against enemies or tyrants; as in the one case there is the perception
of a difference and struggle between passion and reason, so in the other
there is a perception of persuasion and agreement inclining, as it were,
the scale, and giving their help. Moreover a good man marrying a wife
according to the laws is minded to associate and live with her justly
and soberly, but as time goes on, his intercourse with her having
engendered a strong passion for her, he perceives that his love and
affection are increased by reason. Just so, again, young fellows falling
in with kindly teachers at first submit themselves to them out of
necessity and emulation for learning, but end by loving them, and
instead of being their pupils and scholars become and get the title of
their lovers. The same is the case in cities in respect to good
magistrates, and neighbours, and connections by marriage; for beginning
at first to associate with one another from necessity and propriety,
they afterwards go on to love almost insensibly, reason drawing over and
persuading the emotional element. And he who said--

  "There are two kinds of shame, the one not bad,
   The other a sad burden to a family,"[237]

is it not clear that he felt this emotion in himself often contrary to
reason and detrimental by hesitation and delay to opportunities and
actions?

§ IX. In a certain sense yielding to the force of these arguments, they
call shame modesty, pleasure joy, and timidity caution; nor would anyone
blame them for this euphemism, if they only gave those specious names to
the emotions that are consistent with reason, while they gave other
kinds of names to those emotions that resist and do violence to reason.
But whenever, though convicted by their tears and tremblings and changes
of colour, they avoid the terms pain and fear, and speak of bitings and
states of excitement, and gloss over the passions by calling them
inclinations, they seem to contrive evasions and flights from facts by
names sophistical, and not philosophical. And yet again they seem to use
words rightly when they call those joys and wishes and cautions not
apathies but good conditions of the mind. For it is a happy disposition
of the soul when reason does not annihilate passion, but orders and
arranges it in the case of temperate persons. But what is the condition
of worthless and incontinent persons, who, when they judge they ought to
love their father and mother better than some boy or girl they are
enamoured of, yet cannot, and yet at once love their mistress or
flatterer, when they judge they ought to hate them? For if passion and
judgement were the same thing, love and hate would immediately follow
the judging it right to love and hate, whereas the contrary happens,
passion following some judgements, but declining to follow others.
Wherefore they acknowledge, the facts compelling them to do so, that
every judgement is not passion, but only that judgement that is
provocative of violent and excessive impulse: admitting that judgement
and passion in us are something different, as what moves is different
from what is moved. Even Chrysippus himself, by his defining in many
places endurance and continence to be habits that follow the lead of
reason, proves that he is compelled by the facts to admit, that that
element in us which follows absolutely is something different from that
which follows when persuaded, but resists when not persuaded.

