Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
To the man who declares himself intensely fond of himself, Antiochus Philopappus, Plato says that all people grant pardon, though the very greatest of vices grows up along with many others because of it, a vice on account of which one cannot be a just and unbiased judge of oneself: "for the one who loves is blinded regarding the beloved," unless someone has learned and been trained to honor and pursue what is noble more than what is merely one's own and akin to oneself. This gives the flatterer a wide field to operate in, between friendship and himself, since he has in our self-love a natural base of operations against us; for each of us, being first and foremost a flatterer of himself, readily admits the outside flatterer as a witness and confirmer of the very opinions he already holds and wishes to be true about himself. The man commonly reviled as "fond of flatterers" is in fact intensely fond of himself: out of goodwill toward himself he wants everything good to belong to him, and believes that it does — a wish that is not absurd in itself, but a belief that is precarious and requires great caution.
Now if truth is indeed something divine, and is, according to Plato, "the source of all good things for the gods and of all good things for men," then it is likely that the flatterer is an enemy of the gods, and especially of Pythian Apollo; for he is forever arrayed against the precept "know thyself," implanting in each person a delusion about himself, an ignorance of himself and of the good and bad things that pertain to him — making some of these defective and incomplete, others wholly incapable of correction. Now if, like most of the other vices, flattery attacked only or mainly the base and worthless, it would not be so terrible or so hard to guard against; but since, just as woodworms burrow especially into the soft and sweet-tasting timbers, so too the ambitious, decent, and reasonable characters are the ones that receive the flatterer and nourish him as he attaches himself to them — and further, just as Simonides says that "horse-breeding" does not accompany Zacynthus but the wheat-bearing plains, so we observe that flattery does not follow the poor, the obscure, or the powerless, but becomes a besetting slip and disease of great households and great affairs, and often overturns kingdoms and dominions. The examination of flattery is thus no small task, nor one that calls for slight forethought, if it is, being so exceedingly hard to detect, not to harm or slander friendship.
For lice leave the dying and abandon their bodies once the blood on which they feed grows cold, but flatterers are never at all to be seen approaching affairs that are dry and chilled; rather, they fasten themselves upon reputations and positions of power and grow there, but quickly slip away in times of change. Yet one ought not to wait for that late experience, which is unprofitable — or rather harmful and not without danger. For in a time of need for friends, the perception that one's supposed friends are not friends at all is a grievous thing, offering no exchange of something sound and secure for something unsound and counterfeit. Rather, just as one must have a coin tested and approved before the moment of need, not put to the proof by the need itself, so too with a friend: we ought not to become aware of the harm only after being harmed, but should gain experience and understanding of the flatterer precisely in order not to be harmed. Otherwise we shall suffer the same fate as those who realize, from having already tasted them, that certain drugs are deadly only once the poison is working to destroy and corrupt them.
For we praise neither these people nor those who, setting down as the mark of a friend what is noble and beneficial, suppose that they can immediately catch in the very act, as flatterers, those who converse pleasantly. For a friend is not unpleasant or unmixed with charm, nor is friendship a solemn thing that is bitter and harsh; rather, this very nobility and solemnity of friendship is itself sweet and something to be longed for, and the Graces and Desire have made their home beside it. And it is not only to a man in misfortune that it is sweet, as Euripides says, to look into the eyes of a well-disposed man; friendship brings pleasure and grace to the good no less than it removes pains and perplexities from the unfortunate, and attends them. And just as Evenus said that fire is the best of seasonings, so the god, by mixing friendship into life, has made all things bright and sweet and dear to us when friendship is present and sharing in the enjoyment. Indeed, how could the flatterer slip in among our pleasures, if he saw that friendship nowhere admitted what is pleasant? It cannot be said. But just as false gold and counterfeit coin imitate only the brightness and gleam of real gold, so too the flatterer, imitating the pleasant and gratifying quality of the friend, always tries to present himself as cheerful and blooming and never opposing or standing against anyone. Hence we ought not straightway to suspect, simply as flatterers, those who praise us; for praise belongs to friendship no less than blame does, when the occasion calls for it — or rather, a wholly difficult and fault-finding temper is unfriendly and unsociable, whereas we readily and without pain endure the admonition and outspokenness, in turn, of the goodwill that generously and eagerly bestows praise on what is noble, trusting and loving such a person as one who blames only out of necessity, since he praises gladly.
One might therefore say it is a hard thing to distinguish the flatterer from the friend, if they do not differ either in giving pleasure or in giving praise; for indeed in services and attentions too one can often see friendship being overtaken and outrun by flattery. "Why should it not be so," we shall reply, "if we are pursuing the true flatterer, one who handles the matter with cleverness and art, rather than — as most people do — reckoning as flatterers those so-called self-invited guests and table-companions, spoken of as being heard from only after the water for washing hands has been passed round, men whose lack of freedom becomes obvious to all over a single dish and cup amid buffoonery and coarseness?" Surely there was no need to expose Melanthius, the parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, to those who asked how Alexander had been stabbed, would say, "Through the ribs — into my own belly"; nor those who circle around a rich table, whom neither fire nor iron nor bronze keeps from frequenting a dinner; nor the flattering women of Cyprus who, once they crossed over into Syria, were called "ladder-women," because they would bend down and offer themselves as steps for the wives of kings to climb up onto their carriages.
Whom, then, must we guard against? The one who does not seem, and does not admit, to be flattering — who cannot be caught hanging about the kitchen, nor detected measuring out shadows for a dinner invitation, nor found sprawled out drunk however it happens to fall out, but is for the most part sober and meddlesome, and thinks he ought to have a share in one's affairs, and wants to be a partner in one's secret words, and is altogether a tragic, not a satyric or comic, actor of friendship. For just as Plato says it is "the extreme of injustice to seem just without being so," so too we must regard as dangerous the flattery that goes undetected, not the kind that admits itself; not the kind that is playful, but the kind that is in earnest — for this kind fills even genuine friendship with distrust, often falling in together with it, if we are not on our guard.
Now Gobryas, having rushed together with the Magus into a dark chamber as he fled, and finding himself grappling with him, when Darius stood over them hesitating, told him to thrust his sword through both of them alike; but as for us — if we in no way at all approve the saying "let friend perish along with foe" — in seeking to tear the flatterer away from the friend, entangled with him as he is through many resemblances, we must be very much on our guard lest we either cast out the useful along with the bad, or, in sparing what is our own, fall victim to what does us harm. For just as, I think, wild seeds that are similar in shape and size to wheat and are mixed in with it are hard to winnow out — since they do not fall through the narrower openings of the sieve, or else fall through together with it through the wider ones — so too flattery, mingling itself with every feeling and every movement of friendship, and with its needs and its habitual intimacy, is hard to separate from it.
That friendship is indeed the sweetest thing of all, and that nothing else gives more joy, is precisely why the flatterer too works by means of pleasures and is occupied with pleasures. And because gratitude and usefulness attend upon friendship — which is why a friend is said to be more necessary than fire and water — the flatterer, for this reason, throws himself into acts of service and competes to appear always eager, tireless, and zealous. And since what most holds together the beginning of a friendship is a likeness of pursuits and characters, and, in general, the fact of delighting in the same things and avoiding the same things is what first draws people together and unites them through a shared experience of feeling, the flatterer, having observed this, molds and shapes himself like some piece of material, seeking to fit and mold himself, through imitation, to whomever he attempts to catch — being pliable and easily changed and persuasive in his assumed likenesses, so that one might say, not "the son of Achilles," but "that very man himself, you are he."
And what is the most villainous thing of all about him is this: perceiving that outspokenness — both the word and the reputation for it — is thought to be, as it were, the peculiar voice of friendship as a kind of living creature, and that the lack of outspokenness is unfriendly and ignoble, he has not left even this uncounterfeited; but just as skilled cooks use bitter flavors and harsh seasonings to take away the cloying quality of sweet foods, so flatterers offer not a true and beneficial outspokenness but one that is, so to speak, mocking from beneath a raised eyebrow and merely tickling. The man is thus hard to catch out for these reasons — like those animals which, being naturally able to change color, blend themselves in with the colors and terrain beneath them. But since he deceives and conceals himself by means of resemblances, it is our task to uncover him through his differences and strip him bare, as Plato says, "adorned with colors and shapes not his own, for want of his own."
Let us, then, examine this from the very starting point. We said that the starting point of friendship, for most people, is a disposition and nature that readily embraces the same customs and characters, and takes pleasure in the same pursuits, affairs, and pastimes, sharing a common feeling — a disposition of which it has also been said: an old man has the sweetest speech for an old man, a child for a child, and a woman is congenial to a woman, and a sick man to one who is sick, and a man seized by misfortune is a charm to one undergoing trial. The flatterer, then, knowing that delighting in what is alike, and using and loving it, is something innate, tries first, by this means, to draw near to each person and pitch his tent beside him, as it were, in certain pasturing grounds, quietly grazing alongside him and taking on his color in the same pursuits and pastimes, the same concerns and ways of life, until he affords a handhold and, as one touches him, becomes tame and familiar — blaming the very things, lives, and people that he perceives the other man is annoyed by, and praising what pleases him, not moderately, but so as to go to excess with astonishment and wonder, and confirming the other's loves and hatreds as arising from judgment rather than mere feeling.
