How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend (32-34)

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,

Hold one’s head quite close, that the others may not hear it.[*]

With strangers present he reviles the State,

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? [*]

We are no match now even for Hector Who is only one man.[*]

Lest I be known among the Greeks as my father’s slayer[*]

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,[*]

Pandarus, where is now your bow and its winged arrows? Where your repute which no man among us can rival?[*]

Where’s Oedipus and all those riddles famed?[*]

Can much-enduring Heracles speak thus?[*]

Truly Tydeus’ son is not much like his father,[*]

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.