INTRODUCTION Plutarch’s essay on flatterers is addressed to C. Julius Antiochus Philopappus, a descendant of the kings of Commagene, whose monument still stands on the Museum Hill at Athens. He was a patron of art and literature, and on friendly terms with Plutarch.a The essay is not concerned with the impecunious and dependent adherents (parasites) of the rich, but with the adroit flatterers of a higher standing, who worm their way into the confidence of great men, and exercise a pernicious influence upon them. That Philopappus may have stood in need of such a warning may readily be inferred. The essay, at the close, digresses into a disquisition on frank speech ( παρρησία ) that might easily have been made into a separate treatise, but which is developed naturally from the attempt to distinguish the genuineness of a friend from the affectation of a flatterer. Frank speech was regarded in classical times as the birthright of every Athenian citizen, but under the political conditions existent in Plutarch’s day it was probably safer to cultivate it as a private virtue.

Plato says, my dear Antiochus Philopappus, that everyone grants forgiveness to the man who avows that he dearly loves himself, but he also says that along with many other faults which are engendered thereby the most serious is that which makes it impossible for such a man to be an honest and unbiased judge of himself. For Love is blind as regards the beloved, unless one, through study, has acquired the habit of respecting and pursuing what is honourable rather than what is inbred and familiar. This fact affords to the flatterer a very wide field within the realm of friendship, since in our love of self he has an excellent base of operations against us. It is because of this self-love that everybody is himself his own foremost and greatest flatterer, and hence finds no difficulty in admitting the outsider to witness with him and to confirm his own conceits and desires. For the man who is spoken of with opprobrium as a lover of flatterers is in high degree a lover of self, and, because of his kindly feeling toward himself, he desires and conceives himself to be endowed with all manner of good qualities; but although the desire for these is not unnatural, yet the conceit that one possesses them is dangerous and must be carefully avoided. Now if Truth is a thing divine, and, as Plato puts it, the origin of all good for gods and all good for men, then the flatterer is in all likelihood an enemy to the gods and particularly to the Pythian god. For the flatterer always takes a position over against the maxim Know thyself, by creating in every man deception towards himself and ignorance both of himself and of the good and evil that concerns himself; the good he renders defective and incomplete, and the evil wholly impossible to amend.

If the flatterer, then, like most other evils, attacked solely or mostly the ignoble and mean, he would not be so formidable or so hard to guard against. But the fact is, that as bore-worms make their entrance chiefly into the delicate and sweetscented kinds of wood, so it is ambitious, honest, and promising characters that receive and nourish the flatterer as he hangs upon them. Moreover, just as Simonides says, The rearing of horses consorts not with Zacynthus, But with wheat-bearing acres, so we observe that flattery does not attend upon poor, obscure, or unimportant persons, but makes itself a stumbling-block and a pestilence in great houses and great affairs, and oftentimes overturns kingdoms and principalities. Wherefore it is no small task, nor a matter requiring but slight foresight, to subject it to examination, so that, being thoroughly exposed, it may be prevented from injuring or discrediting friendship. Vermin depart from dying persons and forsake their bodies, as the blood, from which the vermin derive their sustenance, loses its vitality; and so flatterers are never so much as to be seen coming near where succulence and warmth are lacking, but where renown and power attend, there do they throng and thrive; but if a change come, they slink away quickly and are gone. But we must not wait until that experience shall befall, which is a thing profitless, or rather injurious and not devoid of danger. For it is cruel to discover friends that are no friends at a crucial time which calls for friends, since there is then no exchanging one that is untrustworthy and spurious for the true and trustworthy. But one’s friend, like a coin, should have been examined and approved before the time of need, not proved by the need to be no friend. For we must not wait for injury to open our eyes, but to avoid injury we must gain acquaintance with the flatterer and learn how to detect him; otherwise we shall be in the same case with those who try to learn about deadly drugs by tasting them first, and so ruin and destroy themselves in order to reach their decision. We do not, of course, commend such persons, nor again those who rate the friend as something noble and beneficial, and so imagine that all who are socially agreeable at once stand openly convicted of being flatterers. For a friend is not unpleasant or absolute, nor is it bitterness and sternness that give dignity to friendship, but this very nobility and dignity in it is sweet and desirable. Close by its side have the Graces and Longing established their dwelling, and not merely for one who is in misfortune ’Tis sweet to gaze into a kind man’s eyes, as Euripides has it, but when friendship attends us, it brings pleasure and delight to our prosperity no less than it takes away the griefs and the feeling of helplessness from adversity. As Evenus has remarked that fire is the best of sauce, so God, by commingling friendship with our life, has made everything cheerful, sweet and agreeable, when friendship is there to share in our enjoyment. Indeed, how the flatterer could use pleasures to insinuate himself, if he saw that friendship was nowhere ready to welcome what is pleasant, no man can explain. But just as false and counterfeit imitations of gold imitate only its brilliancy and lustre, so apparently the flatterer, imitating the pleasant and attractive characteristics of the friend, always presents himself in a cheerful and blithe mood, with never a whit of crossing or opposition. But that is no reason why persons who express commendation should instantly be suspected of being simply flatterers. For commendation at the right time is no less becoming to friendship than is censure, or we may express it better by saying that complaining and fault-finding generally is unfriendly and unsociable, whereas the kindly feeling that ungrudgingly and readily bestows commendation for noble acts inclines us, at some later time, cheerfully and without distress to bear admonishment and frankness of speech, since we believe, and are content, that the man who is glad to commend blames only when he must.

One might say, then, that it is difficult to distinguish flatterer and friend, if neither pleasure nor praise shows the difference; indeed, in services and courtesies we may often observe that friendship is outstripped by flattery. How can it be helped, will be our answer, if we are in quest of the real flatterer, who takes hold of the business with adroitness and skill, and if we do not, like most people, regard as flatterers merely those self-ministering trencherslaves, so called, whose tongue will be wagging, as one man has put it, as soon as the water is brought for the hands, for whom one dish and one glass of wine is enough to show their ill breeding with its display of vulgarity and offensiveness? Surely there was no need to press the case against Melanthius, the parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, in answer to those who asked how Alexander was slain, said, By a stab through his ribs that hit me in my belly ; nor those who throng round a rich man’s table whom Not fire, nor steel, Nor bronze can keep From coming each day to dine. nor the flatteresses in Cyprus, who when they had crossed over into Syria, acquired the nickname of ladderesses, because by prostrating themselves they afforded by their bodies a means for the women of the royal household to mount their carriages.

Against whom, then, must we be on our guard? Against the man who does not seem to flatter and will not admit that he does so, the man who is never to be found hanging round the kitchen, never caught noting the shadow on the sun-dial to see if it is getting towards dinner-time, never gets drunk and drops down in a heap on the floor; he is usually sober, he is always busy, and must have a hand in everything; he has a mind to be in all secrets, and in general plays the part of friend with the gravity of a tragedian and not like a comedian or a buffoon. For as Plato says, it is the height of dishonesty to seem to be honest when one is not, and so the flattery which we must regard as difficult to deal with is that which is hidden, not that which is openly avowed, that which is serious, not that which is meant as a joke. For such flattery infects even true friendship with distrust, unless we give heed, for in many respects it coincides with friendship. Now it is true that Gobryas, having forced his way into a dark room along with the fleeing Magian, and finding himself engaged in a desperate struggle, called upon Darius, who had stopped beside them and was in doubt what to do, to strike even though he should pierce them both ; but we, if we can by no means approve the sentiment, Down with a foe though a friend go too, have great cause to fear in seeking to detach the flatterer, who through many similarities is closely interlocked with the friend, lest in some way we either cast out the useful along with the bad, or else, in trying to spare what is close to our hearts, we fall upon what is injurious. So, I think, when wild seeds which have a shape and size approximating to wheat have got mixed with it, the process of cleaning is difficult (for either they do not pass out through a finer sieve, or else they do pass out through a coarser, and the wheat along with them); in like manner, flattery which blends itself with every emotion, every movement, need, and habit, is hard to separate from friendship.

For the very reason, however, that friendship is the most pleasant thing in the world, and because nothing else gives greater delight, the flatterer allures by means of pleasures and concerns himself with pleasures. And just because graciousness and usefulness go with friendship (which is the reason why they say that a friend is more indispensable than fire and water), the flatterer thrusts himself into services for us, striving always to appear earnest, unremitting, and diligent. And inasmuch as that which most especially cements a friendship begun is a likeness of pursuits and characters, and since to take delight in the same things and avoid the same things is what generally brings people together in the first place, and gets them acquainted through the bond of sympathy, the flatterer takes note of this fact, and adjusts and shapes himself, as though he were so much inert matter, endeavouring to adapt and mould himself to fit those whom he attacks through imitation; and he is so supple in changes and so plausible in his copyings that we may exclaim: Achilles’ self thou art and not his son. But the most unprincipled trick of all that he has is this: perceiving that frankness of speech, by common report and belief, is the language of friendship especially (as an animal has its peculiar cry), and, on the other hand, that lack of frankness is unfriendly and ignoble, he does not allow even this to escape imitation, but, just as clever cooks employ bitter extracts and astringent flavourings to remove the cloying effect of sweet things, so flatterers apply a frankness which is not genuine or beneficial, but which, as it were, winks while it frowns, and does nothing but tickle. For these reasons, then, the man is hard to detect, as is the case with some animals to which Nature has given the faculty of changing their hue, so that they exactly conform to the colours and objects beneath them. And since the flatterer uses resemblances to deceive and to wrap about him, it is our task to use the differences in order to unwrap him and lay him bare, in the act, as Plato puts it, of adorning himself with alien colours and forms for want of any of his own.

Let us, then, consider this matter from the beginning. We have previously said that with most people the beginning of friendship is their congenial disposition and nature, which welcomes the same habits and traits, as nearly as may be, and takes delight in the same pursuits, activities, and avocations; on the subject of this it has also been said: An old man hath the sweetest tongue for old, And child for child, and woman suits her kind, A sick man suits the sick; misfortune’s thrall Hath charms for him who hath just met mischance. So then the flatterer, knowing that when people take delight in the same things it is only natural that they find enjoyment and satisfaction in each other’s company, adopts this course in making his first attempts to approach each victim and to secure a lodgement near him; he acts as though the man were some animal running at large in a pasture, and by affecting the same pursuits, the same avocations, interests and manner of life, he gradually gets close to him, and rubs up against him so as to take on his colouring, until his victim gives him some hold and becomes docile and accustomed to his touch: he is ever disapproving actions and lives and persons which he perceives his victim to dislike, while if anything pleases the other he commends, not with moderation, but so as plainly to outdo him in amazement and wonder, and at the same time he stoutly maintains that his affection and hatred are the result of judgement rather than of emotion.