How, then, is he exposed, and by what differences is he caught, since he is not actually alike nor becomes so, but only imitates likeness? First, one must observe the evenness of his purpose and its consistency — whether he always delights in the same things and always praises the same things and directs and establishes his own life toward one single model, as befits a free man who is a lover of a friendship and an intimacy of like character. For such is the friend. The flatterer, on the other hand, having no single, fixed hearth of character, and living no life of his own choosing, but molding and fitting himself to another and toward another, is not simple or single but manifold and versatile — flowing, like water being poured from vessel to vessel, always into some other place and taking the shape of whatever receives him. For the monkey, it seems, in trying to imitate a man, is caught out by moving and dancing along with him; but the flatterer himself lures and entices others, imitating them not all in the same way, but dancing and singing along with one man, while wrestling and getting covered in dust along with another; and if he lays hold of one devoted to hunting with hounds, he all but cries out the words of Phaedra: "By the gods, I long to halloo the hounds as I pursue the dappled deer" — and it is no concern of his what the quarry is, but he nets and ensnares the hunter himself. And if he is hunting a young man fond of learning and literature, he is at once found among books, with a beard let grow down to his feet, wearing the philosopher's cloak as his hallmark, and an air of indifference, and numbers and Plato's right-angled triangles are forever on his lips.
And if some easy-going, wine-loving, wealthy man has fallen into his snares, then "much-devising Odysseus was stripped bare of his rags" — the cloak is thrown off, the beard is shorn like a fruitless harvest, and wine-coolers and drinking bowls and laughter in the promenades and jibes against those who philosophize appear instead — just as they say happened at Syracuse, when Plato arrived and Dionysius was seized with a mad passion for philosophy, and the palace was full of dust from the crowd of men drawing geometrical figures; but when Plato gave offense, Dionysius, falling away from philosophy, came rushing back again into drinking bouts and trifling women and nonsense and dissipation, and all his court alike, as if transformed in the house of Circe, were overtaken by a forgetfulness of culture and by simple-mindedness.
The deeds of great flatterers, too, and of demagogues, bear witness to this — the greatest of whom was Alcibiades: at Athens jesting, keeping horses, and living with wit and grace; at Sparta having his hair cropped close, wearing the coarse cloak, and bathing in cold water; in Thrace warring and drinking; and when he came to Tissaphernes, adopting luxury, softness, and ostentation — he won over and ingratiated himself with each people by assimilating and making himself at home with them all. Yet Epaminondas was not such a man, nor was Agesilaus; rather, though they associated with very many men, cities, and ways of life, they everywhere preserved the character proper to themselves, in dress, in manner of living, in speech, and in life. So too Plato at Syracuse was the same man he was in the Academy, and toward Dionysius the same as he was toward Dion. But one could most easily detect the flatterer's shifts — like those of a polyp — by oneself appearing to turn in many directions and by finding fault with a way of life he had previously praised, while suddenly embracing, as though they pleased him, the very affairs, ways of living, or arguments that he had before been annoyed by.
For one will see that he is nowhere steady or truly his own, nor does he love and hate and rejoice and grieve out of feelings that are his own, but, like a mirror, he takes up images of feelings, ways of life, and movements that belong to someone else. Such a man is he that, if you find fault with one of your friends in his presence, he will say, "You have been slow to detect the man; for I myself never liked him either." But if, changing course, you praise the man instead, he will swear by Zeus that he shares your delight and is grateful on the man's behalf, and that he trusts him. And if you say that you must change to a different way of life — say, from public affairs to a life of retirement and quiet —
"...changing," he says, "long ago we ought to have been rid of tumults and envies." But if you seem again to be starting up to act and speak, he chimes in: "You think thoughts worthy of yourself; but freedom from business is sweet, yet inglorious and low." One must say straightaway to such a person: "You appear changed to me, stranger, from what you were before" — I have no need of a friend who shifts along with me and
nods along with me, for a shadow does this even better; I need one who shares in truth-telling and shares in judgment with me. This, then, is one manner of testing; but there is another difference to watch for among the resemblances: the true friend is neither an imitator of everything nor an eager praiser of everything, but only of the best things — for he is disposed, in the words of Sophocles, not to join in hating but to join in loving, and, by Zeus, to join in setting right and
to join in loving the good, not to join in erring or in wrongdoing together — unless someone, like the discharge and staining of an eye infection, unwillingly fills him through association and habit with some fault or offense. It is said, for instance, that Plato's intimates imitated his stoop, Aristotle's imitated his lisp, and King Alexander's imitated the tilt of his neck and the roughness of voice in conversation — for
many people unwittingly pick up a great deal both from characters and from ways of life. But the flatterer has exactly the experience of the chameleon. That creature assimilates itself to every color except white, and the flatterer, being unable to make himself like his patron in matters worthy of seriousness, leaves nothing shameful unimitated; rather, like poor painters who cannot attain to what is beautiful
and so, through weakness, transfer their likenesses into wrinkles and moles and scars, so he becomes an imitator of intemperance, of superstition, of irascibility, of bitterness toward servants, of distrust toward relatives and kin. For by nature he is inclined of himself toward the worse, and seems to be very far from finding fault with what is shameful while he is imitating it. For those who emulate the better things and appear vexed
and displeased at their friends' faults are objects of suspicion — this is exactly what slandered and destroyed Dion in the eyes of Dionysius, Samius in the eyes of Philip, and Cleomenes in the eyes of Ptolemy. But the man who wishes both to be and to seem equally pleasant and trustworthy pretends rather to rejoice even at the worse things, as though, out of excessive affection, he is not even displeased by what is base, but becomes sympathetic with and of one nature with everyone. Hence such men do not even
think it right to be exempt from the misfortunes and chance mishaps of their friends, but pretend to be sick in like manner, flattering the sickly, and pretend neither to see sharply nor to hear well, if they keep company with the somewhat blind or somewhat deaf — just as the flatterers of Dionysius, feigning dim sight, would stumble into one another and knock over the side-dishes at dinner. Some, laying hold even more closely of their patrons' sufferings, insinuate themselves still deeper and mix their show of shared feeling in as far as secrets. For on perceiving
that men are unfortunate in marriage, or suspicious of their sons, or wary of their kin, they themselves spare nothing of their own and lament over their own children or wife or relatives or household, revealing certain secret grievances of their own; for likeness makes people more sympathetic toward one another, and, having as it were received the other's confidences as hostages, they let slip some of their own secrets in return — and having let them slip, they trade on them, and are afraid to abandon the
trust placed in them. I myself know of a man who joined in casting out his own wife when his friend dismissed his; yet he was secretly visiting her and exchanging messages with her, and was caught out when the friend's wife noticed it herself. So inexperienced was that friend of what a flatterer is, thinking that these iambic lines belonged rather to the crab than to the flatterer: "a belly is his whole body; an eye that looks everywhere; a beast that crawls upon its teeth." For
such a portrait as this belongs rather to those who are friends of the frying-pan and of the morning after breakfast, as Eupolis says. However that may be, let us set these matters aside for their proper place in the discourse; but let us not pass over this piece of sophistry in the flatterer's imitations — that even when he imitates something fine belonging to the man he is flattering, he still preserves the superiority for that man. For among true friends there is
no rivalry toward one another and no envy; even if they are equal in success, or even lesser, they bear it without resentment and with moderation. But the flatterer, always mindful of taking second place, concedes the appearance of equality, admitting that he is inferior and left behind in everything except in base things. In base things, however, he does not concede first place, but says, if the other is ill-tempered,
that he himself is melancholic; if the other is superstitious, that he himself is possessed by a god; that the other is in love, but he himself is mad. "You laughed out of season," he says, "but I was dying of laughter." In good things, though, it is the opposite. He himself says he runs fast, but the other flies; he himself rides fairly well — "but what is that next to this centaur? I am a naturally gifted poet and write no mean verse, but
the thundering is not mine, but Zeus's." For by imitating, he seems at the same time to be declaring the other's disposition to be fine, and by conceding defeat, to be declaring the other's power unattainable. Such, then, are some of the differences between the flatterer and the friend in the matter of imitation. But since, as has been said, the element of pleasure is also common to both — for the good man rejoices in his friends no less than
the base man rejoices in his flatterers — come, let us mark out this distinction too. The distinction lies in the relation of the pleasure to its end. Consider it this way. Fragrance is present in perfume, and it is present also in a medicinal remedy. But they differ in that the one exists for pleasure and for nothing else, while in the other the purging, or warming, or fleshing
effect of the remedy's power is what is fragrant, incidentally. Again, painters mix bright colors and dyes, and some medical drugs too have a bright appearance and a color that is not unpleasant. What, then, is the difference? Clearly we shall distinguish them by the end for which they are used. So too, in the same way, the favors of friends have their delightfulness blooming, as it were, upon some fine and beneficial purpose,
