How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (22-23)

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.