Can Girls Be Friends?: Talking about Gender in Cicero's de Amicitia

One of the most prominent, although often overlooked, features of Cicero's de Amicitia is that it talks exclusively about men's relationships with other men. Similarly to the pederastic system and the sexual and political assumptions of Plato and his contemporaries, the idealized Roman male affective relationships called amicitia present us with a crucial and intense form of social attachment. This essay offers strategies for encouraging students to analyze the role of gender in the theory and practice of Roman and Hellenistic amicitia, as well as in their own real-life relationships, beginning from Cicero's text.