§ X. Now as to those who make all sins and offences equal, it is not now
the occasion to discuss if in other respects they deviate from truth:
but as regards the passions[238] they seem to go clean contrary to
reason and evidence. For according to them every passion is a sin, and
everyone who grieves, or fears, or desires, commits sin. But in good
truth it is evident that there are great differences between passions,
according as one is more or less affected by them. For who would say
that the craven fear of Dolon[239] was not something very different from
the fear of Ajax, "who retreated with his face to the enemy and at a
foot's pace, drawing back slowly knee after knee"?[240] Or who would say
that the grief of Plato at the death of Socrates was identical with the
grief of Alexander at the death of Clitus, when he attempted to lay
violent hands on himself? For grief is beyond measure intensified by
falling out against expectation: and the calamity that comes unlooked
for is more painful than that we may reasonably fear: as if when
expecting to see one's friend basking in prosperity and admiration, one
should hear that he had been put to the torture, as Parmenio heard about
Philotas. And who would say that the anger of Magas against Philemon was
equal to that of Nicocreon against Anaxarchus? Both Magas and Nicocreon
had been insulted, but whereas Nicocreon brayed Anaxarchus to death with
iron pestles and made mincemeat of him, Magas contented himself with
bidding the executioner lay his naked sword on Philemon's neck, and then
let him go.[241] And so Plato called anger the nerves of the mind,
since it can be both intensified by bitterness, and slackened by
mildness. To evade these and similar arguments, they deny that intensity
and excess of passion are according to judgement, wherein is the
propensity to fault, but maintain that they are bites and contractions
and diffusings capable of increase or diminution through the unreasoning
element. And yet it is evident that there are differences as regards
judgements; for some judge poverty to be no evil, while others judge it
to be a great evil, and others again the very greatest evil, insomuch
that they even throw themselves headlong down rocks and into the sea on
account of it. Again as to death, some think it an evil only in
depriving us of good things, whereas others think it so in regard to
eternal punishments and awful torments in the world below. Health again
is valued by some as natural and advantageous, while to others it seems
the greatest blessing of life, in comparison with which they reckon
little either of wealth or children or "royal power that makes one equal
to the gods," and at last come to think even virtue useless and
unprofitable, if health be absent. Thus it is clear that even with
regard to judgements themselves some err more, some less. But I shall
bring no further proof of this now, but this one may assume therefrom,
that they themselves concede that the unreasoning element is something
different from judgement, in that they allow that by it passion becomes
greater and more violent, and while they quarrel about the name and word
they give up the thing itself to those who maintain that the emotional
and unreasoning part of the soul is distinct from the reasoning and
judging element. And in his treatise on Anomaly,[242] Chrysippus, after
telling us that anger is blind, and frequently does not let one see what
is obvious, frequently also obscures what we do get a sight of, goes on
to say, "The encroachment of the passions blots out reason, and makes
things look different to what they should look, violently forcing people
on unreasonable acts." And he quotes as witness Menander, who says,
"Alas! poor me, wherever were my brains in my body at the time when I
chose that line of conduct, and not this?" And Chrysippus proceeds,
"Though every living creature endowed with reason is naturally inclined
to use reason and to be governed by it on every occasion, yet often do
we reject it, being borne away by a more violent impulse;" thus
admitting what results from the difference between passion and reason.
For otherwise it is ridiculous, as Plato says, to argue that a man is
sometimes better than himself, sometimes worse, sometimes master of
himself, sometimes not master of himself.

§ XI. For how is it possible that the same person can be both better and
worse than himself, both master of himself and not master, unless
everyone is in some way twofold, having in himself both a better and
worse self? For so he that makes the baser element subject to the better
has self-control and is a superior man, whereas he who allows the nobler
element of the soul to follow and be subservient to the incorrigible and
unreasoning element, is inferior to what he might be, and is called
incontinent, and is in an unnatural condition. For by nature it
appertains to reason, which is divine, to rule and govern the
unreasoning element, which has its origin from the body, which it also
naturally resembles and participates in its passions, being placed in it
and mixed up with it, as is proved by the impulses to bodily delights,
which are always fierce or languid according to the changes of the body.
And so it is that young men are keen and vehement in their desires,
being red hot and raging from their fulness of blood and animal heat,
whereas with old men the liver, which is the seat of desire, is dried up
and weak and feeble, and reason has more power with them than passion
which decays with the body. This principle also no doubt characterizes
the nature of animals as regards the sexual appetite. For it is not of
course from any fitness or unfitness of opinions, that some animals are
so bold and resolute in the presence of danger, while others are
helpless and full of fear and trembling; but this difference of emotion
is produced by the workings of the blood and spirit and body, the
emotional part growing out of the flesh, as from a root, and carrying
along with it its quality and temperament. And that the body of man
sympathizes with and is affected by the emotional impulses is proved by
pallors, and blushings, and tremblings, and palpitations of the heart,
as on the other hand by an all-pervading joy in the hope and expectation
of pleasures. But whenever the mind is by itself and unmoved by passion,
the body is in repose and at rest, having no participation or share in
the working of the intellect, unless it involve the emotional, or the
unreasoning element call it in. So that it is clear that there are two
distinct parts of the soul differing from one another in their
faculties.

