[I] Q. Mucius augur multa narrare de C. Laelio socero suo memoriter et iucunde solebat, nec dubitare illum in omni sermone appellare sapientem. ego autem a patre ita eram deductus ad Scaeuolam sumpta uirili toga ut quoad possem et liceret a senis latere numquam discederem. itaque multa ab eo prudenter disputata, multa etiam breuiter et commode dicta memoriae mandabam fierique studebam eius prudentia doctior.

The preface falls into two parts. In the first (1–3), C. establishes his source for the dialogue he is about to recount: he claims to have heard it in 88 bce from his mentor Q. Mucius Scaevola Augur, who recounted to a group of friends a conversation on the topic of friendship that he and C. Fannius had with their father-in-law C. Laelius Sapiens in 129. Just as Scaevola had allegedly retained Laelius’ words, so too C. claims to report Scaevola’s account from memory. In the second part (4–5), the author turns to the work’s dedicatee, his friend Atticus, and explains his rationale in setting up the dialogue the way he has, with a venerable speaker from an earlier generation discoursing on a topic with expertise and authority. Thus, just as in C.’s earlier De senectute the old man Cato discusses old age, in Amic. Laelius – renowned for his friendship with the younger Scipio – talks about friendship. And just as C. had dedicated De senectute to Atticus as an old man to an old man, he now writes for the same dedicatee as one friend to another, encouraging him to immerse himself fully in the fiction of the dialogue and hear “Laelius” speak.

Cicero wrote his Laelius de amicitia (Amic.) in the fall of 44 bce, at a time when he was becoming increasingly drawn into the turbulent political events precipitated by the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15 March. He was 62 years old and could look back on a distinguished career as a statesman, orator, and author of rhetorical and philosophical works but – as so often during his life – he found himself deeply concerned about the state of the Roman commonwealth. Disregard for the republican political process, competing factions and individuals, and the growing threat of violence and civil war meant that Cicero had to fear not only for the well-being of the res publica but also for his own. His concerns were only too justified: before the end of the following year, Cicero was dead, murdered at the behest of the newly established Second Triumvirate.

Ever since antiquity, scholars of Plato have been evenly divided between those who identify Plato’s supreme god with a form (usually, the form of the good) and those who identify Plato’s supreme god with a soul (usually, the soul of the cosmos). But Plato never aims to give us a science of god; he aims to show us how to become like god. I distinguish three Platonic ascents to the divine: a metaphysical ascent to the form of the good; a cosmological ascent to the cosmic soul; and a religious ascent to the proper civic cult. These three ascents form a nested hierarchy, such that the cosmological ascent presupposes the metaphysical ascent, while the religious ascent presupposes the cosmological ascent. The metaphysical and cosmological ascents culminate in the religious ascent because becoming like god for Plato is a civic project. A philosopher can save herself only by saving her city.

We cannot understand the relation of Socratic philosophy to ancient Greek religion unless we first distinguish between the natural religion of the philosophers, the mythic religion of the poets, and the civic religion of the polis. These are not three religions but three differing interpretations of Greek religion. The Socratic philosophers attack the religion of the poets in order to reform the civic religion in the light of natural religion. All three kinds of Greek religion are focused on the relations between gods and humans and on the question of whether a person can traverse the chasm between human and divine. In Greek mythology and cult, some heroic human beings, like Heracles, were able to become gods. For the Socratics, philosophers are the new Greek heroes, able to divinize themselves by dint of rational discipline.