though there are times when they make use also of play and the table and wine and, by Zeus, of laughter and banter with one another, as seasonings to what is fine and serious. It is to this that the line applies: "they delighted in telling tales to one another," and "nor would anything else have parted us, loving and delighting in each other." But for the flatterer, this trifling is his whole business and
his whole end: always to cook up and season some game or act or word for the sake of pleasure and toward pleasure. To put it briefly: the one man thinks he must do everything so as to be pleasant, while the other, always doing what is needful, is often pleasant and often unpleasant — not aiming at the latter, yet not avoiding it either, if it should prove better. For just as a physician, if it is advantageous,
adds saffron or spikenard, and often, by Zeus, bathes his patient gently and nourishes him kindly, yet at other times sets these aside and administers castor oil or the heavy-smelling germander, which indeed smells most dreadful — so the friend, when leading someone toward the good with praise and grace, magnifying and delighting him, is like the man who says, "Teucer, dear head, son of Telamon, lord of men, shoot thus"; or, at other times, he forces someone, grinding it up, to drink hellebore,
making neither the unpleasantness in the one case nor the pleasure in the other his end, but through both leading the one under his care toward the single goal of what is advantageous. So too the friend, sometimes magnifying and delighting with praise and grace, leads toward the good, as in this line — "Teucer, dear head, son of Telamon, lord of men, shoot thus" — and "how then could I forget godlike Odysseus?" —
but again, where correction is needed, he takes hold with a biting word and a caring frankness: "You are foolish, Menelaus, nurtured by Zeus; you have no need of this folly." And there are times when he joins the deed to the word as well, as Menedemus did when, by shutting his door on the dissolute and disorderly son of his friend Asclepiades and refusing to speak to him, he brought the young man to his senses; and as Arcesilaus did when he barred Bato from his school, after
Bato had written a verse against Cleanthes for a comedy; but when Cleanthes had persuaded him and he had repented, they were reconciled. For a friend must pain us while benefiting us, but must not destroy the friendship by paining us; rather he must use his frankness like a biting medicine, one that saves and preserves the patient it treats. Hence the friend, like a musician, by his shifting toward what is fine and advantageous, now relaxing, now tightening,
is often pleasant but always beneficial. The flatterer, however, accustomed always to strum the same single note of pleasure and favor, knows neither a resisting deed nor a painful word, but attends only to what his patron wishes, always singing and speaking in tune with him. Just as Xenophon says that Agesilaus was glad to be praised by those who were also willing to blame him, so one must
consider that which delights and gratifies to be a mark of friendship only if it can also sometimes pain and resist; but one must suspect the company that offers a continuous stream of pleasures and holds always to an unmixed and unbiting favor — and indeed, by Zeus, one should keep ready the saying of the Spartan who, when King Charillus was being praised, said, "How can this man be good, when he is not even harsh to the wicked?" Now,
they say the gadfly settles in near the ear on bulls, and the tick on dogs; but among the ambitious, it is the flatterer who, taking hold of their ears with praise and clinging fast there, is hard to shake off. For this reason one must keep one's judgment especially wide awake and watchful here, observing whether the praise is directed at the deed or at the man. Praise is of the deed if people praise us more when we are absent
than when we are present; if, wishing the same things themselves and pursuing the same goals, they praise not us alone but everyone who acts similarly; if they do not appear now doing and saying one thing, now the opposite; and, greatest of all, if we ourselves recognize that we are not regretting the things for which we are praised, nor ashamed of them, nor wishing rather that the opposite of these things had been done and said by us. For
the inner judgment that testifies against us and refuses to admit the praise is unaffected and untouched and unconquerable by the flatterer. Yet somehow most people do not endure consolation in their misfortunes, but are led rather by those who join in lamenting and mourning with them; whereas when they have erred and gone wrong, the one who by rebuke and blame produces a sting of conscience and repentance seems
to be an enemy and an accuser, while they welcome and consider well-disposed and a friend the one who praises and extols what has been done. Now, those who readily praise and applaud any act or word, whether done in earnest or in jest, are harmful only for the present moment and in what lies immediately at hand; but those whose praises reach as far as a man's character, and, by Zeus, touch his disposition
with flattery, do the same thing as those household servants who steal not from the grain heap but from the seed-stock — for they pervert the disposition and character, which is the seed of one's actions and the source and spring of one's life, clothing vice in the names of virtue. For in times of civil strife and war, Thucydides says, "men exchanged the customary
meaning of words for deeds, according to their own judgment. Reckless daring was accounted courage loyal to one's comrades; prudent hesitation, a specious cowardice; moderation, a cloak for unmanliness; and being intelligent about everything meant being idle about everything." So too in flatteries one must watch and be on guard: prodigality being called generosity, and cowardice called caution, rashness called quickness of mind, and pettiness
called self-control; while the lustful man is called devoted and affectionate, the irascible and arrogant man is called courageous, and the mean and abject man is called kind to his fellow men. So too, Plato says, the lover, being a flatterer of his beloved, calls the snub-nosed boy "charming," the hook-nosed one "kingly," dark-skinned boys "manly," and pale ones "children of the gods"; and the sallow complexion is altogether the lover's own invention, born of his pet-naming
and easy tolerance of the boy's paleness. And yet a man persuaded that he is handsome when he is ugly, or tall when he is short, does not remain long in the deception, and suffers only a light harm, not an incurable one. But the praise that accustoms a person to treat vices as though they were virtues, not resenting them but delighting in them, and that strips away shame for one's own wrongdoing — this is what ruined the Sicilians, calling the cruelty of Dionysius and Phalaris
a hatred of wickedness; this is what destroyed Egypt, naming Ptolemy's effeminacy, his fits of possession, his shrieking, and his gashing to the sound of drums "piety" and "service of the gods"; this very nearly overturned and destroyed the character of the Romans at that time, calling Antony's luxuries and licentiousness and revelries cheerful and generous doings, when the power and fortune that dealt with him so ungrudgingly gave those doings pet names; and what else did it fasten upon Ptolemy but
a halter and pipes, and what did it fix upon Nero but a tragic stage and masks and buskins? Was this not the praise of flatterers? Most kings, if they hum a tune, are hailed as Apollos; if they get drunk, as Dionysuses; if they wrestle, as Heracleses — and, delighting in being so addressed, they are led by flattery into every kind of disgrace. For this reason one must guard most of all against the flatterer in the matter of
praise. And this has not escaped the flatterer himself either — he is clever at guarding against suspicion. If he lays hold of some purple-bordered official or boorish man of thick hide, he uses the whole force of his nose, so to speak, just as Struthias did, strutting about at Bias's side and dancing over the man's insensibility with his praises: "You have drunk more than Alexander the king, and I laugh when I think of the Cyprian." But when he sees more refined men
paying especially close attention to him at just this point, and guarding this very territory and ground, he does not bring on his praise directly, but leads it far around in a circle and only then approaches, as though touching and testing a wild creature noiselessly. For at one moment he reports to the man the praises of certain others concerning him, just as orators do, making use of another's persona, saying that strangers or elders in the marketplace were most glad to be in his company, recalling
many good things about him and admiring him; and then again, at another time, having fabricated and pieced together some light and false charges against him, he arrives as though he had heard them from others, with an air of earnestness, inquiring where the man said this or where he did that. And when the man denies it, as is likely, he seizes on this at once and flings him headlong into praises: "But I was amazed that you would have spoken ill of any of your intimates,"
— when you yourself, who were not even born to hate your enemies, have gone after your own friends, though you give away so much of your own?" Others again, like painters who intensify their bright and luminous colors by setting them beside shadow and darkness, so by blaming the opposite qualities, by abuse or mockery or ridicule, disguise the faults that cling to the men they flatter, praising and fostering them under cover of censure. They condemn self-control, for instance, as boorishness
in men who are dissolute, and among the grasping and the criminal and those who grow rich from shameful and wicked dealings they condemn contentment and justice as timidity and want of enterprise. And when they keep company with idle triflers who shun public affairs and the middle course of civic life, they are not ashamed to call political engagement "meddlesome drudgery" and honorable ambition "barren vanity." There are even times when a rhetorician's flattery disparages a philosopher,
and among unchaste women those who call faithful, husband-loving wives "frigid" and "provincial" win high esteem. But the flatterers exceed all bounds of villainy in not even sparing themselves. Just as wrestlers make their own bodies low so as to throw their opponents, so by belittling themselves they slip into making their neighbors objects of admiration. "I am a coward slave at sea," one says, "I give up before hardships,
I fly into a rage when I am spoken ill of" — but of him," he says, "there is nothing to fear, nothing malicious; he is a man apart, who bears everything calmly, everything without distress." And if there is someone who thinks himself a man of great sense and wishes to be thought stern and outspoken, and out of a kind of rectitude is always ready to quote, "Son of Tydeus, neither praise me overmuch nor find fault," the skilled flatterer does not approach him
in that way at all, but has another device for such a case. He comes to him about some private business of his own, as though to consult a superior wisdom, and says that though he has other intimate friends, he is compelled to trouble this man: "For where," he says, "are we to turn who need advice? Whom are we to trust?" Then, having heard whatever the man says, he goes away declaring that he has received not counsel but an oracle.