§ XII. And generally speaking of all existing things, as they themselves
admit and is clear, some are governed by nature, some by habit, some by
an unreasoning soul, some by a soul that has reason and intelligence.
Man too participates in all this, and is subject to all those
differences here mentioned, for he is affected by habit, and nourished
by nature, and uses reason and intelligence. He has also a share of the
unreasoning element, and has the principle of passion innate in him, not
as a mere episode in his life but as a necessity, which ought not
therefore to be entirely rooted out, but requires care and attention.
For the function of reason is no Thracian or Lycurgean one to root up
and destroy all the good elements in passion indiscriminately with the
bad, but, as some genial and mild god, to prune what is wild, and to
correct disproportion, and after that to train and cultivate the useful
part. For as those who are afraid to get drunk do not pour on the ground
their wine, _but mix it with water_, so those who are afraid of the
disturbing element in passion do not eradicate passion altogether but
temper it. Similarly with oxen and horses people try to restrain their
mad bounds and restiveness, not their movements and powers of work, and
so reason makes use of the passions when they have become tame and
docile, not by cutting out the sinews or altogether mutilating the
serviceable part of the soul. For as Pindar says, "The horse to the
chariot, and the ox to the plough, while he that meditates destruction
for the boar must find a staunch hound."[243] But much more useful than
these are the whole tribe of passions when they wait on reason and run
parallel to virtue. Thus moderate anger is useful to courage, and hatred
of evil to uprightness, and righteous indignation against those who are
fortunate beyond their deserts, when they are inflamed in their souls
with folly and insolence and need a check. And no one if they wished
could pluck away or sever[244] natural affection from friendship, or
pity from philanthropy, or sympathy both in joy and grief from genuine
goodwill. And if those err who wish to banish love because of erotic
madness, neither are they right who blame all desire because of love of
money, but they act like people who refuse to run because they might
stumble, or to throw because they might throw wide of the mark, or
object to sing altogether because they might make a false note. For as
in sounds music does not create melody by the banishment of sharps and
flats, and as in bodies the art of the physician procures health not by
the doing away of cold and heat but by their being blended in due
proportions and quantities, so is victory won in the soul by the powers
and motions of the passions being reduced by reason to moderation and
due proportion. For excessive grief or fear or joy in the soul (I speak
not of mere joy grief or fear), resembles a body swollen or inflamed.
And Homer when he says excellently,

  "The brave man's colour never changes, nor
   Is he much frightened,"[245]

does not take away all fear but only excessive fear, that bravery may
not become recklessness, nor confidence foolhardiness. So also in regard
to pleasure we must do away with excessive desire, and in regard to
vengeance with excessive hatred of evil. For so in the former case one
will not be apathetic but temperate, and in the latter one will not be
savage or cruel but just. But if the passions were entirely removed,
supposing that to be possible, reason would become in many duller and
blunter, like the pilot in the absence of a storm. And no doubt it is
from having noticed this that legislators try to excite in states
ambition and emulation among their townsmen, and stir up and increase
their courage and pugnacity against enemies by the sound of trumpets
and flutes. For it is not only in poems, as Plato says, that he that is
inspired by the Muses, and as it were possessed by them, will laugh to
shame the plodding artist, but also in fighting battles passion and
enthusiasm will be irresistible and invincible, such as Homer makes the
gods inspire men with, as in the line,

  "Thus speaking he infused great might in Hector,
   The shepherd of the people."[246]

and,

  "He is not mad like this without the god,"[247]

as if the god had added passion to reason as an incitement and spur. And
you may see those very persons, whose opinions I am combating,
frequently urging on the young by praises, and frequently checking them
by rebukes, though pleasure follows the one, pain the other. For rebukes
and censure produce repentance and shame, the one bringing grief, the
other fear, and these they mostly make use of for purposes of
correction. And so Diogenes, when Plato was being praised, said, "What
has he to vaunt of, who has been a philosopher so long, and yet never
gave pain to anyone?" For one could not say, to use the words of
Xenocrates, that the mathematics are such handles to philosophy as are
the emotions of young men, such as shame, desire, repentance, pleasure,
pain, ambition, whereon reason and the law laying a suitable grip
succeed in putting the young man on the right road. So that it was no
bad remark of the Lacedæmonian tutor, that he would make the boy
entrusted to his charge pleased with what was good and displeased with
what was bad,[248] for a higher or nobler aim cannot be proposed in the
education fit for a freeborn lad.

    [219] See "Meno," p. 72, A.

    [220] Omitting [Greek: hetera], which Reiske justly
    suspects.

    [221] Reading [Greek: prôton] with Wyttenbach.

    [222] Homer, "Odyssey," xix. 208-212.

    [223] As in the story in "Gil Blas" of the person who,
    after eating a ragout of rabbit, was told it was a
    ragout of cat.--Book X. chapter xii.

    [224] As to Amoebeus, see Athenæus, p. 623. D.

    [225] "Iliad," xvi. 167.

    [226] Generally speaking [Greek: ethos] is the habit,
    [Greek: êthos] the moral character generated by habit.
    The former is Aristotle's [Greek: energeia], the latter
    his [Greek: hexis].

