De amicorum multitudine

Meno, the Thessalian, who felt that he had had a good training in debating, and, to quote Empedocles’ familiar expression, was Haunting the lofty heights of wisdom, was asked by Socrates what virtue is; and when he replied impulsively and promptly that there is a virtue appropriate to a child and to an old man, to a grown man and to a woman, to a public official and to a private citizen, to a master and to a servant, Socrates exclaimed, “A fine answer! for when asked for one virtue you have stirred up a whole swarm of virtues,” inferring, not badly, that it was because the man knew not a single virtue that he was naming so many. And might not we also be subject to ridicule because we, who are not yet in secure possession of one friendship, are afraid that we may unwittingly become involved in a multitude of friendships? We hardly differ at all from a man who, being maimed or blind, is afraid that he may become a Briareus of the hundred hands or an Argus all-seeing. And yet we commend above measure the youth in Menander’s play who says that any man counts it a marvellous good thing If he but have the shadow of a friend.