And if he sees the man laying claim also to some skill in literature, he hands him something he himself has written, asking him to read it over and correct it. Some of King Mithridates' companions, since he had a passion for medicine, offered themselves to be cut and cauterized by him, flattering him in deed rather than in word; for by being trusted by him they were made to seem to bear witness to his skill. Many are the forms this spirit takes, and this class of flatterers, who decline outright praise, requires a shrewder
caution to expose them: deliberately proposing absurd counsels and suggestions and making groundless corrections. For by contradicting nothing, but nodding assent to everything and accepting everything and crying out at every point, "Well done, excellent!" he becomes plainly detectable as one asking for the password, hunting for some other prize, wishing to praise and to join in the general infatuation. And further, just as some have declared painting to be silent poetry, so there is a kind of flattery
that praises in silence. For just as hunters, if they seem to be doing something other than hunting — traveling, or pasturing flocks, or farming — escape the notice of their quarry all the more, so flatterers most effectively lay hold of men with their praise when they do not seem to be praising but doing something else. The man who yields his seat and his couch to one approaching, or who, speaking before the people or the council, notices that one of the rich wishes to speak,
breaks off in the middle and yields him the platform and the floor — he shows by his silence, more than by any shout, that he considers that man his superior and outstanding in judgment. Hence one can see such men securing the front seats at lectures and in theaters, not because they think themselves worthy of them, but so that they may flatter the rich by giving way to them; and taking the lead in speaking at meetings and councils, then yielding
as to their betters, and shifting most readily to the opposite view, provided the man who disagrees is powerful or rich or held in honor. It is especially in the case of such crouching and retreating that one must expose the flatterer — men who yield not to experience, nor to virtue, nor to age, but to wealth and reputation. For when Megabyzus sat down beside the painter Apelles and wished to talk about line and shadow, Apelles said,
"Do you see these boys grinding the pigment? While you were silent they paid close attention to you and admired your purple robe and your gold ornaments; but now they are laughing at you, since you have begun to talk about things you have not learned." And Solon, when Croesus asked him about happiness, declared a certain Tellus, a man of no distinction at Athens, and Cleobis and Biton, to have been more fortunate. But flatterers proclaim kings and
rich men and rulers to be not merely blessed and fortunate, but foremost in wisdom and skill and every virtue. And whereas some cannot bear even to hear the Stoics call the wise man at once rich, handsome, well-born, and a king, flatterers declare the rich man to be at once orator and poet, and if he wishes, painter and flute-player too, and swift of foot and
strong of body, letting themselves be thrown in wrestling and falling behind him in running — just as Crison of Himera let himself fall behind Alexander in a race, and Alexander, perceiving it, was angry. And Carneades used to say that the sons of the rich and of kings learn nothing well and properly except horsemanship; for in their studies their teacher flatters them by praising them, and their wrestling partner lets himself be thrown, whereas the horse,
not knowing or caring who is a commoner or a ruler, rich or poor, throws off those who cannot ride it. So Bion's remark was simple and foolish: "If a man, by praising a field, were going to make it productive and fruitful, then surely he would not be thought mistaken in doing this rather than digging and laboring over it; so too a man would not be strange for loving praise, if praise
were of benefit and profit to the one praised." But a field does not become worse for being praised, whereas men are puffed up and ruined by those who praise falsely and beyond their desert. Let this suffice, then, on this subject; let us next examine the matter of frankness of speech. For it was fitting that, just as Patroclus, when he put on Achilles' armor and drove out his horses to battle, did not dare to touch the spear
of Pelion alone, but left it behind, so the flatterer, though he equips and fashions himself with all the badges and tokens of a friend, should leave untouched and unimitated frankness alone, as the special and weighty and mighty burden proper to friendship. But since, in fleeing the kind of frank reproof that comes with laughter and unrestrained jesting and mockery and playfulness, they now raise the matter to a grave and solemn pitch and flatter with a scowling face,
mixing in some blame and admonition, come, let us not leave this untested either. I think that, just as in Menander's comedy the false Heracles comes forward carrying a club that is not solid or strong but a hollow, empty sham, so the frankness of the flatterer will appear, to those who test it, soft and light and lacking any real tension, but doing just what women's pillows do: they seem
to push back and resist the head, but instead give way and yield all the more. So this counterfeit frankness, being an empty, false, and treacherous swelling, is puffed up and swollen, so that when it collapses and gives way, it may receive and drag down along with itself the one who falls upon it. For true and friendly frankness fastens upon actual faults, bringing a pain that is salutary and solicitous, like honey biting into wounds
and cleansing them, but otherwise beneficial and sweet — a subject on which there will be a discussion of its own. The flatterer, on the other hand, first displays himself as harsh and impetuous and inexorable toward others — for he is severe with his own servants, and quick to pounce on the failings of relatives and household members, admiring and respecting no one outside his circle, but looking down on them, and unforgiving and
slanderous in provoking others to anger, hunting for a reputation as a hater of wickedness, as one who would never willingly relax his frankness with them, nor do nor say anything to please them; and then, while pretending to know and recognize none of their real and great faults, he is quick to pounce with vehemence and force upon their small and external shortcomings — if he sees a utensil
carelessly left lying about, if a house kept badly, if someone neglecting a haircut, or a cloak, or a dog, or a horse, not caring for it properly; but neglect of parents, and carelessness toward children, and dishonoring a wife, and contempt for one's own household, and the ruin of one's fortune, are nothing to him — he is voiceless and timid about these, like a trainer who lets his athlete get drunk and indulge himself, and then is severe about
an oil-flask or a scraper; or like a grammar teacher who scolds a boy about his writing tablet and pen, but seems not to hear when he makes solecisms and barbarisms in speech. For such is the flatterer, just as it is with a bad and ridiculous public speaker: he says nothing about the speech itself, but finds fault with the voice, and complains bitterly that he is ruining his throat by drinking cold water, and when told, against his will, to go through a wretched composition, he blames the paper
as being too rough, and calls the copyist filthy and careless. So too, when courting Ptolemy, who fancied himself a lover of learning, they would fight until midnight over a point of grammar or a line of verse or a piece of history, but when he indulged in cruelty and violence, and in torturing and executing men, not one of all that number stood in his way. It is as if someone, faced with a man covered in tumors and fistulas, were to use a surgeon's scalpel to trim his hair and his
nails: just so flatterers apply frankness only to the parts that give no pain and cause no distress. And still others, more cunning than these, employ frankness and fault-finding for the sake of pleasure. So Agis the Argive, when Alexander was giving great gifts to a certain buffoon, cried out from envy and vexation, "Oh, what utter absurdity!" and when the king turned on him in anger and said, "What
is it you are saying?" he replied, "I confess I am vexed and indignant, seeing that all of you who are born of Zeus alike take delight in flatterers and ridiculous men; for Heracles too took pleasure in certain Cercopes, and Dionysus in Sileni, and among your own court one can see men of that sort held in high favor." And when Tiberius Caesar once entered the senate, one of his flatterers stood up and said that free men
ought to speak frankly and hold nothing back, nor keep silent about what was to their advantage; and having thus aroused everyone's attention, when silence fell and Tiberius was listening intently, he said, "Hear me, Caesar. There is a thing we all charge against you, and no one dares to say it openly: you neglect yourself and expose your body and wear yourself out continually with cares and toils on our behalf, resting neither by day nor by night." And as he
went on stringing together many such things, they say the orator Cassius Severus remarked, "This frankness will be the death of this man." These, however, are lesser matters. Those that follow are already grievous and injurious to fools, whenever flatterers accuse men of the opposite passions and maladies — as Himerius the flatterer reviled one of the richest and stingiest and most miserly men in Athens as a spendthrift and careless, one who would go hungry
along with his children, or as, conversely, they reproach the extravagant and lavish for pettiness and meanness, as Titus Petronius did with Nero, or as they urge rulers who treat their subjects harshly and cruelly to lay aside their excessive leniency and their untimely and unprofitable pity. Like these too is the man who pretends to be on his guard against, and to fear, someone who is really simple-minded and dull and foolish, as though he were formidable and cunning, and
the flatterer of the envious man, who always delights in speaking ill of others and finding fault, if ever, being drawn out, he praises one of the distinguished, taking hold of him and contradicting him as though he had a disease, this praising of men who are worthless: "Who indeed is this man, or what brilliant thing has he said or done?" But it is above all in matters of love that flatterers set upon those they flatter and fan the flames further.
For seeing brothers at odds, or men scorning their parents or looking down upon their own wives, they neither admonish nor reproach them, but even intensify their anger further, saying, "You do not realize your own worth," and "You are the cause of this, always behaving obsequiously and with servility." But if against a courtesan or an adulterous mistress some itch of anger and jealousy should arise, flattery is at once on hand with brilliant frankness,
bringing fire to fire, pleading the case and accusing the lover of doing many unlovely, harsh, and reprehensible things: "O ungrateful man," of her frequent kisses. So did Antony's friends persuade him, burning with love for the Egyptian queen, that it was he who was loved by her, and, reviling him, called him unfeeling and arrogant: "For the woman, having abandoned so great a kingdom and a life of happy pursuits,
wastes away campaigning at your side, keeping the guise of a mere concubine; while you have an unmoved heart within your breast," and you look on unconcerned while she grieves. And he, delighted to be convicted of wrongdoing, and pleased with his accusers no less than with those who praised him, did not notice that he was being further corrupted by the one who seemed to be admonishing him. For this kind of frankness resembles the love-bites of unchaste women, arousing and titillating, under the pretense of causing pain,
the very pleasure it seems to hurt. And just as, when men mix unmixed wine — which is otherwise a remedy — with hemlock, they make the drug's power entirely beyond help, since it is carried up quickly to the heart by the wine's heat, so wicked men, knowing that frankness is a great help against flattery, use frankness itself as an instrument of flattery. This is why Bias did not answer well the man who asked him which
creature was the most savage; he replied that among wild creatures it is the tyrant, and among tame ones the flatterer. It would have been truer to say that among flatterers some are tame — those found around the bathhouse and the dinner table — while the one who extends his meddling, slanderous, malicious reach, like tentacles, into the private chambers and the women's quarters, is savage and
beastlike and hard to handle. There seems to be one particular way of guarding against him: to recognize and always remember that the soul has one part that is truthful, that loves what is noble, and rational, and another part that is irrational, prone to falsehood, and given to passion. The friend is always present as counselor and advocate to the better part, like a physician fostering and preserving what is healthy, while the flatterer sits beside the passionate
and irrational part, and scratches and tickles it and wins it over, and draws it away from reason, contriving for it certain base pleasures. Just as, among foods, there are some that attach themselves neither to the blood nor to the breath, nor lend any strength to sinew or marrow, but instead stir the genitals and rouse the belly and make the flesh flabby and unsound, so the flatterer's talk contributes nothing
...to the part of the soul that thinks and reasons, but instead tames some pleasure of desire, or stretches an irrational spirit of anger, or stirs up envy, or breeds a heavy and empty swelling of pride, or joins in lamenting over grief, or makes the malicious, illiberal, and faithless part of the soul forever sharp, jumpy, and suspicious with certain slanders and premonitions — such talk will not escape the notice of those who pay attention. For he always lurks beneath some passion and fattens it, appearing each time, like a swollen gland, at whatever part of the soul is ulcerous and inflamed.
