Overview

• On June 19, students at Italy’s Classico high schools tackled Cicero’s De Amicitia for the exam’s second writing test.
• Cicero now holds the record as the most featured Latin author in Maturità exams, with 17 appearances since the postwar era.
• Composed between the summer and autumn of 44 B.C. and dedicated to Titus Pomponius Atticus, the dialogue marks the final phase of Cicero’s literary output.
• In De Amicitia, he reflects on how natural goodwill and virtue form the true basis of friendship, contrasting genuine bonds with relationships of convenience.
• Written during Cicero’s persecution by Mark Antony’s faction, the work prefaced his Philippics and foreshadowed the political strife that led to his assassination in 43 B.C.