How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (10-14)

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.