What, then, is the method of exposing him, and by what differences is it possible to detect that he is not really like-minded, or even in a fair way to become like-minded, but is merely imitating such a character? In the first place, it is necessary to observe the uniformity and permanence of his tastes, whether he always takes delight in the same things, and commends always the same things, and whether he directs and ordains his own life according to one pattern, as becomes a free-born man and a lover of congenial friendship and intimacy; for such is the conduct of a friend. But the flatterer, since he has no abiding-place of character to dwell in, and since he leads a life not of his own choosing but another’s, moulding and adapting himself to suit another, is not simple, not one, but variable and many in one, and, like water that is poured into one receptacle after another, he is constantly on the move from place to place, and changes his shape to fit his receiver. The capture of the ape, as it seems, is effected while he is trying to imitate man by moving and dancing as the man does: but the flatterer himself leads on and entices others, not imitating all persons alike, but with one he joins in dancing and singing, and with another in wrestling and getting covered with dust; if he gets hold of a huntsman fond of the chase, he follows on, all but shouting out the words of Phaedra : Ye gods, but I yearn to encourage the hounds, As I haste on the track of the dapple deer. He does not trouble himself in regard to the quarry, but he goes about to net and ensnare the huntsman himself. But if he is on the track of a scholarly and studious young man, now again he is absorbed in books, his beard grows down to his feet, the scholar’s gown is the thing now and a stoic indifference, and endless talk about Plato’s numbers and right-angled triangles. At another time, if some easy-tempered man fall in his way, who is a hard drinker and rich, Then stands forth the wily Odysseus stripped of his tatters; off goes the scholar’s gown, the beard is mowed down like an unprofitable crop; it’s wine-coolers and glasses now, bursts of laughter while walking in the streets, and frivolous jokes against the devotees of philosophy. Just so at Syracuse, it is said, after Plato had arrived, and an insane ardour for philosophy laid hold on Dionysius, the king’s palace was filled with dust by reason of the multitude of men that were drawing their geometrical diagrams in it: but when Plato fell out of favour, and Dionysius, shaking himself free from philosophy, returned post-haste to wine and women and foolish talk and licentiousness, then grossness and forgetfulness and fatuity seized upon the whole people as though they had undergone a transformation in Circe’s house. A further testimony is to be found in the action of the great flatterers and the demagogues, of whom the greatest was Alcibiades. At Athens he indulged in frivolous jesting, kept a racing-stable, and led a life full of urbanity and agreeable enjoyment; in Lacedaemon he kept his hair cropped close, he wore the coarsest clothing, he bathed in cold water; in Thrace he was a fighter and a hard drinker: but when he came to Tissaphernes, he took to soft living, and luxury, and pretentiousness. So by making himself like to all these people and conforming his way to theirs he tried to conciliate them and win their favour. Not of this type, however, was Epameinondas or Agesilaus, who, although they had to do with a very large number of men and cities and modes of life, yet maintained everywhere their own proper character in dress, conduct, language, and life. So, too, Plato in Syracuse was the same sort of man as in the Academy, and to Dionysius he was the same as to Dion.

The changes of the flatterer, which are like those of a cuttle-fish, may be most easily detected if a man pretends that he is very changeable himself and disapproves the mode of life which he previously approved, and suddenly shows a liking for actions, conduct, or language which used to offend him. For he will see that the flatterer is nowhere constant, has no character of his own, that it is not because of his own feelings that he loves and hates, and rejoices and grieves, but that, like a mirror, he only catches the images of alien feelings, lives and movements. For he is the kind of man, who, if you chance to blame one of your friends before him, will exclaim, You’ve been slow in discovering the man’s character; for my part I took a dislike to him long ago. But if, on the next occasion, you change about again and commend the man, then you may be sure the flatterer will avow that he shares your pleasure and thanks you for the man’s sake, and that he believes in him. If you say that you must adopt some other sort of life, as, for example, by changing from public life to ease and quietness, then he says, Yes, we ought long ago to have secured release from turmoils and jealousies. But again if you appear to be bent on public activity and speaking, then he chimes in, Your thoughts are worthy of you; ease is a pleasant thing, but it is inglorious and mean. Without more ado we must say to such a man: Stranger, you seem to me now a different man than aforetime. I have no use for a friend that shifts about just as I do and nods assent just as I do (for my shadow better performs that function), but I want one that tells the truth as I do, and decides for himself as I do. This is one method, then, of detecting the flatterer;

but here follows a second point of difference which ought to be observed, in his habits of imitation. The true friend is neither an imitator of everything nor ready to commend everything, but only the best things; His nature ’tis to share not hate but love, as Sophocles has it, and most assuredly to share also in right conduct and in love for the good, not in error and evil-doing, unless, as a result of association and close acquaintance, an emanation and infection, like that which comes from a diseased eye, contaminate him against his will with a touch of baseness or error. In a similar way it is said that close acquaintances used to copy Plato’s stoop, Aristotle’s lisp, and King Alexander’s twisted neck as well as the harshness of his voice in conversation. In fact, some people unconsciously acquire most of their peculiarities from the traits or the lives of others. But the flatterer’s case is exactly the same as that of the chameleon. For the chameleon can make himself like to every colour except white, and the flatterer, being utterly incapable of making himself like to another in any quality that is really worth while, leaves no shameful thing unimitated; but even as bad painters, who by reason of incompetence are unable to attain to the beautiful, depend upon wrinkles, moles, and scars to bring out their resemblances, so the flatterer makes himself an imitator of licentiousness, superstition, passionate anger, harshness toward servants, and distrust toward household and kinsmen. For by nature he is of himself prone to the worse, and he seems very far removed from disapproving what is shameful, since he imitates it. In fact it is those who follow a higher ideal and show distress and annoyance at the errors of their friends, who fall under suspicion. This is the thing that brought Dion into disfavour with Dionysius, Samius with Philip, Cleomenes with Ptolemy, and finally brought about their undoing. But the flatterer, desiring to be and to seem pleasant and loyal at the same time, affects to take greater delight in the worse things, as one who for the great love he bears will take no offence even at what is base, but feels with his friend and shares his nature in all things. For this reason flatterers will not be denied a share even in the chances of life which happen without our will; but they flatter the sickly by pretending to be afflicted with the same malady, and not to be able to see or hear distinctly if they have to do with those who are dim-sighted or hard of hearing, just as the flatterers of Dionysius, whose sight was failing, used to bump against one another and upset the dishes at dinner. And some seize upon afflictions rather as a means to insinuate themselves still more, and carry their fellow-feeling so far as to include inmost secrets. If they know, for example, that one or another is unfortunate in his marriage, or suspicious towards his sons or his household, they do not spare themselves, but lament over their own children or wife or kinsmen or household, divulging certain secret faults of theirs. For such similarity makes fellow-feeling stronger, so that the others, conceiving themselves to have received pledges, are more inclined to let out some of their own secrets to the flatterers, and having so done they take up with them, and are afraid to abandon the confidential relation. I personally know of one man who put away his wife after his friend had sent his own away; but he was caught visiting her in secret and sending messages to her after his friend’s wife had got wind of what was going on. Quite unacquainted with a flatterer, then, was he who thought that these iambic verses applied to a flatterer rather than to a crab: His body is all belly; eyes that look All ways; a beast that travels on its teeth. For such a description is that of a parasite, one of The saucepan friends and friends postprandial, as Eupolis puts it.

However, let us reserve this matter for its proper place in our discussion. But let us not omit to note this clever turn which the flatterer has in his imitations, that if he does imitate any of the good qualities of the person whom he flatters, he gives him always the upper hand. The reason is this: between true friends there is neither emulation nor envy, but whether their share of success is equal or less, they bear it with moderation and without vexation. But the flatterer, mindful always that he is to play the second part, abates from his equality in the imitation, admitting that he is beaten and distanced in everything save what is bad. In bad things, however, he does not relinquish the first place, but, if the other man is malcontent, he calls himself choleric; if the man is superstitious he says of himself that he is possessed; that the man is in love, but that he himself is mad with passion. You laughed inopportunely, he says, but I nearly died of laughing. But in good things it is just the reverse. The flatterer says that he himself is a good runner, but the other man simply flies; that he himself is a fairly good horseman, but what is that compared with this Centaur? I am a natural born poet, and I write verse that is not at all bad, yet To Zeus belongs the thunder, not to me. a Thus at the same time he thinks to show that the other’s tastes are excellent by imitating them, and that his prowess is unrivalled by letting himself be outdone. Thus, then, in the flatterer’s attempts to conform himself to another, differences like these are found which distinguish him from a friend.

