Book 7
14
Friendship on a footing of equality is civic friendship. Civic friendship is, it is true, based on utility, and fellow-citizens are one another’s friends in the same way as different cities are, and "Athens no longer knoweth Megara,"Lit. the Athenians no longer recognize the Megarians. Author unknown Fr. Eleg. Adespota 6 (Bergk). nor similarly do citizens know one another, when they are not useful to one another; their friendship is a ready-money transaction.Cf. Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1262b 26.
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Nevertheless there is present here a ruling factor and a ruled—not a natural ruler or a royal one, but one that rules in his turn, and not for the purpose of conferring benefit, as God rules, but in order that he may have an equal share of the benefit and of the burden. Therefore civic friendship aims at being on a footing of equality.
16
But useful friendship is of two kinds, the merely legal and the moral. Civic friendship looks to equality and to the object, as buyers and sellers do—hence the saying Unto a friend his wage— . Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1164a 28. Hes. WD 371μισθὸς δ’ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ εἰρημένος ἄρκιος ἔστω'let the wage stated for a friend stand good.
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When, therefore, it is based on a definite agreement, this is civic and legal friendship; but when they trust each other for repayment, it tends to be moral friendship, that of comrades. Hence this is the kind of friendship in which recriminations most occur, the reason being that it is contrary to nature; for friendship based on utility and friendship based on goodness are different, but these people wish to have it both ways at once—they associate together for the sake of utility but make it out to be a moral friendship as between good men, and so represent it as not merely legal, pretending that it is a matter of trust.