    [227] I have adopted, it will be seen, the suggestion of
    Wyttenbach, "[Greek: tô logismô] mutandum videtur in
    [Greek: ton chalinon]."

    [228] Sophocles, "Oedipus Tyrannus," 4, 5. Quoted by our
    author again "On Abundance of Friends," § vi.

    [229] Reading with "Reiske," [Greek: exagetai pros to
    epithymein ta aischra].

    [230] In the "Chrysippus" of Euripides, Fragm.

    [231] Compare Romans viii. 19.

    [232] "Odyssey," xii. 168, 169.

    [233] This line is from Simonides, and is quoted again
    in "How one may be aware of one's Progress in Virtue," §
    xiv.

    [234] "Iliad," vii. 93.

    [235] Reading with Reiske, [Greek: eis duo].

    [236] Reading [Greek: etei] with Reiske and Wyttenbach.

    [237] Euripides, "Hippolytus" 385, 386.

    [238] Reading with Reiske [Greek: pathesi] for [Greek:
    pleiosi].

    [239] See "Iliad," x. 374, sq.

    [240] "Iliad," xi. 547.

    [241] "De Anaxarchi supplicio nota res. v. Menage ad
    Diog. Läert. 9, 59. De Magae, reguli Cyrenarum, adversus
    Philemonem lenitate v. De Cohibenda Ira, §
    ix."--_Reiske._

    [242] "Celebres fuere quondam Chrysippi sex libri
    [Greek: peri tês kata tas lêzeis anômalias], in quibus
    auctore Varrone, _propositum habuit ostendere, similes
    res dissimilibus verbis et similibus dissimiles esse
    notatas vocabulis_. v. Menage ad Diog. Läert. 7,
    192."--_Reiske._

    [243] Compare "On Contentedness of Mind," § xiii.

    [244] Reading with _Reiske_, [Greek: aporrêzeien].

    [245] "Iliad," xiii. 284, 285.

    [246] "Iliad," xv. 262.

    [247] "Iliad," v. 185.

    [248] Compare "That Virtue may be Taught," § ii.

HOW ONE MAY BE AWARE OF ONE'S
PROGRESS IN VIRTUE.

§ I. What amount of argument, Sossius Senecio, will make a man know that
he is improving in respect to virtue, if his advances in it do not
bring about some diminution in folly, but vice, weighing equally with
all his good intentions, "acts like the lead that makes the net go
down?"[249] For neither in music nor grammatical knowledge could anyone
recognize any improvement, if he remained as unskilful in them as
before, and had not lost some of his old ignorance. Nor in the case of
anyone ill would medical treatment, if it brought no relief or ease, by
the disease somewhat yielding and abating, give any perception of
improvement of health, till the opposite condition was completely
brought about by the body recovering its full strength. But just as in
these cases there is no improvement unless, by the abatement of what
weighs them down till they rise in the opposite scale, they recognize a
change, so in the case of those who profess philosophy no improvement or
sign of improvement can be supposed, unless the soul lay aside and purge
itself of some of its imperfection, and if it continue altogether bad
until it become absolutely good and perfect. For indeed a wise man
cannot in a moment of time change from absolute badness to perfect
goodness, and suddenly abandon for ever all that vice, of which he could
not during a long period of time divest himself of any portion. And yet
you know, of course, that those who maintain these views frequently give
themselves much trouble and bewilderment about the difficulty, that a
wise man does not perceive that he has become wise, but is ignorant and
doubtful that in a long period of time by little and little, by removing
some things and adding others, there will be a secret and quiet
improvement, and as it were passage to virtue. But if the change were so
great and sudden that the worst man in the morning could become the best
man at night, or should the change so happen that he went to bed vicious
and woke up in the morning wise, and, having dismissed from his mind all
yesterday's follies and errors, should say,

  "False dreams, away, you had no meaning then!"[250]

who on earth could be ignorant of so great a change happening to
himself, of virtue blazing forth so completely all at once? I myself am
of opinion that anyone, like Caeneus,[251] who, according, to his
prayer, got changed from a woman into a man, would sooner be ignorant of
the transformation, than that a man should become at once, from a
cowardly and senseless person with no powers of self-control, brave and
sensible and perfect master of himself, and should in a moment change
from a brutish life to a divine without being aware of it.

