As Cicero talks about in his writing De Amicitia, companionship is a part of human nature. According to Cicero, "nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on so support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship." He believed that true friendship could only exist among good people. Since true friendship is extremely hard to find and maintain, only people who are good and virtuous are able to handle actual friendships. He posed the question, "how can there be a 'life worth living'...unless it rest[s] upon the mutual love of friends?" As said by Cicero, "a friend is, as it were, a second self." He believed that within friendship comes about the idea that those with similar interests attract each other.

Maintaining lasting friendships is an extremely difficult and intricate process according to Aristotle. He believed friendships must contain soul. In other words, friendship must come from deep within the heart to have any kind of lasting impact. Animals are said to have souls too, but not enough to make a friendship, because friendship must be reciprocated. He also believed that friendships have "three species, corresponding to the three objects of love. For each object of love has a corresponding type of mutual loving, combined with awareness of it, and those who love each other wish goods to each other in so far as they love each other." The first form of friendship is that of utility, where people are useful to each other. The second kind is of pleasure, where people provide each other with delight because they are happy. The last and most pure form is that of goodness, where people recognize each other as good people, and love one another because of that goodness. Aristotle believed that old people mainly have friendships of utility, where younger people tend to have friendships of pleasure. However, true friendship does not come easily by any means. Very thorough examination of one another is necessary in order to evaluate if the friendship will amount to anything. Usually friendships start out as those of utility and pleasure, and evolve from there (Aristotle viii3-35).

As long as love exists among friends and for one's self, friendship can exist on any plane. Aristotle, another influential Greek philosopher, pointed out that good, pleasant, and useful people are all loveable. He wanted to make the point that the best kinds of friendships are those in which love exists. Cicero also related to this in his writing when he defined friendship

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Approximate Word count = 1196
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)