[9] What man is there, then, so indefatigable, so changeable, so universally adaptable, that he can assimilate and accommodate himself to many persons, without deriding the advice of Theognis
1
when he says:
Copy this trait of the cuttle-fish, which changes its colour So as to seem to the eye like to the rock where it clings?
However, the changes in the cuttle-fish have no depth, but are wholly on the surface, which, owing to its closeness or looseness of texture, takes up the emanations from objects which come near to it; whereas friendships seek to effect a thorough-going likeness in characters, feelings, language, pursuits, and dispositions. Such varied adaptation were the task of a Proteus,
2
not fortunate and not at all scrupulous, who by magic can change himself often on the very instant from one character to another, reading books with the scholarly, rolling in the dust with wrestlers, following the hunt with sportsmen, getting drunk with topers, and taking part in the canvass of politicians, possessing no firmly founded character of his own. And as the natural philosophers say of the formless and colourless substance and material which is the underlying basis of everything and of itself turns into everything, that it is now in a state of combustion, now liquefied, at another time aeriform, and then again solid, so the possession of a multitude of friends will necessarily have, as its underlying basis, a soul that is very impressionable, versatile, pliant, and readily changeable. But friendship seeks for a fixed and steadfast character which does not shift about, but continues in one place and in one intimacy. For this reason a steadfast friend is something rare and hard to find.
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De amicorum multitudine. Plutarch. Frank Cole Babbitt (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1928.
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