§ II. That was an excellent observation, Measure the stone by the
mason's rule, not the rule by the stone.[252] But the Stoics, not
applying dogmas to facts but facts to their own preconceived opinions,
and forcing things to agree that do not by nature, have filled
philosophy with many difficulties, the greatest of which is that all men
but the perfect man are equally vicious, which has produced the enigma
called progress, one little short of extreme folly, since it makes those
who have not at once under its guidance given up all passions and
disorders equally unfortunate as those who have not got rid of a single
vile propensity. However they are their own confuters, for while they
lay down in the schools that Aristides was as unjust as Phalaris, and
Brasidas as great a craven as Dolon, and Plato actually as senseless as
Meletus, in life and its affairs they turn away from and avoid one class
as implacable, while they make use of the others and trust them in most
important matters as most worthy people.

§ III. But we who see that in every kind of evil, but especially in a
disordered and unsettled state of mind, there are degrees of more and
less (so that the progress made differs in different cases, badness
abating, as a shadow flees away, under the influence of reason, which
calmly illuminates and cleanses the soul), cannot consider it
unreasonable to think that the change will be perceived, as people who
come up out of some ravine can take note of the progress they make
upwards. Look at the case from the following point of view first. Just
as mariners sailing with full sail over the gaping[253] ocean measure
the course they have made by the time they have taken and the force of
the wind, and compute their progress accordingly, so anyone can compute
his progress in philosophy by his continuous and unceasing course, by
his not making many halts on the road, and then again advancing by leaps
and bounds, but by his quiet and even and steady march forward guided by
reason. For the words of the poet, "If to a little you keep adding a
little, and do so frequently, _it will soon be a lot_,"[254] are not
only true of the increase of money, but are universally applicable, and
especially to increase in virtue, since reason invokes to her aid the
enormous force of habit. On the other hand the inconsistencies and
dulnesses of some philosophers not only check advance, as it were, on
the road, but even break up the journey altogether, since vice always
attacks at its leisure and forces back whatever yields to it.[255] The
mathematicians tell us that planets, after completing their course,
become stationary; but in philosophy there is no such intermission or
stationary position from the cessation of progress, for its nature is
ever to be moving and, as it were, to be weighed in the scales,
sometimes being overweighted by the good preponderating, sometimes by
the bad. If, therefore, imitating the oracle given to the Amphictyones
by the god, "to fight against the people of Cirrha every day and every
night,"[256] you are conscious that night and day you ever maintain a
fierce fight against vice, not often relaxing your vigilance, or long
off your guard, or receiving as heralds to treat of peace[257] the
pleasures, or idleness, or stress of business, you may reasonably go
forward to the future courageously and confidently.

§ IV. Moreover, if there be any intermissions in philosophy, and yet
your later studies are firmer and more continuous than your former ones,
it is no bad indication that your sloth has been expelled by labour and
exercise; for the contrary is a bad sign, when after a short time your
lapses from zeal become many and continuous, as if your zeal were dying
away. For as in the growth of a reed, which shoots up from the ground
finely and beautifully to an even and continuous height, though at first
from its great intervals it is hindered and baffled in its growth, and
afterwards through its weakness is discouraged by any breath of air, and
though strengthened by many and frequent joints, yet a violent wind
gives it commotion and trembling, so those who at first make great
launches out into philosophy, and afterwards find that they are
continually hindered and baffled, and cannot perceive that they make any
progress, finally get tired of it and cry off. "But he who is as it were
winged,"[258] is by his simplicity borne along to his end, and by his
zeal and energy cuts through impediments to his progress, as merely
obstacles on the road. As it is a sign of the growth of violent love,
not so much to rejoice in the presence of the loved one, for everyone
does that, as to be distressed and grieved at his absence,[259] so many
feel a liking for philosophy and seem to take a wonderful interest in
the study, but if they are diverted by other matters and business their
passion evaporates and they take it very easily. "But whoever is
strongly smitten with love for his darling"[260] will show his mildness
and agreeableness in the presence of and joint pursuit of wisdom with
the loved one, but if he is drawn away from him and is not in his
company you will see him in a stew and ill at ease and peevish whether
at work or leisure, and unreasonably forgetful of his friends, and
wholly impelled by his passion for philosophy. For we ought not to
rejoice at discourses only when we hear them, as people like perfumes
only when they smell them, and not to seek or care about them in their
absence, but in the same condition as people who are hungry and thirsty
are in if torn away from food and drink, we ought to follow after true
proficiency in philosophy, whether marriage, or wealth, or friendship,
or military service, strike in and produce a separation. For just as
more is to be got from philosophy, so much the more does what we fail
to obtain trouble us.