“Are you angry? Punish him. Do you desire something? Buy it. Are you afraid? Let us flee. Do you suspect something? Believe it.” But if the passions in these matters are hard to detect, because reason has been knocked out by their violence and magnitude, the flatterer will offer his hand more readily in small things, being the same man throughout. For instance, when someone under suspicion of some hangover or overindulgence hesitates about bathing or eating, the friend will hold him back, urging caution and attention, but the flatterer drags him off to the bathhouse and tells him to have some fresh dish served and not to torment his body by holding back. And seeing him growing faint-hearted about a journey, a voyage, or some undertaking, he will say the occasion is not urgent, and that the same thing can be accomplished by postponing it or by sending someone else.
And if a man, having promised to lend or give money to a relative, regrets it but is ashamed to go back on his word, the flatterer, adding his weight to the worse side of the scale, strengthens his resolve to protect his purse and cuts away his sense of shame, urging him to be sparing on the ground that he spends a great deal already and ought to be enough help to many people as it is. Hence, if we do not conceal from ourselves our own desire, shamelessness, and cowardice, the flatterer will not escape our notice either. For he is always pleading the case of these very passions, and speaking with apparent frankness about how they will turn out. So much, then, on this subject.
Let us now turn to services and acts of assistance; for here too the flatterer creates great confusion, blurring his difference from the true friend, by seeming tireless and eager in everything and never making excuses. For the friend's manner, like the story of truth according to Euripides, is simple, plain, and unaffected, whereas the flatterer's manner, being genuinely diseased in itself, needs many clever and, by Zeus, elaborate remedies.
Just as, in chance meetings, the friend sometimes says nothing and hears nothing but simply glances, smiles, gives and receives an inward look of goodwill and familiarity, and passes on — while the flatterer runs, chases after, greets from far off, and if he is spoken to first after being seen, excuses himself again and again with witnesses and oaths — so too, in practical affairs, friends leave many small things aside, not scrupulously working out every detail, not meddling, and not thrusting themselves into every service. The flatterer, by contrast, is here constant, persistent, and tireless, leaving no room or place for anyone else's service, wanting always to be given orders, and if he is not, feeling stung — or rather utterly despondent and full of complaint.
These, then, are signs, to men of sense, not of true or sound friendship but of a friendship that plays the courtesan, entangling itself too readily around those in need. Still, one must first look for the difference in their promises. It was well said by those before us that the friend's promise is, “if I am able to accomplish it, and if it is something that can be accomplished,” while the flatterer's is, “say whatever is on your mind.” Indeed the comic poets bring characters like this on stage: “Set me, Nicomachus, against the soldier — if I don't beat him into a ripe melon all over,” “if I don't make his face softer than a sponge.”
Again, no true friend becomes a partner in an undertaking unless he has first become its advisor, and only after he has tested it and helped judge that it is fitting or advantageous. The flatterer, however, even if he is granted a role in testing and giving his opinion on the matter, is eager not only to yield and to please, but also fears seeming hesitant or reluctant to act, and so he gives way and joins in spurring the desire onward. For scarcely any rich man or king is ready to say, “let me have a poor man — or, if he likes, one worse than poor — who, being well disposed toward me, will set fear aside and speak from the heart,” but instead, like tragic actors, such men need a chorus of friends singing along with them, or a theater applauding in unison.
Hence tragic Merope advises: “As your friends, keep those who do not go slack in speech, and let the bolted door of your house shut out those base men who speak only to please and gratify you.” But such men do just the opposite: those who do not go slack in speech, but resist them for their own good, they shun; while those base men who speak to please — the illiberal, the tricksters — they admit not only within their bolted doors but into their most secret feelings and affairs.
Of these flatterers, the simpler sort does not think it his place, nor does he claim, to be an advisor in matters of such weight, but merely an assistant and servant. The more cunning sort, however, stands sharing in the perplexity, knitting his brows and nodding along with his face, yet saying nothing — until the other man states his own opinion, whereupon he says, “Heracles, you just beat me to it! I was about to say the very same thing.” For just as mathematicians say that surfaces and lines neither bend nor stretch nor move on their own, being purely intelligible and incorporeal, but bend, stretch, and shift together with the bodies whose boundaries they are, so too you will always catch the flatterer agreeing, declaring the same opinion, rejoicing — yes, by Zeus, and growing angry — right along with his patron, so that in these matters at least the difference is entirely easy to detect.
Still more, however, is it evident in the manner of their service. For the kindness that comes from a friend, like a living creature, keeps its most essential powers deep within, and nothing showy or ostentatious attends it; often, just as a doctor cures a patient without his even knowing it, a friend does good by intervening or by settling some matter, caring for someone while he remains unaware of it.
Such a man was Arcesilaus. Among other instances, learning that Apelles of Chios, who was ill, was also in poverty, he came back to him bringing twenty drachmas, and sitting down beside him said, “Here there is nothing but these elements of Empedocles — fire and water and earth and the gentle height of air — but you are not even lying comfortably,” and while adjusting his pillow, he quietly slipped the coins underneath it. When the old woman who attended him found the money and, astonished, reported it to Apelles, he laughed and said, “This is one of Arcesilaus' thefts.”
And indeed, in philosophy, children born do resemble their parents. Lacydes, for instance, a pupil of Arcesilaus, stood by Cephisocrates, together with his other friends, when Cephisocrates was on trial on an impeachment charge. When the accuser asked for his signet ring, Cephisocrates quietly set it down beside him; Lacydes, noticing, stepped on it with his foot and hid it — for the proof of guilt lay in that ring. After the verdict, while Cephisocrates was thanking the jurors, one of them, who it seems had seen what happened, told him to be grateful to Lacydes and related the whole affair, since Lacydes himself had told no one. In just this way, I think, the gods too do most of their good deeds unseen, taking pleasure by their very nature in the act of giving and doing good.
The flatterer's work, however, has nothing just, true, simple, or generous about it; instead there is sweat, shouting, running to and fro, and a straining of the face that produces an impression and appearance of laborious, urgent service — like an overworked painting that, with garish colors, broken folds of drapery, wrinkles, and sharp angles, manufactures an illusion of vividness.
He is also tiresome in recounting how he acted on your behalf — rehearsing his wanderings and worries, then his quarrels with others, then countless troubles and great sufferings — until one is tempted to say the reward was not worth all that. For every kindness thrown back in one's face is oppressive, thankless, and unbearable, but with the favors of flatterers, the reproachful, embarrassing quality is present not later but from the very moment they are being performed. The true friend, if it becomes necessary to mention the matter at all, reports it modestly and says nothing about himself.
Thus, when the Spartans sent grain to the Smyrnaeans in their need, and the Smyrnaeans marveled at the kindness, they said, “It is nothing much — we simply voted to go without our own breakfast, and that of our pack animals, for a single day, and gathered this from what we saved.” Such a kindness is not only generous but also more pleasant to those who receive it, because they believe that those who benefit them are not being greatly harmed by it.
One would not, then, recognize the flatterer's true nature chiefly from the tiresomeness of his services or the readiness of his promises, but rather from whether the service itself is honorable or shameful, and whether it aims at pleasure or at benefit. For the true friend does not, as Gorgias maintained, expect his friend to render him just services while he himself performs many unjust ones in return; his nature is to share in soundness of mind, not to share in sickness. He will rather turn his friend away from what is not fitting; and if he cannot persuade him, there is that fine saying of Phocion to Antipater: “You cannot have me as both friend and flatterer” — that is, as both a friend and no friend at all.
For one must work together with a friend, not join in his knavery; take counsel with him, not join in his scheming; bear witness with him, not join in deceiving; and share his misfortune, by Zeus, not share in his wrongdoing. Indeed, merely sharing knowledge of a friend's shameful acts is not even desirable — how much less desirable, then, is joining in doing them and sharing the disgrace? Just as the Spartans, defeated in battle by Antipater and negotiating terms, asked him to impose on them whatever penalty he wished, so long as it was not shameful, so too the true friend, when some need arises involving expense, danger, or toil, insists on being called first and taking part without excuse and eagerly — but where shame is involved, he asks only to be left alone and spared.
Flattery does just the opposite: in laborious and dangerous services it begs off, and if you test it by tapping, it rings back hollow and base under some pretext; but in shameful, lowly, and disreputable services — “use me up,” “trample on me” — it considers nothing terrible or degrading. You see the monkey? It cannot guard the house like the dog, nor carry burdens like the horse, nor plow the earth like the oxen; so it submits to abuse and buffoonery and puts up with being toyed with, offering itself as an instrument of laughter.
So too the flatterer, unable to plead a case, contribute funds, or join in a struggle, and falling short in every kind of labor and earnest effort, is unstinting in clandestine, under-the-table affairs: a faithful servant of love affairs, meticulous in settling a prostitute's fee, careful in working out the cost of a drinking party, never lazy in preparing dinners, attentive in tending mistresses — and when ordered to be insolent toward in-laws or to help drive out a wife, he is unyielding and unashamed. So the man is not hard to detect on this front either: ordered to do whatever disreputable, dishonorable thing you like, he is ready to spare nothing of himself, so long as it pleases the one giving the order.