Since, however, as has been said before, the element of pleasure is common to both (for the good man takes no less delight in his friends than the bad man in his flatterers), let us now, if you will, draw the distinction between them in this respect. The distinction lies in referring the pleasure to its end. Look at it in this way: There is a pleasant odour in a perfume, there is a pleasant odour in a medicine. But the difference is that the former has been created for pleasure and for nothing else, while in the latter the purgative, stimulative, or tissue-building principle that gives it value is only incidentally sweet-smelling. Then again, painters mix bright colours and pigments, and there are also some physicians’ drugs that are bright in appearance, and have a colour that is not repellent. What, then, is the difference? Is it not plain that we shall distinguish them by the end for which they are employed? So, in a similar way, the graciousness of friends, in addition to goodness and profit, possesses also the power of giving pleasure as a sort of efflorescence, and there are times when friends enjoy together jest and food and wine, and indeed even mirth and nonsense, as a sort of spice for noble and serious things. To this purport it has been said: Joy they had in converse, speaking each to the other and Else there were nothing Which could have parted us twain in the midst of our love and enjoyment. But the whole work and final aim of the flatterer is always to be serving up some spicy and highlyseasoned jest or prank or story, incited by pleasure and to incite pleasure. To put it in few words, the flatterer thinks he ought to do anything to be agreeable, while the friend, by doing always what he ought to do, is oftentimes agreeable and oftentimes disagreeable, not from any desire to be disagreeable, and yet not attempting to avoid even this if it be better. For he is like a physician, who, if it be for the good of the patient, administers saffron or spikenard, and indeed oftentimes prescribes a grateful bath or generous diet, but there are cases where he lets all these go and drops in a dose of castor, or else of Polium, pungent to smell, whose stench is surely most horrid, or he compounds some hellebore and makes a man drink it down, setting neither in this case the disagreeable nor in the other the agreeable as his final aim, but endeavouring through either course to bring his patient to one state—that which is for his good. So it is with the friend; sometimes by constantly exalting and gladdening another with praise and graciousness he leads him on toward that which is honourable, as did he who said Teucer, dear to my heart, son of Telamon, prince of the people. Aim your other shafts like this, and How then, I ask, could I ever forget Odysseus the godlike? Or again, when there is need of reprehension, he assails with stinging words and all the frankness of a guardian: Foolish you are, Menelaus, cherished by Zeus; nor is needed Any such folly as this. There are times, too, when he combines deeds with words, as did Menedemus, who chastened the profligate and disorderly son of his friend Asclepiades by shutting the door upon him and not speaking to him; and Arcesilaus forbade Baton his lecture-room when the latter had composed a comic line on Cleanthes, and it was only when Baton had placated Cleanthes and was repentant that Arcesilaus became reconciled with him. For one ought to hurt a friend only to help him; and ought not by hurting him to kill friendship, but to use the stinging word as a medicine which restores and preserves health in that to which it is applied. Wherefore a friend, like a skilled musician, in effecting a transition to what is noble and beneficial, now relaxes and now tightens a string, and so is often pleasant and always profitable; but the flatterer, being accustomed to play his accompaniment of pleasantness and graciousness in one key only, knows nothing either of acts of resistance or of words that hurt, but is guided by the other’s wish only, and makes every note and utterance to accord with him. As Xenophon says of Agesilaus, that he was glad to be commended by those who were willing to blame him also, so we must regard that which gives delight and joy as true to friendship, if at times it is able also to hurt our feelings and to resist our desires; but we must be suspicious of an association that is confined to pleasures, one whose complaisance is unmixed and without a sting; and we ought in fact to keep in mind the saying of the Spartan, who, when Charillus the king was commended, said, How can he be a good man, who is not harsh even with rascals?

They say that the gad-fly finds lodgement with cattle close by the ear, as does the tick with dogs; so also the flatterer takes hold of ambitious men’s ears with his words of praise, and once settled there, he is hard to dislodge. Wherefore in this matter especially it is necessary to keep the judgement awake and on the alert, to see whether the praise is for the action or for the man. It is for the action if they praise us in absence rather than in our presence; also if they, too, cherish the same desires and aspirations themselves and praise not us alone but all persons for like conduct; also if they are not found doing and saying now this and now the opposite; but, chief of all, if we ourselves know that we feel no regret for those actions for which we are praised, no feeling of shame and no wish that we had said or done the opposite. For if our own conscience protests and refuses to accept the praise, then it is not affected or touched, and is proof against assault by the flatterer. Yet, in some way that passes my knowledge, most people have no patience with efforts to console them in their misfortunes, but are more influenced by those who commiserate and condole with them; and whenever these same people are guilty of mistakes and blunders, the man who by chiding and blaming implants the sting of repentance is taken to be an enemy and an accuser, whereas they welcome the man who praises and extols what they have done, and regard him as kindly and friendly. Now those who unthinkingly praise and join in applauding an act or a saying, or anything offered by another, whether he be in earnest or in jest, are harmful only for the moment and for the matter at hand; but those who with their praises pierce to the man’s character, and indeed even touch his habit of mind with their flattery, are doing the very thing that servants do who steal not from the heap but from the seed-corn. For, since the disposition and character are the seed from which actions spring, such persons are thus perverting the very first principle and fountain-head of living, inasmuch as they are investing vice with the names that belong to virtue. Amid factions and wars, Thucydides says, they changed the commonly accepted meaning of words when applied to deeds as they thought proper. Reckless daring came to be regarded as devoted courage, watchful waiting as specious cowardice, moderation as a craven’s pretext, a keen understanding for everything as want of energy to undertake anything. And so in attempts at flattery we should be observant and on our guard against prodigality being called liberality, cowardice self-preservation, impulsiveness quickness, stinginess frugality, the amorous man companionable and amiable, the irascible and overbearing spirited, the insignificant and meek kindly. So Plato somewhere says that the lover, being a flatterer of his beloved, calls one with a snub nose fetching, one with a hooked nose kingly, dark persons manly, and fair persons children of the gods ; while honey-hued is purely the creation of a lover who calls sallowness by this endearing term, and cheerfully puts up with it. And yet an ugly man who is made to believe that he is handsome, or a short man that he is tall, is not for long a party to the deception, and the injury that he suffers is slight and not irremediable. But as for the praise which accustoms a man to treat vices as virtues, so that he feels not disgusted with them but delighted, which also takes away all shame for his errors—this is the sort that brought afflictions upon the people of Sicily, by calling the savage cruelty of Dionysius and of Phalaris hatred of wickedness ; this it is that ruined Egypt, by giving to Ptolemy’s effeminacy, his religious mania, his hallelujahs, his clashing of cymbals, the name of piety and devotion to the gods ; this it is that all but subverted and destroyed the character of the Romans in those days, by trying to extenuate Antony’s luxuriousness, his excesses and ostentatious displays, as blithe and kind-hearted actions due to his generous treatment at the hands of Power and Fortune. What else was it that fastened the mouthpiece and flute upon Ptolemy ? What else set a tragic stage for Nero, and invested him with mask and buskins? Was it not the praise of his flatterers? And is not almost any king called an Apollo if he can hum a tune, and a Dionysus if he gets drunk, and a Heracles if he can wrestle? And is he not delighted, and thus led on into all kinds of disgrace by the flattery?

For this reason we must be especially on our guard against the flatterer in the matter of his praises. But of this he is not unconscious himself, and he is adroit at guarding against the breath of suspicion. If, for example, he gets hold of some coxcomb, or a rustic wearing a thick coat of skin, he indulges his raillery without limit, just as Strouthias, in the play, walks all over Bias, and takes a fling at his stupidity by such praise as this: More you have drunk Than royal Alexander, and Ha! ha! A good one on the Cyprian, But as for the more clever people, he observes that they are particularly on the look-out for him in this quarter, that they stand well upon their guard in this place and region; so he does not deploy his praise in a frontal attack, but fetches a wide circuit, and Approaches noiseless as to catch a beast, touching and handling him. Now he will report other people’s praise of him, quoting another’s words as public speakers do, how he had the pleasure of meeting in the market-place with some strangers or elderly men, who recounted many handsome things of him and expressed their admiration; then again, he will fabricate and concoct some trivial and false accusation against him, which he feigns to have heard from others, and comes up in hot haste to inquire when it was he said this or when it was he did that. And if the man denies the thing, as he naturally will, then on the instant the flatterer seizes him and launches him into a flood of praise: I wondered if you did speak ill of any of your good friends, since it is not your nature to speak ill even of your enemies, or if you did make any attempt on other’s property when you give away so much of your own.

Others, like painters who set off bright and brilliant colours by laying- on dark and sombre tints close beside them, covertly praise and foster the vices to which their victims are addicted by condemning and abusing, or disparaging and ridiculing, the opposite qualities. Among the profligate they condemn frugality as rusticity ; and among avaricious evil-doers, whose wealth is gained from shameful and unscrupulous deeds, they condemn contented independence and honesty as the want of courage and vigour for active life ; but when they associate with the easy-going and quiet people who avoid the crowded centres of the cities, they are not ashamed to call public life a troublesome meddling with others’ affairs, and ambition unprofitable vainglory. Often enough a way to flatter a public speaker is to disparage a philosopher, and with lascivious women great repute is gained by those who brand faithful and loving wives as cold and countrified. But here is the height of depravity, in that the flatterers do not spare their own selves. For as wrestlers put their own bodies into a lowly posture in order to throw their opponents, so flatterers, by blaming themselves, pass surreptitiously into admiration for their neighbours: I am a miserable coward on the water, I have no stomach for hardships, I go mad with anger when anyone speaks ill of me; but for this man here, he says, nothing has any terrors, nothing any hardship, but he is a singular person; he bears everything with good humour, everything without distress. But if there be somebody who imagines himself possessed of great sense, and desires to be downright and uncompromising, who because he poses as an upright man, forsooth, always uses as a defence and shield this line: Son of Tydeus, praise me not too much, nor chide me, the accomplished flatterer does not approach him by this road, but there is another device to apply to a man of this sort. Accordingly the flatterer comes to consult with him about his own affairs, as with one obviously his superior in wisdom, and says that while he has other friends more intimate yet he finds it necessary to trouble him. For where can we resort who are in need of counsel, and whom can we trust? Then having heard whatever the other may say, he asserts that he has received, not counsel, but the word of authority; and with that he takes his departure. And if he observes that the man lays some claim to skill in letters, he gives him some of his own writings, and asks him to read and correct them. Mithridates, the king, posed as an amateur physician, and some of his companions offered themselves to be operated upon and cauterized by him, thus flattering by deeds and not by words; for he felt that their confidence in him was a testimony to his skill. In many a guise do the gods appear, and this class of dissimulated praise, which calls for a more cunning sort of precaution, is to be brought to light by deliberately formulating absurd advice and suggestions, and by making senseless corrections. For if he fails to contradict anything, if he assents to everything and accepts it, and at each suggestion exclaims good and excellent, he makes it perfectly plain that he The password asks, to gain some other end, his real desire being to praise his victim and to puff him up all the more.

