman family has
shifted from an extended family to the nuclear family to a more nuanced notion of the Roman family. 4 Dale Martin asks what the crucial factors are for
defining a Roman (or other) family: kinship, co-residence, adoption, marriage
(and remarriage), number of generations, economic interdependence, legal
definitions, cooperation in the production and consumption of goods? All
these criteria are problematic when one looks at families from a comparative
perspective. 5 When one looks at Roman inscriptions, moreover, many tombstones are set up by a wide variety of family members for other members
of the family: parents, children, grandparents, siblings, in-laws, slaves,
freed, and nurslings. For example, siblings and their children are found buried
together, slaves and nurslings with blood relations, multiple generations, or
in-laws with blood relations. Martin argues that the coherent nuclear family
is not necessarily the dominant arrangement for burial. We might say that
the nuclear family holds a gravitational pull in the inscriptions. It provides
the nucleus for a great variety of actual family structures. 6
If it is not so easy to delimit family, neither is it a simple matter to
define friendship. Ciceroany Romanfaced a predicament when he attempted
to write about amicitia, friendship. For amicus encompassed a much wider
range of meaning than our friend. Of course, it could mean friend, but
it could just as easily refer to someone whom we might refer to as a colleague, business associate, political ally, or an acquaintance. Furthermore, it
need not refer only to peers, but to a wide variety of unequal relationships,
whether we call them advocate and client or patron and freedman. Yet Romans avoided using terms such as patronus or cliens, preferring to use the
more positive term amicus. 7 While Cicero stresses that friendship is based
on affection (caritas) and good will (benevolentia), he also recognizes the
importance of reciprocal benefactions and obligations for friendship. It is
the conjunction of good will (23, 26), the performing of ones duties (8),
and reciprocating with beneficia (2932, 4951) that reinforces the mutual
agreement (consensio 20) of good friends. These bonds are solidified between
friends, just as they are between families, because of the exchange of favors,
advice, and assistance. In other words, families and friends were linked by
many of the same bonds, and as in the case of Cicero and Atticus, friends
were sometimes linked to families through marriage.
In what follows, I offer a number of activities designed to help students
develop an understanding of Roman friendship and the Roman family. At the
same time, I want them to comprehend the complexity of defining these relationships in our own society as well. The first step in reading de Amicitia,
3
R. P. Saller, Familia, Domus, and the Roman Conception of the Family,
Phoenix 38 (1984) 336 55; see now his Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge 1994) 74101.
4
S. Dixon, The Roman Family (Baltimore 1992), esp. chapter 1.
5
D. B. Martin, The Construction of the Ancient Family: Methodological
Considerations, JRS 86 (1996) 4950.
6
Martin (above, n.5) 53.
7
R. P. Saller, The Language and Ideology of Patronage, in Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge 1982) 739.

