Excerpt from M. Tulli Ciceronis Laelius De Amicitia: Edited for Schools and Colleges From 51 to 46 D.C. Owing first to his absence in Cilicia, then to the civil troubles, Cicero almost ceased to write. But in the latter year he was reconciled with Caesar, and as the senate and law courts were closed against him on his refusal to com promise his political principles, he betook himself with greater devotion than ever to literature. He began to carry out a great plan for interpreting the best philosophical writings of the Greeks to his cultivated fellow-countrymen. Idleness he felt to be absolutely unendurable and it seemed to him that he could do his country no better service than by conferring on it a philosophical literature of its own. Hitherto those Romans who had studied philosophy at all had studied it in Creek. The only Latin philosophical literature was Epicurean, and putting aside the poem of Lucretius, which had scarcely then become famous, consisted entirely of books rudely written, which had however. Attained a large circulation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.