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Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
@Eponymous-Archon: You altered the date from 1st century BC to 2nd, but the source clearly says 1st. I appreciate the reference to Seneca, but can you be sure that that is the moment the OCD entry is referring to? You also changed "upgraded their clentes" to "ranked their clientes", which I suppose is the error you refer to in your edit summary. Frankly, I have no idea what ranking (you) or grading (OCD) clientes means in this context if not upgrading. To me, the current sentence makes little sense. Srnec (talk) 23:23, 21 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Srnec: With regard to the date, Purcell quotes Seneca who refers to Gracchus and Drusus, two second-century figures. I assume he says first century because they lived in the last years of the second and the primary evidence for the first century is pretty strong (e.g., Cicero). If you read Scullard and Lintott's entry in the OCD on amicitia, they give no such date. (I think that's a better entry for this article, too.) Regarding the "ranking", the quote from Seneca is: "Apud nos primi omnium C. Gracchus et mox Livius Drusus instituerunt segregare turbam suam et alios in secretum recipere, alios cum pluribus, alios universos. Habuerunt itaque isti amicos primos, habuerunt secundos, numquam veros." - "Among us first of all C. Gracchus and soon after Livius Drusus began to divide their crowds and to receive some in secret, some in the company of others, and some with everyone. They therefore had first friends, second friends, and no true friends." So they ranked - or graded, as Purcell says - their friends. I agree that that clause adds little here and could be deleted without harm to the overall meaning of the article. Frankly I'd go further and dispute this as evidence of the earliest use of "amicus" as political friend since the two of them are clearly treating the people in question as actual friends and so this goes beyond mere use of the word. This also has nothing with the Roman state using the term to refer to other states. For that, we also have Polybius' account of the first treaty between Rome and Carthage which he places in the late 6th c., and speaks of φιλίαν (Latin amicitia) between the two states. Even if he's wrong, the latest that language can be is his own lifetime (though that's very unlikely since he says that the Latin was archaic), and so mid-second century. Polybius also elsewhere uses this language for earlier treaties, like the one with the Aetolians, so it's clear that it's well established by the second century. - Eponymous-Archon (talk) 01:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