Moreover, just as some have defined painting as silent poetry, so there is a kind of praise that is silent flattery. For just as men engaged in hunting are less noticed by their quarry if they pretend not to be so engaged, but to be going along the road or tending flocks or tilling the soil, so flatterers gain the best hold with their praise when they pretend not to be praising, but to be doing something else. Take, for example, a man who yields his seat or his place at table to a new-comer, or if he is engaged in speaking to the popular assembly or the senate and discovers that someone of the wealthy wants to speak, suddenly lapses into silence in the midst of his argument, and surrenders the platform with his right to speak; such a man by his silence, far more than one who indulges in loud acclaim, makes it plain that he regards the rich person as his better and his superior in intelligence. This is the reason why such persons are to be seen taking possession of the front seats at entertainments and theatres, not because they think they have any right to them, but so that they may flatter the rich by giving up their seats. So, too, in an assemblage or a formal meeting they may be observed to begin a subject of discussion, and later to give ground as though before their betters, and to shift over with the utmost readiness to the other side, if the man opposing them be a person of power or wealth or repute. Herein lies the supreme test by which we must detect such cases of cringing submission and giving way, in that deference is paid, not to experience or virtue or age, but to wealth and repute. Apelles, the painter, as Megabyzus took a seat by his side, eager to discuss line and chiaroscuro, said, Do you see these boys here who are grinding the body for my colours? They were all attention while you kept silent, and admired your purple robe and golden ornaments, but now they are laughing at you because you have undertaken to speak of matters which you have never learned. And Solon, when Croesus inquired about happiness, declared that Tellus, one of the inconspicuous men at Athens, and Cleobis and Biton, were more blest by fate than he. But flatterers proclaim that kings and wealthy persons and rulers are not only prosperous and blessed, but that they also rank first in understanding, technical skill, and every form of virtue.

Again, some people will not even listen to the Stoics, when they call the wise man at the same time rich, handsome, well-born, and a king; but flatterers declare of the rich man that he is at the same time an orator and a poet, and, if he will, a painter and a musician, and swift of foot and strong of body; and they allow themselves to be thrown in wrestling and outdistanced in running, as Crison of Himera was outdistanced in a foot-race with Alexander, but Alexander saw through the deception and was indignant. Carneades used to say that the sons of the wealthy and sons of kings do learn to ride on horseback, but that they learn nothing else well and properly; for in their studies their teacher flatters them with praise, and their opponent in wrestling does the same by submitting to be thrown, whereas the horse, having no knowledge or concern even as to who is private citizen or ruler, or rich or poor, throws headlong those who cannot ride him. It was therefore silly and foolish of Bion to say that if he were sure to make his field productive and fruitful by lauding it, should he not then seem to be in error if he did not do this rather than give himself the trouble to dig it over? And so, too, a man would not be an improper subject for praise, if by virtue of praise alone he becomes profitable and abundantly productive of good. But the truth is that a field is not made any the worse by being praised, whereas a man is puffed up and ruined by those who praise him falsely and beyond his deserts.

Enough, then, on this topic. Let us, as the next step, look at the subject of frankness. As Patroclus, when he equipped himself with the armour of Achilles, and drove forth his horses to battle, did not venture to touch the Pelian spear, but left that, and that only, behind, so the flatterer, when he arrays himself to masquerade in the badges and insignia proper to a friend, ought to leave frankness alone as the one thing not to be touched or imitated, as though it were a choice piece of equipment, Heavy and big and solid, belonging to friendship only. But since they shrink from the exposure that awaits them in laughter and wine, and in jest and jollity, and their next effort is to raise their business to a serious level, by putting a stern face on their flattery, and tempering it with a little blame and admonition, let us not neglect to examine this point also. My mind is this: Just as in Menander’s comedy the sham Heracles comes on carrying a club which is not solid nor strong, but a light and hollow counterfeit, so the flatterer’s frankness will appear, if we test it, to be soft and without weight or firmness, just like women’s cushions, which, while they seem to support and to offer resistance to their heads, yet rather yield and give way to them; and in the same way this counterfeit frankness, through having a hollow, false, and unsound bulk, is inflated and swollen, to the intent that later when it contracts and collapses it may take in and drag along with it the man who throws himself upon it. For the true frankness such as a friend displays applies itself to errors that are being committed; the pain which it causes is salutary and benignant, and, like honey, it causes the sore places to smart and cleanses them too, but in its other uses it is wholesome and sweet; this later shall have a chapter to itself. But the flatterer, in the first place, makes a parade of harshness and of being acrimonious and inexorable in his bearing towards others. For he is rough with his own servants, and very quick to pounce on the errors of his kinsmen and household, refusing to admire or extol any outsider but rather despising all such; he is relentless in his efforts to stir up others to anger by his slanders; his aim is to get the name of a hater of iniquity, and to give the impression that he would not willingly abate his frankness to please others, nor do or say anything at all to curry favour. In the second place, he pretends not to know or notice a single real and important misdeed, but he is very quick to swoop down upon trifling and immaterial shortcomings, and to indulge in an intense and vehement tirade if he sees that a bit of furniture is carelessly placed, if he sees that a man is a poor manager, if anyone is careless about having his hair cut or about his clothing, or does not give proper care to some dog or horse; but let a man disregard his parents, neglect his children, insult his wife, disdain his household, squander his money, all this is nothing to him, but in the midst of such matters he is mute and craven, like a trainer who allows an athlete to get drunk and live loosely, and then is very stern about oilflask and flesh-scraper, or like a schoolmaster who scolds a boy about his slate and pencil, and affects not to hear his blunders in grammar and diction. For the flatterer is the sort of person who will not say a word regarding the actual discourse of a cheap and ridiculous speaker, but will find fault with his voice, and accuse him severely because he ruins his throat by drinking cold water; or if he is requested to look over a wretched piece of writing, he will find fault with the paper for being rough, and call the copyist abominably careless. So it was with the flatterers of Ptolemy, who posed as a lover of learning; they would contend with him about an obscure word or a trifling verse or a point of history, and keep it up till midnight; but when he indulged in wanton cruelty and violence, played the cymbals and conducted his initiations, not one of all these people opposed his course. Just imagine a man using a surgeon’s lancet to cut the hair and nails of a person suffering from tumours and abscesses! Yet this is the sort of thing that flatterers do, who apply their frankness to those parts that feel no hurt or pain.

There is still another class of persons, even more unscrupulous than these, who employ this frankness of speech and reprehension of theirs in order to give pleasure. For example, Agis, the Argive, on an occasion when Alexander gave great gifts to a jester, in his jealousy and chagrin shouted out, Heavens, what gross absurdity! The king turned upon him angrily and said, What’s that you say? Whereupon he replied, I confess that I feel troubled and indignant at seeing that all you sons of Zeus alike show favour to flatterers and ridiculous persons. For Heracles had pleasure in certain Cercopes, and Dionysus in Sileni, and one can see that such persons are in good repute with you. And once, when Tiberius Caesar had come into the Senate, one of the flatterers arose and said that they ought, being free men, to speak frankly, and not to dissemble or refrain from discussing anything that might be for the general good. Having thus aroused general attention, in the ensuing silence, as Tiberius gave ear, he said, Listen, Caesar, to the charges which we are all making against you, but which no one dares to speak out. You do not take proper care of yourself, you are prodigal of your bodily strength, you are continually wearing it out in your anxieties and labours in our behalf, you give yourself no respite either by day or by night. As he drew out a long string of such phrases, they say that the orator Cassius Severus remarked, Such frankness as this will be the death of this man!

All that is really a minor matter. But we come now to matters that are a serious problem, and do great damage to the foolish, when the flatterer’s accusations are directed against emotions and weaknesses the contrary to those that a person really has. For example, Himerius the flatterer used to vilify a man, the most illiberal and avaricious of the rich men at Athens, as a careless profligate destined to starve miserably together with his children. Or again, on the other hand, they will reproach profligate and lavish spenders with meanness and sordidness (as Titus Petronius did with Nero); or they will bid rulers who deal savagely and fiercely with their subjects to lay aside their excessive clemency and their inopportune and unprofitable pity. Very like to these also is the man who pretends to be on his guard against some simple and stupid fool, and to fear him as a clever rascal; and so, too, if a malicious person, and one that delights in constant evil-speaking and fault-finding, be induced to commend some man of note, a flatterer of this stamp takes him straight in hand, and contradicts him, declaring that it is a weakness of his to commend even the worthless. For who is this fellow, or what brilliant thing has he said or done? Especially in regard to love affairs they beset their victims and add fuel to their fire. Likewise if they see that any are in disagreement with their brothers, or that they contemn their parents, or deal scornfully with their wives, they do not admonish or arraign them, but try to intensify such feelings. You have no proper appreciation of yourself, they say, and, You have yourself to blame for this, because you always affect such an obsequious and humble air. And if, as a result of temper and jealousy, a feeling of irritation is engendered toward a mistress or another man’s wife with whom the man has a love-affair, in comes flattery at once with a splendid frankness, adding fire to fire, pleading for justice, accusing the lover of many unloving, obdurate, and reprehensible actions: O ingrate, after crowding kiss on kiss! So the friends of Antony, who was consumed with love of the Egyptian woman, tried to make him believe that she was enamoured of him, and, upbraiding him, they would call him cold and haughty: For the woman, forsaking so great a kingdom and so many happy employments, is wearing her life away, as she follows with you on your marches in the guise of a concubine; But the mind in your breast is proof against enchantment, and you are indifferent to her distress. He was pleased at being taken to task for such wrongdoing, and taking more pleasure in those who accused him than he did even in any who commended him, he failed to see that by this seeming admonition he was being perversely drawn towards her. Such frankness is like the love bites of lascivious women; it arouses and tickles the sense of pleasure by pretending to cause pain. So undiluted wine is of itself a helpful remedy for the hemlock poison, but if they add it to hemlock and mix the two together they make the potency of the drug quite beyond remedy, since it is rapidly carried to the heart by the heat. In like manner the unscrupulous, being well aware that frankness is a great remedy for flattery, flatter by means of frankness itself. It is for this reason that Bias did not give a good answer to the man who asked him What is the fiercest animal? when he replied, Of the wild animals the tyrant, and of the domesticated the flatterer. For it were nearer the truth to say, that among flatterers those who hover about the bath and the table are domesticated, whereas he that extends his meddling and slander and malice like tentacles into the bedchamber and the women’s privacy, is an uncivilized brute and most hard to handle.

