The memorable and hereditary friendship which subsisted between Lælius and the younger Scipio Africanus, rendered them the most suitable characters from whom the sentiments expressed on this delightful topic could be supposed to flow. Their mutual and unshaken attachment threw an additional lustre over the military glory of the one, and the contemplative wisdom of the other. “Such,” says Cicero in the introduction to the treatise _De Republicâ_, “was the common law of friendship between them, that Lælius adored Africanus as a god, on account of his transcendent military fame; and that Scipio, when they were at home, revered his friend, who was older than himself, as a father(456).” The kindred soul of Cicero appears to have been deeply struck with this delightful assemblage of all the noblest and loveliest qualities of our nature. The friendship which subsisted between himself and Atticus was another beautiful example of a similar kind: And the dialogue _De Amicitiâ_ is accordingly addressed with peculiar propriety to Atticus, who, as Cicero tells him in his dedication, could not fail to discover his own portrait in the delineation of a perfect friend. This treatise approaches nearer to dialogue than that _De Senectute_, for there is a story, with the circumstances of time and place. Fannius, the historian, and Mucius Scævola, the Augur, both sons-in-law of Lælius, paid him a visit immediately after the sudden and suspicious death of Scipio Africanus. The recent loss which Lælius had thus sustained, leads to an eulogy on the inimitable virtues of the departed hero, and to a discussion on the true nature of that tie by which they had been so long connected. Cicero, while in his earliest youth, had been introduced by his father to Mucius Scævola; and hence, among other interesting matters which he enjoyed an opportunity of hearing, he was one day present while Scævola related the substance of the conference on Friendship, which he and Fannius had held with Lælius a few days after the death of Scipio. Many of the ideas and sentiments which the mild Lælius then uttered, are declared by Scævola to have originally flowed from Scipio, with whom the nature and laws of friendship formed a favourite topic of discourse. This, perhaps, is not entirely a fiction, or merely told to give the stamp of authenticity to the dialogue. Some such conversation was probably held and related; and I doubt not, that a few of the passages in this celebrated dialogue reflect the sentiments of Lælius, or even of Africanus himself. The philosophical works of Cicero, which have been hitherto enumerated, are complete, or nearly so. But it is well known that he was the author of many other productions which have now been entirely lost, or of which only fragments remain.