What Is Friendship? Seneca, Moral Epistles 48A.4-5

~ Seneca continues his discussion of friendship, talking about the way we distinguish between actual friends, whom we know and care for personally, and fellow human beings, for whom we ideally cultivate a general & even friendly affection, though we do not know them personally or intimately. Seneca would not call any general relationship to mankind friendship, though Lucilius appears to have suggested this & asked Seneca to parse friendship more precisely, a task that Seneca refuses. ~

Hoc, Lucili virorum optime, mihi ab istis subtilibus praecipi malo, quid amico praestare debeam, quid homini, quam quot modis amicus dicatur, et homo quam multa significet. In diversum ecce sapientia et stultitia discedunt! cui accedo? in utram ire partem iubes? Illi homo pro amico est, huic amicus non est pro homine; ille amicum sibi parat, hic se amico: tu mihi verba distorques et syllabas digeris. Scilicet nisi interrogationes vaferrimas struxero et conclusione falsa a vero nascens mendacium adstrinxero, non potero a fugiendis petenda secernere. Pudet me: in re tam seria senes ludimus. Vale (†).

Ah, Lucilius, best of all the men I know! I prefer to teach this lesson from certain keen questions—what should I owe to friends? what is my duty to fellow humans?—rather than others, blunter and more general: what meanings do we invoke when we utter the word friend? how many different things do we mark with the word human? Behold how wisdom and stupidity here diverge! Which one am I approaching? To which do you bid me draw near? One of them takes human to mean friend, while the other refuses to make friend synonymous with human. One grooms friends for himself, while the other grooms himself for friends. Here you deform my words, mincing their parts without taking my meaning. Unless I now lay out inquiries obscenely cunning, coaxing a lie from the truth & binding it down with a false conclusion, I will not be able to parse out the answers you want without admitting consequences that must be shunned. I am properly ashamed of us here, playing dumb games in such a serious matter in spite of our advanced age. Farewell.

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(†) The majority of MSS conclude the epistle here, but editors since Hense follow the tradition that treats the following epistle as part of this one. I shall separate them here as 48A & 48B, respecting both traditions (as I have no compelling reason to decide in favor of either).