confidently that they are friends, even as they are faithful and upright. For where else is friendship than where faith is, where piety is, where there is an interchange of virtue, and none of other things than that? 7. _But such a one hath shown kindness to me so long, and is he not my friend?_ Slave, whence knowest thou if he did not show thee kindness as he wipes his shoes or tends his beast? Whence knowest thou if, when thy use is at an end as a vessel, he will not cast thee away like a broken plate? _But she is my wife, and we have lived together so long?_ And how long lived Eriphyle with Amphiaraus, and was the mother, yea, of many children? But a necklace came between them.[6] But what is a necklace? It is the opinion men have concerning such things. That was the wild beast nature, that was the sundering of love, that which would not allow the woman to be a wife, or the mother a mother. And of you, whosoever hath longed either to be a friend himself or to win some other for a friend, let him cut out these opinions, let him hate them and drive them from his soul. 8. And thus he will not revile himself, nor be at strife with himself, nor be variable, nor torment himself. And to another, if it be one like himself, he will be altogether as to himself, but with one unlike he will be forbearing and gentle and mild, ready to forgive him as an ignorant man, as one who is astray about the greatest things; but harsh to no man, being well assured of that dogma of Plato, that no soul is willingly deprived of the truth. 9. But otherwise you may do all things whatsoever, even as friends are wont to do, and drink together, and dwell together, and voyage together, and be born from the same parents, for so are snakes; but friends they are not, nor are ye, so long as ye hold these accursed doctrines of wild beasts. CHAPTER VIII. TIME AND CHANGE. 1. Let not another’s vice be thy evil. For thou wast not born to be abject with others, or unfortunate with others, but to prosper with them. But if any one is unfortunate, remember that it is of his own doing. For God hath made all men to be happy, and of good estate. For this end hath He granted means and occasions, giving some things to each man as his own concern, and some things as alien; and the things that are hindered and subject to compulsion and lost are not his own concern, and those that are unhindered are; and the substance of Good and of Evil, as it were worthy of Him that careth for us and doth protect us as a father, He hath placed among our own concerns. 2.——“But I have parted from such a one, and he is grieved.”