Frodo, Sam and Friendship

In thinking about friends and significant people in my life I turned to The Four Loves to look-up a passage and noticed the following by C.S. Lewis:

“…but very few modern people think Friendship a love of comparable value or even a love at all. I cannot remember that any poem since In Memoriam, or any novel, has celebrated it. Ristan and Isolde, Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, have innumerable counterparts in modern literature: David and Jonathan, Pylades and Orestes, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amile, have not. To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”

I wonder why Lewis didn’t think of Sam and Frodo? Was that relationship friendship or was it the devotion of a servant to his master? A devotion animated by love to be sure…maybe I’ve answered my own question…I don’t know.