Cicero: On Obligations

 In my town, which is in no way mine yet, there is a building that always captivates me.  It is a fairly typical Romanesque building from the turn of the century, but with a black, Gothic tower jutting out from one corner.  My friend Rose hates it.  She says it doesn't match, that it can't decide what it is.  The sinister darkness that protrudes from the edge and becomes the dominating feature is out of place.  I can relate.

Whence comes this darkness, the edges, the spires, the ominous black face that belies the careful and respectable whole?  I often look for its source, and for the roots of my intense goodness as well, in my family history.  On a recent trip to Topeka, I met my third cousin for the first time, and hit it off with her  immediately.  She showed me a portrait of our common ancestor, my great-great-grandfather, handsome and focused, and wearing a mysterious pin.  It was nothing I had seen before, not Masonic, or Rotarian.  I asked her what orders he might have belonged to, and she told me he was a member of the Knights of Pythias.  

That building, the one that speaks to me?  It's name: The Pythian Castle.  Headquarters of the same organization that my ancestor belonged to.  

I read this book because it was said to contain the story of Pythias, only to find out that it was barely a paragraph of mention.  Cicero is not concerned with such stories except as they relate to his true passion: the Roman State.  He iterates the types of virtue at length, thinking he has proven his point, but without really having done so.  There is nothing new in this book, nor is it put in a particularly convincing or engaging way.  Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, and Greatness of Spirit are certainly excellent virtues.  There is another, though, that he nearly ignores.  It is that which I have been searching for as long as I can recall, and also that to which the Knights of Pythias happened to be dedicated.  I flatter myself that I also have it in abundance, though without any proper outlet.  I am a Pythian without a Damon, a Knight without a banner.  Oh where is Enkidu, Jonathon, Caphisodorus?  That we may form an altar to Friendship, and raise its banner over all?