One mode of protection, as it would seem, is to realize and remember always that our soul has its two sides: on the one side are truthfulness, love for what is honourable, and power to reason, and on the other side irrationality, love of falsehood, and the emotional element; the friend is always found on the better side as counsel and advocate, trying, after the manner of a physician, to foster the growth of what is sound and to preserve it; but the flatterer takes his place on the side of the emotional and irrational, and this he excites and tickles and wheedles, and tries to divorce from the reasoning powers by contriving for it divers low forms of pleasurable enjoyment. There are some sorts of food, for example, that are without affinity for either the blood or the breath, which add no vigour to nerves or marrow, but only excite the lower passions, arouse the appetite, and make unsound flesh that is morbid within. So the flatterer’s talk adds nothing to the thinking and reasoning powers, but only promotes familiarity with some amorous pleasure, intensifies a foolish fit of temper, provokes envy, engenders an offensive and inane bulk of conceit, commiserates in distress, or, by a succession of slanders and forebodings, causes malice, illiberality and distrust to grow bitter, timorous, and suspicious; and these are all matters that will not escape the observant. For the flatterer is always covertly on the watch for some emotion, and pampering it, and his presence is like that of a tumour in that he ever comes immediately following some morbid or inflamed condition of the soul. Are you angry? Punish then. Do you crave a thing? Then buy it. Are you afraid? Let’s run away. Have you a suspicion? Then give it credence. But if it is hard to detect the flatterer when he is engaged with these major emotions, inasmuch as our power to reason is deranged by their vehemence and magnitude, yet with the lesser ones he will better give a vantage, since his behaviour here will be the same. For example, if a man is afraid that he may have a headache or a digestive upset from drinking or eating to excess, and hesitates about bathing and taking food, a friend will try to hold him back, and advise him to be careful and cautious, but the flatterer drags him off to the baths, and bids him order some novel dish, and not to maltreat his body by forced abstinence. And if he sees his man to be feebly inclined towards some journey or voyage or undertaking, he will say that the occasion is not pressing but that they will accomplish the same result by postponement or by sending somebody else. If the man, after promising money as a loan or a gift to some personal friend, wants to change his mind, but is ashamed to do so, the flatterer throws his weight upon the worse inclination, strengthens his opinion touching his purse, and banishes his feeling of mortification, bidding him be economical, since he has many expenses and many mouths to feed. It follows, therefore, that if we are not unaware of our own feelings of covetousness, shamelessness, and cowardice, we shall not be unaware of the flatterer. For he always acts as an advocate of such emotions, and is frank in discussing the results to which they lead. This, then, is enough on this subject.

Let us come without more ado to the topic of services and ministrations; for it is in these that the flatterer brings about a great confusion and uncertainty in regard to the difference between himself and the friend, because he appears to be brisk and eager in everything and never to make an excuse. For the character of a friend, like the language of truth, is, as Euripides puts it, simple, plain, and unaffected, whereas that of the flatterer, in very truth Self-sick, hath need of dextrous remedies, and of a good many too, I venture to affirm, and of an uncommon sort. Take the case of one person meeting another: a friend sometimes, without the exchange of a word, but merely by a glance and a smile, gives and receives through the medium of the eyes an intimation of the goodwill and intimacy that is in the heart, and passes on. But the flatterer runs, pursues, extends his greeting at a distance, and if he be seen and spoken to first, he pleads his defence with witnesses and oaths over and over again. It is the same with actions: friends omit many of the trifling formalities, not being at all exacting or officious in this respect, not putting themselves forward for every kind of ministration; whereas the flatterer is in these matters persistent, assiduous, and untiring, giving to no one else place or space for a good office, but he is eager for orders, and if he receives none he is nettled, or rather he is utterly dispirited and gives way to lamentations.

Now to people of sense these are manifestations, not of a pure nor a chaste friendship, but of a friendship that is more ready than it should be to solicit and embrace. We need first, however, to consider the difference shown by the two men in offering their services. It has been well said by writers before our time that a friend’s offer takes this form: Yes, if I have the power, and if it can be accomplished, while a flatterer’s is like this: Speak what you have in mind. In fact the comic poets introduce on the stage characters of this sort: Match me, Nicomachus, against that brute; If I don’t pulp his carcase with my whip And make his visage softer than a sponge. In the second place, no friend enters into cooperation unless he has first been taken into consultation, and then only after he has examined the undertaking and agreed in setting it down as fitting or expedient; but if anyone concedes to the flatterer an opportunity to take part in examining and pronouncing upon some matter in hand, inasmuch as he not only desires to yield and give gratification, but also fears to afford suspicion that he may draw back and avoid the task, he gives way and adds his urgency to the other’s desires. For it is not easy to find a wealthy man or a king who will say: Give me a beggar—and if he so will, Worse than a beggar—who, through love for me Leaves fear behind, and speaks his heart’s belief; but such people, like the tragedians, want to have a chorus of friends singing the same tune or a sympathetic audience to applaud them. This is the reason why Merope in the tragedy gives this advice: Have friends who are not yielding in their speech, But let your house be barred against the knaves Who try by pleasing you to win regard. But such people generally do just the opposite; they abominate those who are not yielding in speech, who take a stand against them for their own good, while the knaves who try to win regard, the servile impostors, they receive not only within their houses barred, but even within their secret emotions and concerns. The more simple-minded of such flatterers does not think it necessary or proper that he be taken into consultation regarding matters of this sort, but only that he be a ministrant and servant; whereas the more unscrupulous will do no more than to join in the deliberation, contracting his brows, and looking his assent, but says not a word. However, if the other man states his view, then he says, Gad, but you got a bit ahead of me; I was just going to say that very thing. Now the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and lines do not bend or extend or move of themselves, being imaginary conceptions without material substance, but that they bend and extend and change their position along with the bodies of which they are the boundaries: so, too, you shall detect the flatterer by his being always in agreement with his victim in words and expressions, —yes, in pleasures and in angry passions too—so that in these matters, at least, the difference is quite easy to detect. Still more is this evident in the manner of his ministrations. For a gracious act on the part of a friend is like a living thing: it has its most potent qualities deep within it, and there is nothing on the surface to suggest show or display; but, as a physician cures without his patient’s knowledge, so oftentimes a friend does a good turn by interceding or by settling, while the object of his solicitude knows nothing of it. Such a friend was Arcesilaus in all his dealings, and this was especially seen of him when he discovered the poverty of Apelles of Chios, who was ill; for on his next visit he came with twenty shillings, and taking a seat by the bed, remarked, There is nothing here but Empedocles’ elements, Fire and water and earth and the gentle heights of ether. But you are not even lying at ease. And with that he re-arranged his pillow, and, unobserved, slipped the money underneath. When the aged servingwoman discovered it, and in amazement announced her discovery to Apelles, he said with a laugh, Arcesilaus contrived that fraud! Moreover, the saying that children are born like their parents holds true in the field of philosophy. At any rate, Lacydes, the associate of Arcesilaus, stood by Cephisocrates, as did his other friends, when he was impeached; and when the prosecutor demanded his ring, Cephisocrates quietly let it fall beside him, and Lacydes, perceiving this, put his foot on it and concealed it; for the tell-tale evidence was in the ring. After the verdict, Cephisocrates was shaking hands with the jurors, when one of them, who apparently had seen what happened, bade him thank Lacydes, and related the whole affair; but Lacydes had told it to nobody. So, too, I imagine the gods confer their benefits, for the most part, without our knowledge, since it is their nature to take pleasure in the mere act of being gracious and doing good. But the flatterer’s activity shows no sign of honesty, truth, straightforwardness, or generosity, but only sweating and clamour and running to and fro, and a strained look that gives the appearance and suggestion of onerous and urgent business. It is like an extravagantly wrought picture, which by means of gaudy pigments, irregular folds in the garments, wrinkles, and sharp angles, strives to produce an impression of vividness. He is offensive, too, as he relates how he has had to go hither and thither on the business, how he has worried over it, and then, as he tells of all the enmity he has incurred, and then of his countless troubles and great tribulations; and, as a result, he gets a declaration that it was not worth all that. For any favour that evokes a reproach from its recipient is offensive, disfavoured, intolerable; and in the flatterer’s favours there is this reproach and mortification, which is felt, not at some later time, but at the very time when they are performed. But if a friend has to tell what he has done, he reports it modestly and says nothing about himself. It was in this spirit that the Lacedaemonians sent corn to the people of Smyrna in their need, and when these expressed their admiration of the gracious action, the Lacedaemonians said, It was nothing of any importance; we merely voted that we and our cattle go without dinner for one day, and collected the amount. Such graciousness is not only the mark of a generous spirit, but it is pleasanter for the recipients, since they feel that those who assist them suffer no great damage.

It is not therefore by the flatterer’s offensiveness in his ministrations, or by his facile way of offering his services, that one can best learn to know his nature, but a better distinction may be found in the nature of his service, whether it is honourable or dishonourable, and whether its purpose is to give pleasure or help. For a friend will not, as Gorgias was wont to declare, expect his friend to support him in honest projects, and yet himself serve the other in many also that are dishonest, for he In virtue joins, and not in viciousness. Much rather, therefore, will he try to turn his friend aside from what is unbecoming; and if he cannot persuade him, then he may well retort with Phocion’s remark to Antipater: You cannot use me as both friend and flatterer, that is as a friend and not a friend. For one should assist a friend in doing, not in misdoing, in advising, not in ill-devising, in supporting his conclusions, not his delusions, in sharing his mishaps, not his misdeeds. No, we would choose not even to have knowledge of our friends’ dishonourable actions; how then can we possibly choose to cooperate in them and to share in the unseemly conduct? As the Lacedaemonians, defeated in battle by Antipater, in making terms of peace bade him prescribe any penalty he would, but nothing dishonourable, so a friend, if need befall for his services that involves expense, danger, or labour, is foremost in insisting, without excuse or hesitation, that he be called upon and that he do his share, but wherever disgrace goes with it, he is also foremost in begging to be left alone and spared from participation. But flattery, on the contrary, in arduous and dangerous ministrations fails you, and if you test it by sounding, it does not ring clear, but has an ignoble tone jangling with some excuse; but for any shameful, mean, or disreputable service you may use the flatterer as you will, and treat him as the dirt beneath your feet; and he thinks it nothing dreadful or insulting. You must have noticed the ape. He cannot guard the house like the dog, nor carry a load like the horse, nor plough the land like oxen; and so he has to bear abuse and scurrility, and endure practical jokes, thus submitting to be made an instrument of laughter. So also with the flatterer: unable to help another with words or money or to back him in a quarrel, and unequal to anything laborious or serious, yet he makes no excuses when it comes to underhand actions, he is a faithful helper in a love-affair, he knows exactly the price to be paid for a prostitute, he is not careless in checking up the charge for a wine supper, nor slow in making arrangements for dinners, he tries to be in the good graces of mistresses; but if bidden to be impudent toward a wife’s relatives or to help in hustling a wife out of doors he is relentless and unabashed. As a result the man is not hard to detect in this way, either; for if he is told to do any disreputable and dishonourable thing that you will, he is ready to be prodigal of himself in trying to gratify the man who tells him to do it.