And not least of all, one might see how very different he is from the true friend in his attitude toward that friend's other friends. For the true friend finds it most pleasant to love and be loved along with many others, and constantly works to make his friend widely loved and widely honored; holding that friends' possessions are held in common, he thinks nothing ought to be so common as friends themselves. The flatterer, being false, spurious, and alloyed with base metal, and knowing above all that he is wronging friendship — counterfeiting it, as it were, like debased coinage — is envious by nature, but directs his envy against his equals, competing to outdo them in buffoonery and idle gossip, while he trembles and fears his superior — not, by Zeus, like “a foot soldier racing beside a Lydian chariot,” but rather, as Simonides says, like lead set “beside refined gold, unmixed.”
So then, being light, fusible, and deceptive, when he is set up close beside a true, weighty, hammered-solid friendship for comparison, he cannot bear the test but is exposed — and does just what that painter did who painted roosters so badly: he used to order his slave-boy to chase the real roosters as far as possible from his picture, and this flatterer likewise chases away true friends and does not let them come near. But if he cannot manage that, he openly fawns on the true friends, dances attendance on them, and pretends to be in awe of them as his betters, while secretly he lets slip and sows the seeds of slander against them.
And when his hidden word has scratched open a wound, even if it does not do its full work at once, he keeps in mind and holds to the maxim of Medius. Medius was, as it were, the choir-leader of the flatterers around Alexander, a master sophist arrayed in chief against the best men. He used to urge his fellows to attack boldly and bite with their slanders, teaching that even if the man bitten heals the wound, the scar of the slander will remain. And indeed, eaten away by such scars — or rather by gangrenes and cancers — Alexander destroyed Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas; while to men like Hagnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and Demetrius he gave himself unstintingly to be tripped up, letting himself be bowed down to, dressed up, and remolded by them like some barbarian idol.
So great a power has the desire to please, and it seems, it would appear, to be greatest of all in those thought to be the greatest of men; for believing oneself to possess the finest qualities, joined with the wish that it be so, gives the flatterer both credibility and courage. For while, among physical places, the heights are hard of approach and hard for plotters to reach, the height and pride that arise in a soul lacking sense — whether from good fortune or from natural gifts — is most readily accessible of all to the small and the lowly.
Hence, at the beginning of this discourse we urged, and now we urge again, that we cut out from ourselves self-love and self-conceit; for this, flattering us in advance, makes us softer prey for the flatterers who wait at our door, as though we were already prepared for them. But if, obeying the god, we learn how valuable “know thyself” is to each of us above all else, and so review our own nature, upbringing, and education, finding them to have countless deficiencies in goodness and much that is base and haphazardly mixed in among our actions, our words, and our passions, we will not so easily offer ourselves as a place for flatterers to walk about in.
Alexander, for one, said he most distrusted those who proclaimed him a god whenever it came to sleeping and to sex, since in these matters he found himself becoming more ignoble and more subject to passion than his ordinary self. We too, seeing many shameful, distressing, incomplete, and mistaken things in ourselves in many places, will constantly discover that we stand in need not of a friend who praises and showers us with fine words, but of one who examines us, speaks frankly, and — by Zeus — blames us when we act wrongly.
For among the many, few are those who dare to speak frankly rather than to please their friends; and even among that few you will not easily find those who know how to do it, but rather those who suppose that if they scold and find fault, they are using frankness. And yet, like any other drug, frank speech that misses its proper occasion has the effect of causing needless pain and disturbance, and produces, in a way, distress of the sort that flattery produces pleasure. For people are harmed not only by being praised out of season but also by being blamed; and this above all delivers them, easily caught and off balance, into the hands of flatterers, who, deflected from what is too harsh and resistant, slip toward what is soft and yielding, like water toward hollow ground. For this reason frank speech must be tempered with good character and must have reasoning that removes its excess and its unmixed intensity, as one tempers light, so that people, not being disturbed or pained by those who find fault with everything and blame everyone, may not take refuge in the shadow of the flatterer and turn away toward whatever gives no pain.
For every vice, Philopappus, must be fled by way of virtue, not by way of the opposite vice, as some seem to think — fleeing bashfulness by shamelessness, and boorishness by buffoonery, while placing their character as far as possible from cowardice and softness, so that they appear very close to recklessness and rashness. Some also make of atheism and unscrupulousness an excuse for escaping superstition and folly, twisting their character, like a piece of wood bent the wrong way, from one crooked extreme to the opposite one out of inexperience in setting it straight. And the most shameful renunciation of flattery is to be needlessly unpleasant, and, out of sheer tastelessness and lack of skill in dealing kindly with people, to flee, through mere disagreeableness and harshness, what is ignoble and servile in friendship — like the freedman in comedy who thinks that giving offense is the enjoyment of free speech.
Since, then, it is shameful to fall into flattery by pursuing what is pleasing, and shameful also, in fleeing flattery, to destroy what is friendly and caring through an excess of frankness, and one must suffer neither fault but, as with anything else, draw from frank speech what is good by way of moderation — the argument itself, in demanding what comes next, seems to be putting the finishing touch to our essay.
So then, seeing that there are, as it were, a good many banes attached to frank speech, let us first remove from it self-love, being very much on guard lest, on account of some private matter — feeling wronged and pained, say — we seem to be reproaching our friend. For people suppose that the speech made on behalf of the speaker himself arises not from goodwill but from anger, and that it is not admonition but complaint. For frank speech is a mark of friendship and dignity, while complaint is self-regarding and petty. Hence people respect and admire those who speak frankly, but return the charge against, and despise, those who merely complain — just as Agamemnon could not tolerate Achilles, who seemed to speak with moderate frankness, yet yielded to and endured Odysseus, though he attacked him bitterly, saying, "Accursed one, would that you were commanding some other, inglorious army," restraining himself before the caring and sensible character of the speech. For Odysseus, having no private grievance of his own, spoke frankly to him on behalf of Greece, whereas the other seemed to be angry chiefly on his own account.
As for Achilles himself — though he was no sweet-tempered or gentle man, but a formidable one, of the kind who could make even an innocent man feel blamed — he allowed Patroclus in silence to heap up many such reproaches against him as "pitiless one; surely then your father was not the horseman Peleus, nor Thetis your mother; rather the grey sea bore you, and the sheer cliffs, since your mind is so unyielding." For just as Hyperides the orator thought the Athenians should consider not only whether a man is harsh, but whether he is harsh gratis — without personal stake — so too the admonition of a friend, when it is free of all private feeling, commands respect, dignity, and cannot be met with a defiant stare.
But if someone, in the very act of speaking frankly, is plainly seen to pass over and leave entirely aside the wrongs his friend has done to him personally, while exposing and censuring, without sparing him, certain other faults committed against others, the force of such frank speech is irresistible, and by the sweetness of the one giving admonition he only intensifies the sharpness and severity of the reproof. Hence it has been well said that in anger and in disputes with friends one ought especially to do and consider something for their advantage or propriety; but no less a mark of friendship than this is to speak frankly and to remind people, on behalf of others who are being neglected, of the very fact that they themselves seem to be overlooked and disregarded. So Plato acted in his dealings with Dionysius amid suspicions and disputes: he asked for a time to meet him privately; Dionysius granted it, supposing that Plato had some complaint of his own to lodge and explain. But Plato addressed him something like this: "If you perceived, Dionysius, that some ill-disposed man had sailed to Sicily wishing to do you some harm, but lacking opportunity, would you let him sail away and allow him to depart unpunished?"
"Far from it," said Dionysius, "Plato; for one must hate and punish not only the deeds of enemies but their intentions too." "Well then," said Plato, "if someone has come here out of goodwill toward you, wishing to be the cause of some good for you, but you afford him no opportunity, is it right to let him go away thanklessly and with neglect?" When Dionysius asked who this man was, Plato said, "Aeschines — a man whose character is as decent as that of any of Socrates' companions, and whose speech is capable of improving those who keep his company; and having sailed here over a great expanse of sea, in order to associate with you through philosophy, he has been neglected." This so moved Dionysius that he immediately threw his arms around Plato and embraced him, admiring his kindness and magnanimity, and saw to it that Aeschines was cared for handsomely and generously.
In the second place, then, let us purge frank speech, as it were, of all insolence, mockery, jeering, and buffoonery — vicious seasonings of frankness. For just as when a doctor cuts flesh, a certain rhythm and cleanliness must attend his work, while a dancer's flourish, recklessness, roving suppleness, and fussiness must be absent from the hand, so too frank speech admits of wit and cleverness, provided the charm preserves its dignity, but insolence, foulness, and outrage, when they attach themselves to it, utterly corrupt and destroy it. Hence the lyre player, not without persuasiveness or tact, silenced Philip when he tried to argue with him about points of music, saying, "God forbid, O king, that you should ever fare so badly as to know these things better than I do."
Epicharmus, however, spoke wrongly when, after Hiero had put some of his acquaintances to death and a few days later invited him to dinner, he said, "But the other day, when you were sacrificing, you did not invite your friends." Antiphon too spoke badly when, in a discussion at Dionysius' court about what bronze is best, he said, "That from which they made at Athens the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton." For such remarks neither help by their sharpness and bitterness, nor please by their buffoonish playfulness, but are rather a kind of licentiousness mixed with malice and hostility — a sort by which those who use it destroy themselves as well, literally dancing the dance around the well's edge. Indeed Antiphon was put to death by Dionysius, and Timagenes was cast out of Caesar's friendship, though he never used free speech, but at drinking parties and walks, on every occasion, without any serious purpose, kept bringing up, as though it were a clever jibe, whatever occurred to him as a laughing matter — "a cause of friendship for the Argives."
