Life & Wisdom Quote by Lucan

Loyalty, Lucan suggests, is rarely the romantic virtue it pretends to be; it is a social investment. “Nobody ever chooses the already unfortunate” strips friendship of its halo and reveals the cold calculus underneath: people attach themselves to those who can confer protection, status, access, a reflected glow. The line lands with the hard snap of a generalization that feels embarrassing because it’s plausible. “Chooses” is the key verb. Friendship here isn’t fate or chemistry; it’s selection, like picking an ally.

Lucan writes inside the brutal circuitry of Roman power, where patronage and proximity to the strong could mean survival. In that world, misfortune isn’t just sadness, it’s contagion. The unfortunate friend can’t help you; worse, they might pull you into their orbit of risk. So loyalty becomes performative, conditional, a badge worn when it’s safe and profitable. Lucan’s phrasing also implies the inverse: when someone falls, their circle “discovers” practical reasons to drift away. That’s not merely personal weakness; it’s a culture trained to read fortune as moral evidence, to treat success as proof of worth and failure as something like guilt.

The subtext is both accusation and warning. If you’re prosperous, don’t mistake attendance for devotion. If you’re suffering, don’t be surprised when affection thins out. Lucan isn’t celebrating cynicism; he’s mapping the social physics of an empire where friendship is often just another form of strategy.