✦ History Fact ✦

360 BC — Athens, Greece. Aristotle writes in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are three kinds of friendship: those based on utility, those based on pleasure, and the rarest kind — those based on virtue. He calls this highest form philia, and declares it essential to the good life. He also notes: "Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."

100 AD — Ancient Rome. Cicero writes De Amicitia (On Friendship), describing it as "the greatest thing in the world." Roman generals trusted their closest friends — their amici — with their lives, their secrets, and their campaigns.

1920s — The Harlem Renaissance. Writers, poets and artists like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston form friendships that change American culture forever. Their bond — rooted in mutual admiration and shared struggle — produces some of the most electric literature of the century.

Today — Your phone. You send a meme at 2am. They reply instantly with three crying-laugh emojis. The medium has changed. The miracle hasn't.

"Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together." — Woodrow Wilson