For even the comic poets composed much that was harsh and political for their theater audiences, but the laughable and buffoonish element mixed into it, like a bad relish added to food, made their frankness ineffective and useless, so that its speakers gained a reputation for malice and foulness, while their hearers gained nothing useful from what was said. In general, then, playfulness and laughter must be brought to friends in one manner, but frank speech must have seriousness and character. And if it concerns weightier matters, the speech must be made credible and moving by feeling, posture, and tone of voice; and occasion, when neglected in anything, does great harm, but it especially ruins the usefulness of frank speech.
That such frankness must be guarded against in wine and drunkenness is entirely clear. For he who stirs up talk amid play and friendliness brings a cloud upon a clear sky, drawing up the brow and composing the face into a scowl, as though setting himself against the god Lyaeus and against "him who looses the brow's furrow of hard cares," as Pindar says. And ill-timedness in this carries great danger besides. For souls are especially prone to anger on account of wine, and often drunkenness, seizing upon frank speech, has turned it into enmity. And in general it is neither noble nor courageous, but rather unmanly, to indulge in frank speech at the table when sober silence would have been more frank — like cowardly dogs. There is no need, then, to dwell at length on these matters.
But since many people, when their friends are faring well in their affairs, neither think it right nor dare to correct them, but consider good fortune wholly inaccessible and unreachable by admonition — yet when those same friends stumble and trip, they set upon them and trample them underfoot once they have been brought low, releasing upon them, all at once and against nature, like a stream that had been dammed up, their frank speech, and gladly enjoying the change on account of their former disdain for those men's arrogance and their own former weakness — it is no worse to go through this matter too, and to answer Euripides, who says, "When the god gives good things, what need is there of friends?" — that it is precisely when friends are prospering that they most need frank-speaking friends, ones who will restrain their excess of pride. For few are those to whom good sense comes along with good fortune; most people need borrowed wits and outside reasoning to press upon them, since they are being puffed up and tossed about by fortune.
But when the god casts down and strips away their pretension, in the very circumstances themselves lies the power to admonish and to instill repentance. Hence there is then no need of a friend's frank speech, nor of words carrying weight and sting, but truly, in such reversals, it is sweet to look into the eyes of a kindly light that comforts and encourages — just as Xenophon says that Clearchus' face, seen amid battles and dangers, being kindly and humane, made those in danger more confident. But the man who brings frank speech and biting words to someone in misfortune, like a sharp probe to an eye already troubled and inflamed, heals nothing and removes nothing of what is causing pain, but adds anger to grief and further provokes the sufferer.
For instance, a man in good health is not harsh or altogether savage toward a friend who criticizes his drinking bouts and companions, or criticizes his idleness, lack of exercise, constant bathing, and untimely overindulgence; but a man who is sick cannot bear it — it is a greater sickness still to hear that these things have happened to him from intemperance and softness, and from delicacies and women. "Oh, what bad timing, man! I am writing my will, and my doctors are preparing castor oil or scammony for me, and you are moralizing and philosophizing at me!" So too the affairs of the unfortunate do not admit of frank speech and moralizing, but need gentleness and help. For nurses too, when children fall down, do not run up to scold them, but lift them, wash them off, and set them right, and only then do they rebuke and punish them.
It is said too that Demetrius of Phalerum, when he had been driven from his country and was living near Thebes in disgrace and low circumstances, was not glad to see Crates approaching, expecting Cynic frankness and harsh words; but when Crates met him gently and spoke with him about exile — saying that it held nothing bad, nor anything worth taking hard, since he had been freed from precarious and unstable affairs, and at the same time urging him to take courage in himself and in his own disposition — Demetrius, growing more cheerful and regaining his confidence, said to his friends, "Alas for those activities and preoccupations, on account of which I never came to know such a man as this!" For to one who is grieving, a kindly tale from friends is fitting, but admonitions are for one who is behaving too foolishly.
This is the way of noble friends; but the ignoble and lowly are flatterers of the fortunate, who, as Demosthenes says of ruptures and sprains, "are stirred up whenever some illness seizes the body" — such men fasten upon reversals of fortune, as though delighting and taking pleasure in them. And indeed, if he should need some reminder in matters where he stumbled through his own poor judgment, it is enough to say: "Not at all according to our mind; for I indeed strongly advised against it many times." In what circumstances, then, must a friend be forceful, and when should he use the full intensity of frank speech?
When the occasions call for checking someone carried away by pleasure, anger, or arrogance — either to curb greed, or when it would be senseless to tolerate carelessness. So Solon spoke frankly to Croesus, who had been corrupted and made soft by unstable good fortune, bidding him look to the end. So Socrates used to check Alcibiades, and drew from him genuine tears when he was refuted, and turned his heart around. Such too were the words of Cyrus to Cyaxares, and those of Plato to Dion, at the time when Dion was at the height of his brilliance and was turning all men's eyes upon himself because of the splendor and greatness of his deeds — Plato urging him to guard against and fear "self-will, since it dwells with solitude." Speusippus too wrote to him not to be proud that he had great repute among boys and women, but to see to it that, by adorning Sicily with piety, justice, and the best laws, he would "bring renown" to the Academy.
Euctus and Eulaeus, companions of Perseus, always spoke to please him and nodded agreement while he was fortunate, following along like the rest; but when he had engaged the Romans at Pydna, stumbled, and fled, they fell upon him and reproached him bitterly, reminding him of the wrongs he had done or overlooked, casting up each one to him, until the man, overcome with grief and anger, struck them both down with his dagger and killed them. Let the occasion common to all cases, then, be marked out in this way; but the occasions that people themselves frequently provide, a friend who truly cares for them ought not to let pass, but should make use of. For a question, or a narration, or blame of similar faults committed by others, or praise, serve as a kind of opening for frank speech in some cases. For example, they say that Demaratus came to Macedonia at the time when Philip was at odds with his wife and son;
and when Philip greeted him and asked how the Greeks stood toward one another in concord, Demaratus — being well disposed toward him and on familiar terms — said, "It is indeed a fine thing for you, Philip, to be inquiring about the concord of the Athenians and the Peloponnesians, while you overlook your own household, embroiled in so great a discord."
...full of strife and discord." Diogenes too spoke well: when he came into Philip's camp, at the time Philip was marching out to fight the Greeks, he was brought before him, and Philip, not recognizing him, asked whether he was a spy. "Certainly," he said, "a spy, Philip, of your poor judgment and folly, on account of which, with no one forcing you, you come to gamble away your kingdom and your life in a single hour."
This, perhaps, was rather too harsh. But there is another occasion for admonition: whenever people, reviled by others for the faults they commit, become humbled and subdued. A tactful man would make skillful use of such an occasion, checking and deflecting those who revile, while privately taking his friend aside and reminding him that, if for no other reason, he should attend to the matter so that his enemies not be emboldened. "For where will they find room to open their mouths, what will they have left to say, if you let this go and cast off the very things for which you are spoken ill of?" In this way the pain becomes the reviler's, and the benefit the admonisher's.
Some manage this more cleverly: by finding fault with others, they turn their own acquaintances around, since they accuse other people of doing the very things they know their friends are doing. Our own teacher Ammonius, during an afternoon class, on noticing that some of his students had eaten an extravagant lunch, ordered his son's freedman to give his own boy a beating, adding that the boy could not lunch without a dash of vinegar. And at the same time he looked toward us, so that the reproof landed on those who were actually guilty.
Further, one must be cautious about using frankness with a friend on many occasions, bearing Plato's remark in mind. For when Socrates had taken one of his companions to task rather sharply while conversing at table, Plato said, "Would it not have been better to say this privately?" And Socrates replied, "And would you not have done better to say this to me privately?" And they say that when Pythagoras treated an acquaintance rather roughly in front of many people, the young man hanged himself, and from that time on Pythagoras never again admonished anyone in the presence of another.
For, like a disease that is not decent to expose, the admonition and uncovering of a fault must be kept private, not turned into a public festival or a display, nor made to gather witnesses and spectators. It is not the mark of a friend but of a sophist to build a reputation on other people's errors, preening himself before the bystanders, like those doctors who perform surgery in the theaters for a fee.
But apart from the insolence which it is right that no course of treatment should carry, one must also consider that vice is quarrelsome and stubborn: for, as Euripides says, love does not press harder simply because it is admonished plainly - rather, if someone admonishes without restraint and before many witnesses, he drives every disease and every passion into shamelessness. Just as Plato holds that those who would instill a sense of shame in the young must themselves, as old men, first feel shame before the young, so too among friends the frankness that itself shows restraint is the frankness that abashes most effectively; and approaching the offender gently and cautiously, taking hold of him with care, undermines and works upon the vice, filling it with shame at the very shame it meets.