§ V. Either precisely the same as this or very similar is Hesiod's[261]
very ancient definition of progress in virtue, namely, that the road is
no longer very steep or arduous, but easy and smooth and level, its
roughness being toned down by exercise, and casting the bright light of
philosophy on doubt and error and regrets, such as trouble those who
give themselves to philosophy at the outset, like people who leave a
land they know, and do not yet descry the land they are sailing to. For
by abandoning the common and familiar, before they know and apprehend
what is better, they frequently flounder about in the middle and are
fain to return. As they say the Roman Sextius, giving up for philosophy
all his honours and offices in Rome, being afterwards discontented with
philosophy from the difficulties he met with in it at first, very nearly
threw himself out of window. Similarly they relate of Diogenes of
Sinope,[262] when he began to be a philosopher, that the Athenians were
celebrating a festival, and there were public banquets and shows and
mutual festivities, and drinking and revelling all night, and he, coiled
up in a corner of the market-place intending to sleep, fell into a train
of thought likely seriously to turn him from his purpose and shake his
resolution, for he reflected that he had adopted without any necessity a
toilsome and unusual kind of life, and by his own fault sat there
debarred of all the good things. At that moment, however, they say a
mouse stole up and began to munch some of the crumbs of his barley-cake,
and he plucked up his courage and said to himself, in a railing and
chiding fashion, "What say you, Diogenes? Do your leavings give this
mouse a sumptuous meal, while you, the gentleman, wail and lament
because you are not getting drunk yonder and reclining on soft and
luxurious couches?" Whenever such depressions of mind are not frequent,
and the mind when they take place quickly recovers from them, after
having put them to flight as it were, and when such annoyance and
distraction is easily got rid of, then one may consider one's progress
in virtue as a certainty.

§ VI. And since not only the things that in themselves shake and turn
them in the opposite direction are more powerful in the case of weak
philosophers, but also the serious advice of friends, and the playful
and jeering objections of adversaries bend and soften people, and have
ere now shaken some out of philosophy altogether, it will be no slight
indication of one's progress in virtue if one takes all this very
calmly, and is neither disturbed nor aggravated by people who tell us
and mention to us that some of our former comrades are flourishing in
kings' courts, or have married wives with dowries, or are attended by a
crowd of friends when they come down to the forum to solicit some office
or advocateship. He that is not moved or affected by all this is already
plainly one upon whom philosophy has got a right hold; for it is
impossible that we should cease to be envious of what most people
admire, unless the admiration of virtue was strongly implanted in us.
For over-confidence may be generated in some by anger and folly, but to
despise what men admire is not possible without a true and steady
elevation of mind. And so people in such a condition of mind, comparing
it with that of others, pride themselves on it, and say with Solon, "We
would not change virtue for wealth, for while virtue abides, wealth
changes hands, and now one man, now another, has it."[263] And Diogenes
compared his shifting about from Corinth to Athens, and again from
Thebes to Corinth, to the different residences of the King of Persia, as
his spring residence at Susa, his winter residence at Babylon, and his
summer residence in Media. And Agesilaus said of the great king, "How is
he better than me, if he is not more upright?" And Aristotle, writing to
Antipater about Alexander, said, "that he ought not to think highly of
himself because he had many subjects, for anyone who had right notions
about the gods was entitled to think quite as highly of himself." And
Zeno, observing that Theophrastus was admired for the number of his
pupils,[264] said, "His choir is, I admit, larger than mine, but mine
is more harmonious."