The great difference between flatterer and friend may be most clearly perceived by his disposition towards one’s other friends. For a friend finds it most pleasant to love and be loved along with many others, and he is always constant in his endeavours that his friend shall have many friends and be much honoured; believing that friends own everything in common he thinks that no possession ought to be held so much in common as friends. But the flatterer is false, spurious, and debased, inasmuch as he fully understands that he is committing a crime against friendship, which in his hands becomes a counterfeit coin as it were. While he is by nature jealous, yet he employs his jealousy against his own kind, striving constantly to outdo them in scurrility and idle gossip, but he stands in awesome dread of his betters, not indeed because he is Trudging afoot beside a Lydian chariot, but because, as Simonides puts it, he Hath not even lead to show ’Gainst gold refined and unalloyed. Whenever, then, the flatterer, who is but a light and deceptive plated-ware, is examined and closely compared with genuine and solid-wrought friendship, he does not stand the test, but he is exposed, and so he does the same thing as the man who had painted a wretched picture of some cocks. For the painter bade his servant scare all real cocks as far away as possible from the canvas; and so the flatterer scares all real friends away, and does not allow them to come near; or if he cannot accomplish this, he openly cringes to them, pays them attentions, and makes a great show of respect for them as for superiors, but secretly he is suggesting and spreading some sort of calumny; and when secret talk has caused an irritating sore, even though he be not entirely successful at the outset, yet he remembers and observes the precept of Medius. This Medius was, if I may call him so, leader and skilled master of the choir of flatterers that danced attendance on Alexander, and were banded together against all good men. Now he urged them not to be afraid to assail and sting with their calumnies, pointing out that, even if the man who is stung succeeds in healing the wound, the scar of the calumny will still remain. In fact it was by such scars, or rather such gangrenes and cancers, that Alexander was consumed so that he destroyed Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas, and put himself without reserve into the hands of men like Hagno, Bagoas, Agesias, and Demetrius, to be brought low, by submitting to be worshipped, bedecked and fantastically tricked out by them, after the manner of a barbaric idol. So great is the power wielded by giving gratification, and it is greatest, apparently, with those who seem to be the greatest personages. For self-conceit regarding the noblest qualities, coupled with the wish to have them, gives both confidence and boldness to the flatterer. It is true that lofty places are difficult of approach and access for those who propose to capture them, but loftiness or conceit, in a mind which lacks sense because of the favours of Fortune or Nature, lies at the mercy of the insignificant and mean.

Wherefore I now urge, as I did at the beginning of this treatise, that we eradicate from ourselves self-love and conceit. For these, by flattering us beforehand, render us less resistant to flatterers from without, since we are quite ready to receive them. But if, in obedience to the god, we learn that the precept, Know thyself, is invaluable to each of us, and if at the same time we carefully review our own nature and upbringing and education, how in countless ways they fall short of true excellence, and have inseparably connected with them many a sad and heedless fault of word, deed, and feeling, we shall not very readily let the flatterers walk over us. Now Alexander said that two things moved him to discredit those who proclaimed him a god, his sleeping and his passion for women, evidently feeling that in these matters he revealed the more ignoble and susceptible side of himself; and so in our own case, if we are careful to observe many and many a fault of our own, shameful and grievous, both of omission and commission, we shall constantly be detecting our own need, not of a friend to commend and extol us, but of a friend to take us to task, to be frank with us, and indeed to blame us when our conduct is bad. For there are but few among many who have the courage to show frankness rather than favour to their friends. And again, among those few you cannot easily find men who know how to do this, but rather you shall find those who think that if they abuse and find fault they use frankness. Yet frankness, like any other medicine, if it be not applied at the proper time, does but cause useless suffering and disturbance, and it accomplishes, one may say, painfully what flattery accomplishes pleasantly. For people are injured, not only by untimely praise, but by untimely blame as well; and it is this especially that delivers them over, broadside on, to the flatterers, an easy prey, since like water they glide away from the steeps that repel toward the valleys that softly invite. Frankness, therefore, should be combined with good manners, and there should be reason in it to take away its excess and intensity, which may be compared to that of light, so that any who are exposed to it shall not, for being disturbed and distressed by those who find fault with everything and accuse every one, take refuge in the shadow of the flatterer, and turn away towards what does not cause pain. Now every form of vice, my dear Philopappus, is to be avoided through virtue, and not through the vice that is its antithesis, as some people, for instance, think to escape bashfulness through shamelessness, rusticity through scurrility, and to make their manner to be farthest removed from cowardice and softness if they can make themselves seem nearest to impudence and boldness. Others again, to prove themselves free from superstition, adopt atheism, and play the knave to show that they are not fools, and thus distort their character, like a piece of wood, from one form of crookedness to its opposite, because they do not know how to straighten it. But the most shameful way of disavowing the name of flatterer is to cause pain without profit; and it shows an utterly rude and tactless disregard of goodwill in one’s relations with friends to resort to being disagreeable and harsh in order to avoid abasement and servility in friendship. Such a person is like a freedman of the comic stage, who thinks that abuse is a fair use of equal speech. Since, therefore, it is a shameful thing to fall into flattery in aiming to please, and a shameful thing also, in trying to avoid flattery, to destroy the friendly thoughtfulness for another by immoderate liberty of speech, we ought to keep ourselves from both the one and the other extreme, and in frankness, as in anything else, achieve the right from the mean. The subject itself requiring, as it does, consequent elaboration, seems to determine that this be the final complement of our work.

Seeing, therefore, that there are certain fatal faults attending upon frankness, let us in the first place divest it of all self-regard by exercising all vigilance lest we seem to have some private reason for our reproaches, such as a personal wrong or grievance. For people are wont to think that anger, not goodwill, is the motive of a man who speaks on his own behalf, and that this is not admonition but fault-finding. For frankness is friendly and noble, but fault-finding is selfish and mean. For this reason those who speak frankly are respected and admired, while fault-finders meet with recrimination and contempt. Agamemnon, for instance, has no patience with Achilles, who appears to have spoken with moderate frankness only, but when Odysseus assails him bitterly and says, Hopeless and helpless! Would you had to rule some other Paltry band, not this, he yields and puts up with it, quieted by the friendly concern and good sense of the other’s words. For Odysseus, who had no ground for anger personally, spoke boldly to him in behalf of Greece, while Achilles seemed to be incensed chiefly on his own account. And it is true that Achilles himself, although he was not a man of sweet or gentle temper, but a Terrible man, who is given to blaming even the blameless, submitted himself to Patroclus in silence, although Patroclus often launched upon him strictures like this: Ruthless man, your sire was not the knightly Peleus, Nor was Thetis your mother; no, the grey-gleaming ocean Bore you, and high rugged rocks, you are so hard-hearted. The orator Hypereides used to tell the Athenians that it was only right that they consider, not merely whether he was bitter, but whether he was so upon no cause; and in the same way, the admonition of a thing to be treated with respect and reverence, not to be faced out. And if one also makes it clear that in speaking frankly he is leaving out of all account or consideration his friend’s lapses toward himself, but taking him to task for certain other shortcomings, and that it is in the interest of other persons that he visits him with stinging reproof so unsparingly, the force of such frankness is irresistible, and the generous attitude of the speaker serves only to intensify the bitterness and severity of his admonition. Therefore, while it has been well said that when we are angry or at variance with friends, we ought then most of all to be doing or planning what will be for their advantage or interest, yet it is no less material in friendship, when we feel that we ourselves are slighted and neglected, to speak frankly in behalf of others who are likewise being neglected, and to remind our friends of them. For example, Plato, in the midst of suspicions and disagreements with Dionysius, asked him for an appointment for an interview, and Dionysius granted it, supposing that Plato had some long tale of fault-finding to rehearse on his own account. But Plato talked with him somewhat after this fashion: If you should learn, Dionysius, that some ill-disposed man had made the voyage to Sicily, cherishing the desire to do you harm, but unable to find an opportunity, would you allow him to sail away, and should you let him withdraw unscathed? Far from it, Plato, said Dionysius, for not only the acts of enemies but their intentions as well must be detested and punished. If now, said Plato, somebody has come hither out of goodwill to you, wishing to be the author of some good to you, but you give him no opportunity, is it proper to let such a man go without showing him any gratitude or attention? When Dionysius asked who the man was, Aeschines, he said, in character as fair as any one of Socrates’ companions, and potent in speech to improve those with whom he may associate; but after sailing hither over a vast expanse of the sea in order to discuss philosophy with you, he finds himself neglected. These words so moved Dionysius, that he straightway embraced Plato affectionately, marvelling at his kindliness and high-mindedness, and afterwards he paid to Aeschines honourable and distinguished attentions.

