Stobaeus on Stoic Ethics 23

Again, of good things, some are things which exist in themselves and some are relative dispositions. 

Knowledge, just action, and similar things are things which exist in themselves. 

Honor, goodwill, friendship, and agreement are relative. 

And knowledge is a grasp which is secure and unchangeable by argument. 

Another definition: knowledge is a complex system of grasps of this sort, such as knowledge of the particulars, which is, in the virtuous man, rational. 

Another definition: a complex system of craftsmanlike knowledge, which provides its own stability, which is what the virtues are like. 

Another definition: a condition receptive of presentations which is unchangeable by argument, which they say consists in a tension and power of the soul. 

Friendship is a community of life. Agreement is a sharing of opinions about things relevant to life. 

Within friendship, familiarity is friendship with people who are well known to you; habituation is friendship with people you have become accustomed to; companionship is friendship by choice, such as that with one’s contemporaries; guest-friendship is friendship with foreigners; there is also a kind of family friendship between relatives; and an erotic friendship based on sexual love. 

And painlessness and organization are the same as temperance, just as insight and wits are the same as prudence, and sharing and generosity are the same as good-heartedness; for they have been given names by reference to their relative dispositions. And one must note this too in each of the other virtues. 

IMAGE: Carl Spitzweg, Childhood Friends (1855)