ABSTRACT
Friendship – to continue the cliches – stands for giving, not asking. Friendship does not depend on the precarious, wayward and fickle accidents of sexual attractiveness. A certain equality makes friendship easier. The tradition of moral philosophy and social duties developed by the Greeks and elaborated by the Romans set great store, as Pat Easterling shows in her account, by friendship as an indispensable element in the good life. Personal testimonies of the need for and continued existence of real bonds of friendships endure besides sour undertones and threads of scepticism running through our common consciousness about friendship. The language of friendship certainly lies open to manipulation for cynical purposes. An entrepreneur in the industrial revolution, such as Matthew Boulton, the Birmingham iron-master, thought that one of the responsibilities of his friends was to loan him money without interest for indefinite periods, to finance his business.