In the second place, then, let us purge away, as it were, and eliminate from our frankness all arrogance, ridicule, scoffing, and scurrility, which are the unwholesome seasoning of free speech. Just as a certain orderliness and neatness should pervade the work of a surgeon when he performs an operation, but his hand should forbear all dancing and reckless motions, all flourishes and superfluity of gesticulation, so frankness has plenty of room for tact and urbanity, if such graciousness does not impair the high office of frankness; but when effrontery and offensiveness and arrogance are coupled with it, they spoil and ruin it completely. There was point, therefore, and polish in the retort with which the harper stopped Philip’s mouth when Philip attempted to argue with him about playing upon his instrument. God forbid, said he, that your Majesty should ever fall so low as to have a better knowledge of these matters than I. But Epicharmus was not right in his retort upon Hiero, who had made away with some of his intimate friends, and then a few days later invited Epicharmus to dinner. But the other day, said Epicharmus, you held a sacrifice without invitation, of friends! As badly answered Antiphon, when the question was up for discussion in the presence of Dionysius as to what is the best kind of bronze, and he said, The kind from which they fashioned the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton at Athens. For the offensiveness and bitterness of such retorts profits nothing, their scurrility and frivolity gives no pleasure; but a retort of this kind betokens intemperance of the tongue combined with malice and arrogance, and not without enmity. By employing it men eventually bring about their own destruction, since they are simply dancing on the edge of the pit. For Antiphon was put to death by order of Dionysius, and Timagenes lost his place in Caesar’s friendship because, while he never indulged in any high-minded utterance, yet in social gatherings and in discussions, for no serious purpose at all, but Whatsoever he thought would move the Argives to laughter, he would on every possible occasion put forward friendship’s cause as an artful excuse for railing. It is true that the comic poets addressed to their audiences many stern rebukes of value to the citizens; but the admixture of drollery and scurrility in them, like a vile dressing with food, made their frankness ineffective and useless, so that there was nothing left for the authors but a name of malice and coarseness, and no profit for the hearers from their words. On other occasions jest and laughter may well enough be employed with friends, but frankness of speech ought to have seriousness and character. And if it concern matters of greater moment, let feeling be so evident, the countenance so serious, and the voice so earnest that the words may claim credence and touch the heart. Failure to observe the proper occasion is in any case exceedingly harmful, but particularly when frankness is concerned it destroys its profitableness. That in the midst of wine and hard drinking we must be on our guard against anything of this sort is plain enough. It is like overcasting fair weather with a storm-cloud, when in the midst of jesting and merrymaking someone starts a discussion that makes others frown and sets the face in rigid lines, as though the topic were meant to combat the god of Relaxation who relaxes the bond of troubled cares, as Pindar puts it. This neglect of occasion contains a great danger also. For men’s minds are perilously inclined to anger on account of the wine, and oftentimes heavy drinking takes control of their frankness and creates enmity. And in general, it does not show a noble or stout heart, but unmanliness rather, for one who never displays boldness of speech when he is sober to be bold at table, as is the way of cowardly curs. There is no need, then, to multiply words on this subject.

Now we observe that many people have neither the assurance nor the courage to school their friends when these are prospering, but on the contrary feel that good fortune is altogether inaccessible and impregnable to admonition, whereas, when one of their friends has fallen and come to grief, they assail him and trample upon him now he is reduced to a subordinate and humble position, letting loose upon him a flood of frank speech, like a stream which has been held in unnatural restraint, and they find a welcome pleasure in the change because of their friend’s former disdain and their own weakness; it would therefore be well to discuss this matter also, and to make a reply to Euripides when he says, When Heaven grants us luck, what need of friends? The reply is, that in good fortune men have most need of friends to speak frankly and reduce their excess of pride. For there are few persons who in good fortune have still a sober mind; most have need of discretion and reason to be put into them from without, which shall repress them when they are puffed up and unsettled with the favours of fortune. But when the Heavenly power casts them down and strips off their importance, there is in these calamities alone admonition enough to work repentance. Wherefore at such a time there is no use for a friend’s frankness or for words charged with grave and stinging reproof; but in such reversals truly ’Tis sweet to gaze into a kind man’s eyes, when he offers consolation and encouragement. And this was true of Clearchus, the sight of whose face, Xenophon says, so kindly and benevolent in the midst of battles and perils, strengthened the confidence of the men in the face of danger. But he who applies frankness of speech and stinging reproof to a person in misfortune, might as well apply some stimulant of vision to a disordered and inflamed eye; he effects no cure nor any abatement of the pain, but only adds irritation to the painfulness, and exasperates the sufferer. Thus no man in good health, for instance, is at all harsh or ferocious against a friend who blames him for yielding to women and wine, or for being lazy and neglecting to take exercise, or for indulging perpetually in baths or unseasonable gourmandise. But for a man who is sick it is intolerable, nay, an aggravation of the sickness, to be told, See what comes of your intemperance, your soft living, your gluttony and wenching. Heavens, man, what a time to talk of that! I am writing my will, the doctors are preparing for me a dose of castor or scammony, and you admonish and lecture me! Under such conditions, then, the very circumstances in which the unfortunate find themselves leave no room for frank speaking and sententious saws, but they do require gentle usage and help. When children fall down, the nurses do not rush up to them to berate them, but they take them up, wash them, and straighten their clothes, and, after all this is done, they then rebuke and punish them. It is said that when Demetrius of Phalerum had been banished from his native land and was living in obscurity and humble station near Thebes, he was not well pleased to see Crates approaching, anticipating some cynical frankness and harsh language. But Crates met him with all gentleness, and conversed with him concerning the subject of banishment, how there was nothing bad in it, nor any good cause to feel distress, since thus he was set free from a hazardous and insecure office; at the same time he urged him not to be discouraged over himself and his present condition. Whereupon Demetrius, becoming more cheerful and once more taking heart, said to his friends, What a pity that those activities and occupations of mine have kept me from knowing a man like this! The kindly words of friends for one in grief And admonitions when one plays the fool. This is the way of noble friends, but the ignoble and degraded flatterers of the fortunate are like the old fractures and sprains, which, as Demosthenes says, are stirred afresh whenever the body suffers some ill, and so these persons have a clinging fondness for reverses, as though they were pleased with them and derived enjoyment from them. For if a man really needs a reminder where he has come to grief through following his own ill-advised counsel, sufficient are the words: Never did I approve the act; indeed I often Spoke against it.

In what circumstances, then, should a friend be severe, and when should he be emphatic in using frank speech? It is when occasions demand of him that he check the headlong course of pleasure or of anger or of arrogance, or that he abate avarice or curb inconsiderate heedlessness. Such was the frankness of Solon towards Croesus, who was spoiled and pampered by fickle fortune, when he bade him look to the end. In such manner Socrates tried to keep Alcibiades in check, and drew an honest tear from his eyes by exposing his faults, and so turned his heart. Of such sort was the conduct of Cyrus towards Cyaxares, and of Plato toward Dion at the time when the latter was at the height of his splendour and was drawing the eyes of all mankind upon himself through the beauty and magnificence of his works, when Plato exhorted him to be on his guard against arbitrary self-will and to fear it, since it is companion to solitude. Speusippus also wrote to Dion not to feel proud if there was much talk of him among children and light-minded women, but to see to it that by adorning Sicily with holiness, justice, and the best of laws, he should bring name and fame to the Academy. But, on the other hand, Euctus and Eulaeus, companions of Perseus, while his good fortune lasted always behaved so as to please him, and complied with his humour, and like all the rest they followed where he led; but when, after his disastrous encounter with the Romans at Pydna, he took to flight, these men beset him with bitter reproaches, and continually reminded him of his errors and omissions, reviling him for everything he had done, until the man, smarting with grief and anger, stabbed them with his dagger and made an end of both of them.

Let thus much, then, serve to define the proper occasion in general. But the friend who is concerned for his friends must not let slip the occasions which they themselves often present, but he should turn these to account. For sometimes a question, the telling of a story, blame or commendation of like things in other people, may serve as an opening for frank speech. For example, Demaratus is said to have come to Macedonia during the time when Philip was at odds with his wife and son. Philip, after greeting him, inquired how well the Greeks were at harmony together; and Demaratus, who knew him well and wished him well, said, A glorious thing for you, Philip, to be inquiring about the concord of Athenians and Peloponnesians, while you let your own household be full of all this quarrelling and dissension! Excellent, too, was the retort of Diogenes on the occasion when he had entered Philip’s camp and was brought before Philip himself, at the time when Philip was on his way to fight the Greeks. Not knowing who Diogenes was, Philip asked him if he were a spy. Yes, indeed, Philip, he replied, I am here to spy upon your ill-advised folly, because of which you, without any compelling reason, are on your way to hazard a kingdom and your life on the outcome of a single hour. This perhaps was rather severe.

But another opportunity for admonition arises when people, having been reviled by others for their errors, have become submissive and downcast. The tactful man will make an adept use of this, by rebuffing and dispersing the revilers, and by taking hold of his friend in private and reminding him that, if there is no other reason for his being circumspect, he should at least try to keep his enemies from being bold. For where have these fellows a chance to open their mouths, or what can they say against you, if you put away and cast from you all that which gets you a bad name? In this way he who reviles is charged with hurting, and he who admonishes is credited with helping. But some persons manage more cleverly, and by finding fault with strangers, turn their own intimate acquaintances to repentance; for they accuse the others of what they know their own acquaintances are doing. My professor, Ammonius, at an afternoon lecture perceived that some of his students had eaten a luncheon that was anything but frugal, and so he ordered his freedman to chastise his own servant, remarking by way of explanation that that boy can’t lunch without his wine! At the same time he glanced towards us, so that the rebuke took hold of the guilty.

One other point: we must be very careful about the use of frank speech toward a friend before a large company, bearing in mind the incident in which Plato was involved. It so happened that Socrates had handled one of his acquaintances rather severely in a conversation which took place close by the money-changers’, whereupon Plato said, Were it not better that this had been said in private? Socrates retorted, Should you not have done better if you had addressed your remark to me in private? And again, when Pythagoras once assailed a devoted pupil pretty roughly in the presence of several persons, the youth, as the story goes, hanged himself, and from that time on Pythagoras never admonished anybody when anyone else was present. For error should be treated as a foul disease, and all admonition and disclosure should be in secret, with nothing of show or display in it to attract a crowd of witnesses and spectators. For it is not like friendship, but sophistry, to seek for glory in other men’s faults, and to make a fair show before the spectators, like the physicians who perform operations in the theatres with an eye to attracting patients. Quite apart from the affront involved—which ought never to be allowed in any corrective treatment— some regard must be paid to the contentiousness and self-will that belong to vice; for it is not enough to say, as Euripides has it, that Love reproved More urgent grows, but if admonition be offered in public, and unsparingly, it only confirms each and every morbid emotion in its shamelessness. Hence, just as Plato insists that elderly men who are trying to cultivate a sense of respect among the young, must themselves, first of all, show respect for the young, so among friends a modest frankness best engenders modesty, and a cautious quiet approach and treatment of the erring one saps the foundations of his vice and annihilates it, since it gradually becomes imbued with consideration for the consideration shown to it. It follows, then, that the best way is to Hold one’s head quite close, that the others may not hear it. And least of all is it decent to expose a husband in the hearing of his wife, and a father in the sight of his children, and a lover in the presence of his beloved, or a teacher in the presence of his students: for such persons are driven almost insane with grief and anger at being taken to task before those with whom they feel it is necessary to stand well. I imagine also that it was not so much the wine that caused Cleitus to be so exasperating to Alexander, as that he gave the impression of trying to curb him before a large company. And Aristomenes, Ptolemy’s tutor, because he gave Ptolemy a slap to wake him up, as he was nodding while an embassy was present, thereby afforded a hold to the flatterers, who affected to be indignant on the king’s behalf, and said, If with all your fatiguing duties and great lack of sleep you dropped off, we ought to admonish you in private, not to lay hands on you before so many people ; and Ptolemy sent a goblet of poison with orders that the man should drink it off. So, too, Aristophanes says that Cleon accused him because With strangers present he reviles the State, thus trying to exasperate the Athenians against him. This blunder, therefore, along with the others, must be guarded against by those who desire, not to show off, or to win popularity, but to employ frank speaking in a way that is beneficial and salutary. In feet, persons that use frank speaking ought to be able to say what Thucydides represents the Corinthians as saying about themselves, that they have a good right to reprove others —which is not a bad way of putting it. For as Lysander, we are told, said to the man from Megara, who in the council of the allies was making bold to speak for Greece, that his words needed a country to back them ; so it may well be that every man’s frank speaking needs to be backed by character, but this is especially true in the case of those who admonish others and try to bring them to their sober senses. Plato at any rate used to say that he admonished Speusippus by his life, as, to be sure, the mere sight of Xenocrates in the lecture-room, and a glance from him, converted Polemon and made him a changed man. But the speech of a man light-minded and mean in character, when it undertakes to deal in frankness, results only in evoking the retort: Wouldst thou heal others, full of sores thyself!

