Whose Mistake? The Errors of Friendship in Cicero, La Boétie, and Montaigne

Focusing on Montaigne’s adaptation of Cicero’s De amicitia within his own essay “On Friendship,” this chapter reveals Montaigne’s complex reception of the “Roman error” of putting friendship before the needs of the state. Drawn to such matters in part by his friendship with Étienne de La Boétie, Montaigne, in effect, disagrees with Cicero over how to react to this error. Cicero (through his Laelius) opts to condemn it, while Montaigne finds in it support for his view of friendship, one that in turn sustains Montaigne’s moderation amid the political extremism of the French Wars of Religion. Montaigne’s rejection of Roman friendship as error on the one hand reflects his questioning of the value of ancient models for understanding the present. On the other hand, however, his characterization of ideal friendship as autotelic and autonomous can also be seen as a tacit acknowledgment that friendship among the elite is inherently political.