One Body, One Mind: Friendship in Plutarch’s De amicorum multitudine and Lucian’s Toxaris

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of how topical ideas within the discourse about friendship circulated and were repurposed for different needs in the early imperial period. Specifically, it deals with the topical idea that friends essentially constitute one entity. By comparing Plutarch’s De amicorum multitudine with Lucian’s Toxaris and recontextualizing these texts in the early imperial period, the present paper not only shows the ubiquity and durability of the idea, but also analyzes how the two texts relate to one another when representing friendship as a union of bodies and minds. It shows that they use the same idea for specific purposes that reflect the authors’ idiosyncratic approach to ethics and moral norms. In the De amicorum multitudine, Plutarch’s protreptic and parenetic approach consists in warning its recipients of the dangers of incautious socialization and intimacy, and in offering guidelines for forming “safe” friendships. Conversely, Lucian’s Toxaris encourages its recipients to reflect critically upon the moral norms illustrated in the characters’ stories of exemplary friendships. It includes the recipients in the process of evaluation and thereby enables them to progress in their friendship. This friendship unites the recipients and the characters of the dialogue thanks to their paideia, despite any differences in geographical origin and cultural background.