Since, however, circumstances oftentimes impel men that are none too good themselves to use admonition when in the company of others who are no better than they, the most reasonable method would be that which in some way involves and includes in the arraignment the speaker himself. This is the principle of the reproof Son of Tydeus, what has made us forget our swift prowess? and We are no match now even for Hector Who is only one man. And in this way Socrates quietly took the young men to task, not assuming that he himself was exempted from ignorance, but feeling that he had need as well as they to study virtue and to search for truth. For those win goodwill and confidence who give the impression that, while addicted to the same faults, they are correcting their friends precisely as they correct themselves. But the man who gives himself airs in trying to curb another as though he himself were some pure and passionless being, unless he be well on in years or possessed of an acknowledged position in virtue and repute, only appears annoying and tedious, and profits nothing. Therefore it was not without a purpose that Phoenix interjected the account of his own misfortunes, his attempt in a fit of anger to slay his father, and his sudden change of heart, Lest I be known among the Greeks as my father’s slayer This he did because he would not seem to admonish Achilles as though he were unaffected by anger and without fault himself. For such things make a deep moral impression, and persons are more wont to yield to those who seem to have like emotions but no feeling of contempt. Since a brilliant light must not be brought near to an inflamed eye, and a troubled spirit likewise does not put up with frank speaking and plain reproof, among the most useful helps is a light admixture of praise, as in the following: Not without honour now can you be remiss in swift prowess, You who are all the best in our host. No cause for a quarrel Have I ’gainst any man who may be remiss in the fighting, If he is craven, but with you I am wroth beyond measure, and Pandarus, where is now your bow and its winged arrows? Where your repute which no man among us can rival? Lines like the following also sound a clear summons to come back when men are on the verge of giving way: Where’s Oedipus and all those riddles famed? and Can much-enduring Heracles speak thus? For not only do they mitigate the harsh and peremptory tone of the censure, but they also arouse in a man a desire to emulate his better self, since he is made to feel ashamed of disgraceful conduct by being reminded of his honourable actions, and is prompted to look upon himself as an example of what is better. But whenever we draw comparisons with other people, as, for example, with those of a man’s own age or his fellow-citizens or his kinsmen, then the spirit of contentiousness that belongs to vice is made sullen and savage, and it will often suggest with some temper, Then why don’t you go away to my betters, and not trouble me? One must, therefore, in frank speaking toward one set of persons be on his guard against commending another set, with the single exception, it is true, of parents. For example, Agamemnon can say: Truly Tydeus’ son is not much like his father, and so, too, Odysseus in the Scyrians: Dost thou, to shame the glory of thy race, Card wool, whose father was the noblest Greek?

Least of all is it becoming to reply to admonition with admonition, and to counter frank speaking with frank speaking. For this provokes instant heat, and causes estrangement, and such altercation, as a rule, bewrays, not the man that merely rewards frankness with frankness, but the man that cannot tolerate frankness. It is better, therefore, to bear patiently with a friend who affects to offer admonition; for if later he errs himself, and requires admonition, this very fact, in a certain way, gives our frank speaking a chance to speak frankly. For if he be gently reminded, without any show of resentment, that he himself has not been wont to overlook the errors of his friends, but to take his friends to task and enlighten them, he will be much more inclined to yield and accept the correction, as being a way to requite a kindly and gracious feeling, and not fault-finding or anger.

Then again, as Thucydides says, Whoever incurs unpopularity over matters of the highest importance, shows a right judgement ; so it is the duty of a friend to accept the odium that comes from giving admonition when matters of importance and of great concern are at stake. But if he is for ever bickering over everything and about everything, and approaches his acquaintance in the manner not of a friend but of a schoolmaster, his admonitions will lose their edge and effectiveness in matters of the highest importance, since, like a physician who should dole out his supply of a pungent or bitter but necessary and costly medicine by prescribing it in a great number of slight cases where it is not necessary, he will have used up his supply of frankness without result. He will, therefore, be earnestly on his guard against continual censoriousness in himself; and if another person is apt to search narrowly into everything, and keeps up a continual comment of petty accusation, this will give him the key, as it were, in opening an attack on faults that are more important. The physician Philotimus, on an occasion, when a man with an ulcerated liver showed him his finger with a whitlow on it, said, My friend, you need not concern yourself about a sore finger. And so, too, the right occasion gives a friend a chance to say to the man whose accusations are based on trifles of no real import, Why dwell on playful sports and conviviality and nonsense? Let this man, my friend, but get rid of the woman he keeps, or cease gambling, and there we have a man in all else admirable. For the man who receives indulgence in small matters is not unready to grant to his friend the right to speak frankly in regard to the greater. But the inveterate nagger, everywhere sour and unpleasant, noticing everything and officiously making it his concern, is not only intolerable to children and brothers, but is unendurable even to slaves.

But since, to quote Euripides, not everything connected with old age is bad, and the same thing holds true also of our friends’ fatuity, we ought to keep close watch upon our friends not only when they go wrong but also when they are right, and indeed the first step should be commendation cheerfully bestowed. Then later, just as steel is made compact by cooling, and takes on a temper as the result of having first been relaxed and softened by heat, so when our friends have become mollified and warmed by our commendations we should give them an application of frankness like a tempering bath. For the right occasion gives us a chance to say, Is this conduct worthy to compare with that? Do you see what fruits honour yields? This is what we your friends demand; this befits your own character; nature intended you for this. But those other promptings must be exorcised— Off to the mountain or else to the surge of the loud-roaring ocean. For as a kind-hearted physician would prefer to relieve a sick man’s ailment by sleep and diet rather than by castor and scammony, so a kindly friend, a good father, and a teacher, take pleasure in using commendation rather than blame for the correction of character. For nothing else makes the frank person give so little pain and do so much good by his words, as to refrain from all show of temper, and to approach the erring good-humouredly and with kindliness. For this reason they should not be sharply refuted when they make denial, nor prevented from defending themselves; but we should in some way or other help them to evolve some presentable excuses, and, repudiating the worse motive, provide one more tolerable ourselves, such as is found in Hector’s words to his brother: Strange man! ’Tis not right to nurse this wrath in your bosom, as though his withdrawal from the combat were not desertion, or cowardice, but only a display of temper. And so Nestor to Agamemnon: But you to your high-minded spirit Gave way. For a higher moral tone, I think, is assumed in saying You acted unbecomingly rather than You did wrong, and You were inadvertent rather than You were ignorant, and Don’t be contentious with your brother rather than Don’t be jealous of your brother, and Keep away from the woman who is trying to ruin you rather than Stop trying to ruin the woman. Such is the method which frankness seeks to take when it would reclaim a wrongdoer; but to stir a man to action it tries the opposite method. For example, whenever it either becomes necessary to divert persons that are on the point of going wrong, or when we would give an earnest impulse to those who are trying to make a stand against the onset of a violent adverse impulse, or who are quite without energy and spirit for what is noble, we should turn round and ascribe their action to some unnatural or unbecoming motives. Thus Odysseus, as Sophocles represents him, in trying to rouse the spirit of Achilles, says that Achilles is not angry on account of the dinner, but Already at the sight of builded Troy You are afraid. And again when Achilles is exceedingly indignant at this, and says that he is for sailing away, Odysseus says I know what ’tis you flee; not ill repute, But Hector’s near; it is not good to stay. So by alarming the spirited and manly man with an imputation of cowardice, the chaste and orderly with an imputation of licentiousness, the liberal and lordly with an imputation of pettiness and stinginess, they give to such persons an impulse toward what is noble, and turn them away from what is disgraceful, proving themselves moderate in matters beyond remedy, and owning more to sorrow and sympathy than to blame in their frank speaking; but in efforts to prevent the commission of error and in any wrestling with the emotions they are severe, inexorable, and unremitting. For this is the right time for a resolute goodwill and genuine frankness. Blame for past deeds is a weapon which we see enemies using against each other. Whereby is confirmed the saying of Diogenes that as a matter of self-preservation, a man needs to be supplied with good friends or else with ardent enemies; for the former instruct him, and the latter take him to task. But it is better to guard against errors by following proffered advice than to repent of errors because of men’s upbraiding. This is the reason why it is necessary to treat frankness as a fine art, inasmuch as it is the greatest and most potent medicine in friendship, always needing, however, all care to hit the right occasion, and a tempering with moderation.

Since, then, as has been said, frankness, from its very nature, is oftentimes painful to the person to whom it is applied, there is need to follow the example of the physicians; for they, in a surgical operation, do not leave the part that has been operated upon in its suffering and pain, but treat it with soothing lotions and fomentations; nor do persons that use admonition with skill simply apply its bitterness and sting, and then run away; but by further converse and gentle words they mollify and assuage, even as stone-cutters smooth and polish the portions of statues that have been previously hammered and chiselled. But the man who has been hard hit and scored by frankness, if he be left rough and tumid and uneven, will, owing to the effect of anger, not readily respond to an appeal the next time, or put up with attempts to soothe him. Therefore those who employ admonition should be particularly on their guard in this respect, and not take their leave too soon, nor allow anything painful and irritating to their acquaintances to form the final topic of conversation at an interview.