Ioläus: An Anthology of Friendship — Inside the Classic

Montaigne’s Unseamed Friendship

The longest excerpt in the anthology is Montaigne’s essay on his friendship with Étienne de La Boëtie. Carpenter reproduces the famous passage in which Montaigne insists that true friendship admits no rival: “they mingle and melt into one piece, with so universal a mixture that there is left no more sign of the seam.” The language is tactile, almost physical—a union without seam. Montaigne’s reason for loving La Boëtie—“Because it was he; because it was I”—is offered as an irreducible, almost tautological fact. Carpenter lets the passage stand without commentary, trusting its emotional force. The editor’s selection emphasizes the exclusivity and totality of this bond, contrasting it with “common friendships” that can be divided by beauty, humour, or liberality. Montaigne’s grief after La Boëtie’s death is rendered in stark terms: “the very pleasures that present themselves to me, instead of administering anything of consolation, double my affliction.”

Sidney’s Two Loves and a Mentor

Carpenter includes a short poem by Philip Sidney addressed to the pastoral god Pan, asking to “Grant me with these two remaining”—the two being Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer. The editor notes that Sidney wrote “youthful verses” to both, and that the poem follows “the fashion of the age” of pastoral invocation. This is followed by a prose account of Sidney’s friendship with the older Hubert Languet, a French Protestant who shared the perils of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre with Sidney. Carpenter quotes a source describing Languet’s letters as “breathing the tenderest spirit of affection, mingled with wise counsel.” The pairing of the two entries—one lyrical, one biographical—shows Carpenter’s method: he juxtaposes poetic expression with historical context, allowing the reader to see friendship as both a literary trope and a lived institution. The Sidney section is typical of the anthology’s structure: a short headnote, a primary text, and a secondary account.

Chronology as Argument

Carpenter’s arrangement is itself a rhetorical device. He moves from “Friendship-customs in the Pagan and Early World” through Greek life and thought, Greek and Roman poetry, early Christian and medieval times, to the Renaissance and modern times. A final section of “Additions” from 1906 extends the range. The preface claims that this evolutionary order makes “the continuity of these customs come out all the more clearly.” Yet the anthology is not a linear history; it is a curated collection of moments. The editor acknowledges incompleteness, calling the book “only a small contribution, at best, towards a large subject.” The reader is invited to trace patterns across cultures—the oath at Ioläus’s tomb, the Greek philia, the Christian agape, the Renaissance ideal of the friend as a second self. Carpenter’s voice is most present in the preface and the section introductions; elsewhere, he steps back, letting the excerpts speak.

Carpenter’s anthology rewards a non-linear reading. The table of contents lists five main sections plus additions, but the excerpts within each section vary widely in length and tone. A reader might start with Montaigne, then jump to the Greek poets, then return to the preface. The index (not reproduced here) likely helps locate specific authors. Because Carpenter’s own translations appear without attribution, it is worth noting which passages are his. The book is best approached as a sourcebook for reflection, not a continuous argument.

I’ve spent many evenings with Edward Carpenter’s Ioläus, watching how friendship speaks differently across centuries, yet always in the same quiet tone. Beside it, I sometimes set Latter-Day Pamphlets — Reading Notes, and there, too, I find that same patient voice—not arguing, just noting what binds one age to another. Two old friends on my shelf, each knowing the other’s silences.