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therefore, is to create expectations and get students to predict what they might
find in this work. 8 At the same time, if students are to become engaged, they
need to develop their own definitions of friendship and family. Before students
begin to read de Amicitia, I ask them to spend some time individually and then
in small groups defining (in English) what they think a friend is and what a
family is and what, if any, connection there is between the two. Since defining
abstract concepts can be tricky, it might be useful to start with more specific
questions: What are the adjectives associated with friendship and family (e.g.,
personal, private, dependable, loyal)? What synonyms do we have for friends
(e.g., acquaintance, partner, colleague, compatriot, companion, ally) and family
member (e.g., father, mother, cousin, relative, daughter-in-law)? Finally, what
are some examples of friends that they know of from their reading, from their
knowledge of popular culture, or from personal experience?
Second, the setting and participants of the de Amicitia need to be introduced
before reading the dialogue. In fact, the dialogue features four generations:
Scipio Africanus and the elder Laelius, Laelius (the speaker in the dialogue)
and his friend Scipio Aemilianus, C. Fannius and Mucius Scaevola (Laelius
audience), and Cicero (Scaevolas protg) and Atticus (Ciceros dedicatee).
An excellent way to introduce these participants is to ask students to label
the significant members of the family trees 9 with appropriate kinship terminology (pater, mater, filius, filia, socer, gener, nepos). For example, Laelius
est filius Gaii, pater Laeliae maioris et Laeliae minoris, socer C. Fannii et
Q. Mucii Scaevolae. Students not only learn the relationships of each of the
major characters but also become acquainted with Roman kinship terminology.
Once readers have been prepared for the various major themes and vocabulary of the dialogue, it is time to begin reading. In order to build on the
family tree exercise and come to a deeper understanding of the relationships
that frame the dialogue as well as those mentioned as exempla later in the
work, students could research the life and relationships of one of the characters named in the first few sections. Using reference works such as the OCD
and MRR, supplemented by other works such as Astins Scipio Aemilianus, 10
students should discover not just who these people were, but also explore
the different kinds of bonds that united them: bonds of kinship, marriage,
patronage, and friendship. As students present the results of their research,
they can begin to discover that these charactersthe Laelii and Scipiones,
Fannius and Scaevolus, Cicero and Atticusare united in many more ways
than simply friendship and that a nexus of blood ties, marriage, reciprocal
obligations, and affection bind them together in friendship.
When students reach Laelius first speech about friendship, they can
construct a semantic map that lays out in graphic form various clusters of
words associated with friendship. At the same time, students can recall and
compare their first thoughts about friendship that they developed in English
8
For practical activities to do before reading, while reading, and after reading,
see M. A. Barnett, More than Meets the Eye: Foreign Language Reading (Englewood
Cliffs 1989); J. Gruber-Miller, Toward Fluency and Accuracy: A Reading Approach
to College Latin, in R. A. LaFleur, ed., Latin for the 21st Century: From Concept
to Classroom (Glenview, Ill., 1998) 16275; J. K. Phillips, Practical Implications of
Recent Research in Reading, Foreign Language Annals 17 (1984) 28596.
9
J. G. F. Powell, ed., Cicero: On Friendship and the Dream of Scipio (Warminster 1990) 10, offers a useful set of family trees.
10
E.g. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary,
3rd ed. (Oxford 1996); T. R. S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic (New
York 195152); A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford 1967).

P aedagogus

91

before they began reading. A semantic map for amicitia, based on the Laelius
1724, might look as follows:
Qualis est amicus/amica?
Familiaris est.
Iucundus/a est.
Verus/a est.


Amicitia
Quas virtutes amici monstrant?
Constantia (19, 6264)
Fides (19, 65)
Integritas (19); veritas (6566, 8990)
Liberalitas (19)

Quid amici agunt?

consentiunt de rebus (20).
beneficia dant (20).
Colloquuntur omnia (22).
In prosperis gaudent (22).
Adversas ferunt (22).
Quod ad animi motus pertinet?
caritas, benevolentia (1920, 22, 50)
iucundius (49)

Students can create this map either before or after they read the section.
The advantage of creating it before (with the help of their teacher) is that
it will help them with new vocabulary before they read. If they complete it
after they read the section, it might provide a post-reading exercise that will
help them solidify their knowledge of Ciceros idea of friendship.
Another way for students to perceive the complexity of defining key terms
associated with family and friendship in the Roman world is a dictionary
project. Some students could focus on terms for family (e.g., familia and
its cognates, domus, propinquus, coniunctus, and consuetudo) and others on
patronage (officium, beneficium, gratia, merita). 11 To choose the first example,
the OLD defines familia as:
1.

2.
3.
4.

5.
6.

A ll persons subject to the control of one man, whether

relations, freedman, slaves, a household.
T he slaves of a household, servants.
A group of servants domiciled in one place.
A body of persons closely associated by blood or
affinity, family.
A school (of philosophy, etc.).
( legal) Estate (consisting of the household and household
property).