§ VII. Whenever then, by thus comparing the advantages of virtue with
external things, you get rid of envies and jealousies and those things
which fret and depress the minds of many who are novices in philosophy,
this also is a great indication of your progress in virtue. Another and
no slight indication is a change in the style of your discourses. For
generally speaking all novices in philosophy adopt most such as tend to
their own glorification; some, like birds, in their levity and ambition
soaring to the height and brightness of physical things; others like
young puppies, as Plato[265] says, rejoicing in tearing and biting,
betake themselves to strifes and questions and sophisms; but most
plunging themselves into dialectics immediately store themselves for
sophistry; and some collect sentences[266] and histories and go about
(as Anacharsis said he saw the Greeks used money for no other purpose
but to count it up), merely piling up and comparing them, but making no
practical use of them. Applicable here is that saying of Antiphanes,
which someone applied to Plato's pupils. Antiphanes said playfully that
in a certain city words were frozen directly they were spoken, owing to
the great cold, and were thawed again in the summer, so that one could
then hear what had been said in the winter. So he said of the words
which were spoken by Plato to young men, that most of them only
understood them late in life when they were become old men. And this is
the condition people are in in respect to all philosophy, until the
judgement gets into a sound and healthy state, and begins to adapt
itself to those things which can produce character and greatness of
mind, and to seek discourses whose footsteps turn inwards rather than
outwards, to borrow the language of Æsop.[267] For as Sophocles said he
had first toned down the pompous style of Æschylus, then his harsh and
over-artificial method, and had in the third place changed his manner
of diction, a most important point and one that is most intimately
connected with the character, so those who go in for philosophy, when
they have passed from flattering and artificial discourses to such as
deal with character and emotion, are beginning to make genuine and
modest progress in virtue.

§ VIII. Furthermore, take care, in reading the writings of philosophers
or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than
things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by
what is serviceable and solid and useful. And also, in studying poems or
history, let nothing escape you of what is said to the point, which is
likely either to correct the character or to calm the passions. For as
Simonides says the bee hovers among the flowers "making the yellow
honey,"[268] while others value and pluck flowers only for their beauty
and fragrance, so of all that read poems for pleasure and amusement he
alone that finds and gathers what is valuable seems capable of knowledge
from his acquaintance with and friendship for what is noble and
good.[269] For those who study Plato and Xenophon only for their style,
and cull out only what is pure and Attic, and as it were the dew and the
bloom, do they not resemble people who love drugs for their smell and
colour, but care not for them as anodynes or purges, and are not aware
of those properties? Whereas those who have more proficiency can derive
benefit not from discourses only, but from sights and actions, and cull
what is good and useful, as is recorded of Æschylus and other similar
kind of men. As to Æschylus, when he was watching a contest in boxing at
the Isthmus, and the whole theatre cried out upon one of the boxers
being beaten, he nudged with his elbow Ion of Chios, and said, "Do you
observe the power of training? The beaten man holds his peace, while the
spectators cry out." And Brasidas having caught hold of a mouse among
some figs, being bitten by it let it go, and said to himself, "Hercules,
there is no creature so small or weak that it will not fight for its
life!" And Diogenes, seeing a lad drinking water out of the palm of his
hand, threw away the cup which he kept in his wallet. So much does
attention and assiduous practice make people perceptive and receptive of
what contributes to virtue from any source. And this is the case still
more with those who mix discourses with actions, who not only, to use
the language of Thucydides,[270] "exercise themselves in the presence of
danger," but also in regard to pleasures and strifes, and judgements,
and advocateships, and magistrateships make a display of their opinions,
or rather form their opinions by their practice. For we can no more
think those philosophers who are ever learning and busy and
investigating what they have got from philosophy, and then straightway
publish it in the market-place or in the haunt of young men, or at a
royal supper-party, any more than we give the name of physicians to
those who sell drugs and mixtures. Nay rather such a sophist differs
very little at all from the bird described in Homer,[271] offering his
scholars like it whatever he has got, and as it feeds its callow young
from its own mouth, "though it goes ill with itself," so he gets no
advantage or food from what he has got for himself.

§ IX. We must therefore see to it that our discourse be serviceable to
ourselves, and that it may not appear to others to be vain-glorious or
ambitious, and we must show that we are as willing to listen as to
teach, and especially must we lay aside all disputatiousness and love of
strife in controversy, and cease bandying fierce words with one another
as if we were contending with one another at boxing, and leave off
rejoicing more in smiting and knocking down one another than in learning
and teaching. For in such cases moderation and mildness, and to commence
arguing without quarrelsomeness and to finish without getting into a
rage, and neither to be insolent if you come off best in the argument,
nor dejected if you come off worst, is a sufficient sign of progress in
virtue. Aristippus was an excellent example of this, when overcome in
argument by the sophistry of a man, who had plenty of assurance, but
was generally speaking mad or half-witted. Observing that he was in
great joy and very puffed up at his victory, he said, "I who have been
vanquished in the argument shall have a better night's rest than my
victor." We can also test ourselves in regard to public speaking, if we
are not timid and do not shrink from speaking when a large audience has
unexpectedly been got together, nor dejected when we have only a small
one to harangue to, and if we do not, when we have to speak to the
people or before some magistrate, miss the opportunity through want of
proper preparation; for these things are recorded both of Demosthenes
and Alcibiades. As for Alcibiades, though he possessed a most excellent
understanding, yet from want of confidence in speaking he often broke
down, and in trying to recall a word or thought that slipped his memory
had to stop short.[272] And Homer did not deny that his first line was
unmetrical,[273] though he had sufficient confidence to follow it up by
so many other lines, so great was his genius. Much more then ought those
who aim at virtue and what is noble to lose no opportunity of public
speaking, paying very little attention to either uproar or applause at
their speeches.

