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This book is about love in the classical world – not erotic passion but the kind of love that binds together intimate members of a family and very close friends, but which may also be extended to include a wider range of individuals for whom we care deeply. The book includes chapters on friendship, especially the idea that a friend is another self; loyalty, and why loyalty was not a prominent virtue in classical thought; generosity and gratitude; grief in response to the loss of a loved one; and, finally, civic solidarity. Love, it is argued, underpins all these relations. Thus, rather than describing these affective ties in terms of reciprocity, which involves an expectation of return and a kind of selfishness or egoism, the book argues that these are truly other-regarding sentiments. It is acknowledged that the ancient sources sometimes describe these relations, including friendship, as forms of mutual obligation, but this book focuses on the counter strand in the literature that emphasizes genuine altruism. The study of how love drew into its orbit the various relations examined in this book sheds light on some central features not only of ancient habits of thought but also our own.
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