Hence it is best to "hold one's head close," so that others may not overhear; and it is least fitting to expose a husband with his wife listening, a father with his children looking on, a lover with his beloved present, or a teacher with his acquaintances present. For people, refuted before those in whose eyes they wish to have a good name, are driven beside themselves by pain and anger. I think too that Cleitus was provoked less by the wine than by the fact that, with many looking on, he seemed to be cutting Alexander down. And Aristomenes, Ptolemy's tutor, gave the flatterers a handle against him because he struck the king to wake him when he was nodding off during an audience with ambassadors - they pretended to be indignant on the king's behalf and said,
"If you were so overcome by toil and lack of sleep, we ought to have admonished you privately, not laid hands on you in front of so many people." And so he sent the man a cup of poison and ordered him to drink it down. Aristophanes says that this too was the charge brought against Cleon, that with foreigners present he spoke ill of the city and provoked the Athenians. For this reason those who wish to use frankness usefully and therapeutically, rather than to make a display of it or curry favor with a crowd, must guard against this as well, along with everything else.
And indeed, what Thucydides has the Corinthians say of themselves - that they "deserve" to "bring reproach" upon others, a remark well made - ought to hold true of those who speak frankly. Lysander, it seems, said to the man from Megara who was speaking frankly among the allies on Greece's behalf, that his words needed a city behind them; but frankness, perhaps, needs the backing of a man's whole character, and this is truest of all when said of those who admonish and bring others to their senses.
Plato, at any rate, used to say that he admonished Speusippus simply by the example of his own life, just as Xenocrates, merely by being seen in the school and turning his gaze on Polemo, converted and transformed him. But it is the mark of a shallow and worthless character for a man who takes up the language of frankness to have it said of him, in addition, that he is "himself a healer teeming with others' sores."
Nevertheless, since men who are themselves flawed, and who keep company with others of the same kind, are often driven by circumstance to admonish, the most reasonable approach is the one that links the frank speaker himself, in some way, to the very fault he charges - the sort of thing meant by "Son of Tydeus, what has come over us, that we have forgotten our furious valor?" and
"now we are not worth even a single Hector." Socrates too used to refute the young so gently, not as one already free of ignorance, but as one who thought he needed, together with them, to pursue virtue and seek the truth. For those who fall into the same faults, and yet think they are correcting their friends as they would correct themselves, win goodwill and trust; whereas the man who exalts himself while cutting another down, as though he alone were pure and untouched by passion - unless he is well advanced in years or has an acknowledged reputation for virtue and standing - only comes across as burdensome and oppressive, and does no good.
Hence Phoenix did not simply relate his own misfortunes at random - how in anger he had once tried to kill his father and quickly repented, "lest I be called a father-killer among the Achaeans" - but did so precisely so as not to seem to be admonishing Achilles as one himself untouched by anger and free of fault. For such things work on people morally, and men yield more readily to those who seem to share their affliction than to those who look down on them.
And since one must not bring a bright light to an inflamed eye, nor can a soul in the grip of passion accept frankness and unmixed admonition, one of the most useful remedies is a touch of praise mixed in, as in these lines: "But you, no longer let go your furious might, you who are the best men in the whole army. I would not fight with a man who let go of war, being a coward; but I am angry at heart with you two, Pandarus - where is your bow, and your winged arrows, and the fame in which no man here can rival you?"
And still more openly Homer calls back to themselves those who are slipping, as when he has one say, "Oedipus, where now are your famous riddles?" and another, "This is the speech of Heracles, who has endured much." For such words not only relieve the harshness and sting of blame, but also instill in the shamed man a rivalry with his own better self, by reminding him of his noble deeds and making himself his own model for something better. But whenever we set others beside him - his peers, say, or fellow citizens, or kinsmen - the contentiousness of his vice grows resentful and savage,
and this often provokes the angry retort: "Why then don't you go off to those better than I am, instead of giving me trouble?" One must therefore be careful about praising others when speaking frankly to someone, unless, of course, they happen to be his parents - as when Agamemnon says, "Truly Tydeus begot a son little like himself," and as the Odysseus of the Scyrians says, "You who
disgrace the bright light of your lineage, spinning wool, though born of the noblest of the Greeks" - such comparisons are not fitting elsewhere. It is least fitting of all for a man being admonished to counter-admonish in turn, answering frankness with frankness; for this quickly inflames matters and breeds a quarrel, and altogether such pushing back looks not like a reply in kind but like a man who simply cannot bear frankness at all. It is better, then, to put up with the friend who seems to be admonishing; for if he himself later goes wrong and needs admonition, this very fact
gives, in a sense, license to one's own frankness in return. For being reminded, without any bitterness, that he too used to refuse to overlook his friends' faults but would expose and instruct them, he will yield more readily and accept the correction, since it will seem a repayment of goodwill and gratitude rather than of blame or anger. Further, Thucydides says: "Whoever takes on the envy that attaches to the greatest matters plans rightly";
and it is fitting for a friend to bear the odium that comes from admonishing, when the matters at stake are great and truly important. But if he is difficult about everything and with everyone, and treats his companions not as a friend but as a schoolmaster, he will be blunted and ineffective when admonishing in matters of real weight - like a doctor who has spent a sharp or bitter medicine on many trivial and unnecessary things, and so has none left
for what is truly necessary, having used up his frankness on it. He himself, then, will be very careful to avoid constant fault-finding; but if someone else is petty about everything and prone to false accusation, this will serve him, as it were, as an opening for the more serious faults. Indeed the physician Philotimus, when a man with an abscessed liver showed him his ulcerated finger, said, "My good man, this is no time to talk about hangnails." So too
the occasion gives a friend the chance to say to one who complains about small and worthless matters: "Why do we speak of games and drinking parties and trifles? Let the man, my good sir, get rid of his mistress, or stop gambling, and in every other respect he is a marvelous fellow as far as we are concerned." For the man who has received indulgence in small things does not find it unpleasant to grant his friend frankness in greater ones; whereas the man who is forever
harping on everything, everywhere and always bitter and joyless, knowing everything and meddling in everything, is unbearable even to his own children or brothers, and indeed insufferable even to his slaves. And since, as Euripides says, not every evil belongs to old age, nor does every evil belong to the folly of friends, one must watch one's friends not only when they err but also when they succeed, and, by Zeus, be eager to praise first; then, just as
iron is hardened by cooling and takes its temper only after first being softened by heat, so with friends: when they are relaxed and warmed by praise, one should apply frankness gently, like a tempering. For the occasion allows one to say: "Is it really worth setting that beside this? Do you see what fine fruit nobility yields? This is what we, your friends, require of you; this is what truly belongs to you; for this you were
born - but those other things must be cast off, to the mountain, or into the waves of the loud-roaring sea." For just as a sensible doctor would rather resolve a patient's illness by sleep and diet than by castor oil and scammony, so too a reasonable friend, a good father, and a teacher take more pleasure in using praise than blame for the correction of character; for nothing else pains the man being spoken to frankly so little, and heals him so much,
as the sparing of anger and an approach made with good character and goodwill toward those who err. Hence one must neither harshly refute those who deny their fault, nor prevent those who wish to make their defense, but must somehow help supply decent excuses too, and, as people draw back from the worse charge on their own, allow them a milder one - as Hector does: "Strange man, do not harbor this anger in your heart" - toward his brother, treating
his withdrawal from the battle not as flight or cowardice but as the result of anger. And Nestor says to Agamemnon: "But you yielded to your great-hearted spirit." For I think it more considerate to say "you did not attend to it" and "you were unaware" than "you did wrong" and "you behaved shamefully," and to say "do not quarrel with your brother" rather than "do not envy your brother," and
"flee the woman who is ruining you" rather than "stop being ruined by the woman." For this is the manner that therapeutic frankness seeks, while practical frankness seeks the opposite. For whenever it is necessary to check people who are about to go wrong, standing against some violent impulse carrying them the wrong way, or to urge on and stir those who are soft and reluctant toward noble action, one must attribute what is happening to
strange and inappropriate causes - as Odysseus does in Sophocles, provoking Achilles: he does not say that Achilles is angry over the dinner, but says instead, "Are you afraid, now that you see the seats of Troy before you?" And again, when Achilles grows indignant at this and says he will sail away, Odysseus replies: "I know what you are fleeing - not the fear of being spoken ill of, but because Hector is near; it is not good to stay..." The man,
then, who is spirited and manly, they frighten with the prospect of a reputation for cowardice; the one who is moderate and well-ordered, with a reputation for licentiousness; the one who is generous and magnanimous, with a reputation for stinginess and love of money - thereby urging him on toward noble conduct and driving him away from disgrace: moderate when dealing with irreversible matters, showing more of the pain of shared suffering than of blame in their frank speech, but vehement, relentless, and persistent in checking faults still in progress and in
struggles against the passions. For this is the occasion for goodwill that holds nothing back and for genuine frankness. But we observe enemies employing the practice of finding fault with each other's actions - just as Diogenes used to say that a man who is to be saved needs either good friends or fiery enemies, since the one kind instructs while the other refutes. It is better, though,
to guard against faults by heeding those who advise us than to repent of a fault because of those who speak ill of us. And for this reason one must cultivate real skill even in frankness, since it is the greatest and most powerful remedy in friendship, and always requires good aim in timing together with a measured blend. Since, then, as has been said, frankness is often by nature painful to the one being treated, one must imitate physicians:
for they, too, when cutting, do not leave the affected part in pain and suffering, but bathe it gently and soothe it with washes; likewise those who admonish skillfully do not, after inflicting something bitter and cutting, simply walk away, but with other kinds of conversation and reasonable words they soften and dissolve the sting - just as stone-carvers, after chipping and cutting their statues, smooth and polish them afterward. But the man who has been struck by frankness
and marked by it, if left while still rough, swollen, and disturbed by anger, is again hard to call back and hard to console. For this reason those who admonish must especially guard against this too: not to leave too soon, and not to make the pain and irritation of their companion the very point at which they end the conversation and the meeting.