How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (20-24)

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.