As one reads through the definitions (and as we saw above), it becomes

clear that familia did not have the same resonances as our family. As students
learn to use the OLD and compare the diverse meanings of words connected
with family and friendship, they can begin to see that Romans used these
terms in different ways than today, that the Romans had no equivalent to
our word family or friend, and that terms such as propinquus or coniunctus
could refer to any close relationship, whether kin or neighbor or friend. In
short, Roman notions of family and friendship tend to be more public and
rooted in face-to-face, personal relationships.
The opening scene of Mario Puzos The Godfather (1972) offers another
way for students to comprehend the intersection of family and friendship and
the importance of personal ties of pietas and officium in relationships. In
11
For discussion of the first set of terms, see Saller (above, n.3). For the second
set, see R. Saller, The Language and Ideology of Patronage, in Personal Patronage
under the Early Empire (Cambridge 1982) 739.

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this scene, Don Corleone, the Godfather, is about to celebrate his daughters
wedding when an undertaker, whose daughter is the godchild of Corleones
wife, enters the Godfathers study (tablinum), not to offer good wishes, but
to ask for favor (beneficium). The Godfather responds by asking the undertaker why he and his family have not visited, invited him for coffee, or sent
their regards in the past. After the undertaker acknowledges his inattention
to the ties of family and friendship and finally renews their relationship,
Don Corleone grants his request, but makes clear that someday he may ask
for a favor in return. The scene nicely illustrates Roman ideas of personal
relationships over our preference for economic exchange, of the importance
of maintaining ties of family and friendship throughout ones life, and of the
complicated nexus of reciprocal obligations in Roman society. 12
One final, major project is to ask groups of students to follow Halletts advice
to heed our native informants 13 and to explore other texts that might act as
corroboration (or not) of Ciceros definition of friendship in de Amicitia. Ciceros
letters offer just such a corpus to test whether his definitions of friendship in
the Laelius remain true in his letters to family and friends. For example, in
one letter to Atticus, Cicero writes please love me and believe that I love you
as brother (Att. 1.5.8) while in another, he refers to Quintus as a friend (Att.
1.18.1). In groups of four, students can be assigned one figure from Ciceros
friends and family. Each group would contain one member from Ciceros family (e.g., Terentia, Tullia, Quintus, Tiro), another who is a good friend (e.g.,
Atticus, Lentulus Spinther), another who is younger protg (e.g., M. Caelius
Rufus, G. Trebatius Testa), and a fourth from a diverse group of adressees
(e.g., Pompey, Caesar, Antony, Clodia Metelli, or Caerellia). 14 For example,
one group may explore P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, who was instrumental in
securing Ciceros recall from exile; P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, son of the
elder Spinther; G. Trebonius, who published a collection of Ciceros witticisms,
and M. Tullius Tiro, Ciceros secretary and advisor. In exploring the letters to
discover what sort of bonds link Cicero to his addressee, it is possible to see
examples of genuine affection in the vocabulary used in openings and closing
salutations of letters. Though less apparent, it is also possible to ascertain levels
of affection and commitment by looking at their shared interests, enthusiasm
for these shared pursuits, and willingness to execute business for the others
sake. As students read through these letters, they will once again see that not
all relationships exhibit the same level of intimacy, that relationships change
over time, that Ciceros letters expand and elaborate on his understanding of
friendship in de Amicitia, and that different cultures construct friendship and
family in ways unique to their own society and values.
Cornell College
Classical World 103.1 (2009)

John Gruber-Miller
JGruber-Miller@cornellcollege.edu

12
For a transcript and summary of the opening scene, see T. Dirks, Review of
The Godfather, http://www.filmsite.org/godf.html (accessed September 2009).
13
Hallett (above, n.2).
14
One can find who is mentioned in which letters by exploring the index to
the Loeb editions of Ciceros letters or in D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Onomasticon to
Ciceros Letters (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1995). For more on Ciceros relations with
Terentia, see S. Dixon, Family Finances: Terentia and Tullia, in Beryl Rawson, ed.,
The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (Ithaca 1986) 93120; on Tullia, see
S. Treggiari, Roman Social History (Routledge 2002); on Quintus, see C. Bannon,
The Brothers of Romulus: Fraternal Pietas in Roman Law, Literature, and Society
(Princeton 1997) 10116; on Clodia, see M. Skinner, Clodia Metelli, TAPA 113
(1983) 27387; on Caerellia, see Hallett (above, n.2).