“Shameful it is to say, yet the common herd, if only we admit the truth, value friendships by their profit.”

—  Ovid , book Epistulae ex Ponto

II, iii, 7-8; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)

Original

Turpe quidem dictu, sed, si modo vera fatemur, vulgus amicitias utilitate probat.

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Ovid 120
Roman poet -43–17 BC

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