Now, if on a stage, such as a public assembly essentially is, where there is the amplest room for fiction and half-truths, truth nevertheless prevails if it be but fairly laid open and brought into the light of day, what ought to happen in the case of friendship, which rests entirely on truthfulness?
From a philosophical dialogue on friendship, Cicero argues that truth, even in public life, ultimately prevails, highlighting its essential role in genuine friendship.
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For nothing is more commendable, nothing more becoming in a pre-eminently great man than courtesy and forbearance.
And so, when we have leisure from the demands of business cares, we are eager to see, to hear, to learn something new, and we esteem a desire to know the secrets or wonders of creation as indispensable to a happy life.
Besides, he will not expose anyone to hatred or disrepute by groundless charges, but he will surely cleave to justice and honour so closely that he will submit to any loss, however heavy, rather than be untrue to them, and will face death…
So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself.
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