§ X. And not only ought each to see to his discourses but also to his
actions whether he regards utility more than show, and truth more than
display. For if a genuine love for youth or maiden seeks no witnesses,
but is content to enjoy its delights privately, far more does it become
the philosopher and lover of the beautiful, who is conversant with
virtue through his actions, to pride himself on his silence, and not to
need people to praise or listen to him. As that man who called his maid
in the house, and cried out to her, "See, Dionysia, I am angry no
longer,"[274] so he that does anything agreeable and polite, and then
goes and spreads it about the town, plainly shows that he looks for
public applause and has a strong propensity to vain-glory, and as yet
has no acquaintance with virtue as a reality but only as a dream,
restlessly roving about amid phantoms and shadows, and making a display
of whatever he does as painters display a picture. It is therefore a
sign of progress in virtue not merely to have given to a friend or done
a good turn to an acquaintance without mentioning it to other people,
but also to have given an honest vote among many unjust ones, and to
have withstood the dishonourable request of some rich man or of some man
in office, and to have been above taking bribes, and, by Zeus, to have
been thirsty all night and not to have drunk, or, like Agesilaus,[275]
to have resisted, though strongly tempted, the kiss of a handsome youth
or maiden, and to have kept the fact to oneself and been silent about
it. For one's being satisfied with one's own good opinion[276] and not
despising it, but rejoicing in it and acquiescing in it as competent to
see and decide on what is honourable, proves that reason is rooted and
grounded within one, and that, to borrow the language of Democritus, one
is accustomed to draw one's delights from oneself. And just as farmers
behold with greater pleasure those ears of corn which bend and bow down
to the ground, while they look upon those that from their lightness
stand straight upright as empty pretenders, so also among those young
men who wish to be philosophers those that are most empty and without
any solidity show the greatest amount of assurance in their appearance
and walk, and a face full of haughtiness and contempt that looks down on
everybody, but when they begin to grow full and get some fruit from
study they lay aside their proud and vain[277] bearing. And just as in
vessels that contain water the air is excluded, so with men that are
full of solid merit their pride abates, and their estimate of themselves
becomes a lower one, and they cease to plume themselves on a long beard
and threadbare cloak,[278] and transfer their training to the mind, and
are most severe and austere to themselves, while they are milder in
their intercourse with everybody else; and they do not as before
eagerly snatch at the name and reputation of philosopher, nor do they
write themselves down as such, but even if he were addressed by that
title by anyone else, an ingenuous young man would say, smiling and
blushing, "I am not a god: why do you liken me to the immortals?"[279]
For as Æschylus says,

  "I never can mistake the burning eye
   Of the young woman that has once known man,"[280]

so to the young man who has tasted of true progress in philosophy the
following lines of Sappho are applicable, "My tongue cleaves to the roof
of my month, and a fire courses all over my lean body," and his eye will
be gentle and mild, and you would desire to hear him speak. For as those
who are initiated come together at first with confusion and noise and
jostle one another, but when the mysteries are being performed and
exhibited, they give their attention with awe and silence, so also at
the commencement of philosophy you will see round its doors much
confusion and assurance and prating, some rudely and violently jostling
their way to reputation, but he who once enters in, and sees the great
light, as when shrines are open to view, assumes another air and is
silent and awe-struck, and in humility and decorum follows reason as if
she were a god. And the playful remark of Menedemus seems to suit these
very well. He said that the majority of those who went to school at
Athens became first wise, and then philosophers, after that orators, and
as time went on became ordinary kind of people, the more they had to do
with learning, so much the more laying aside their pride and high
estimate of themselves.

§ XI. Of people that need the help of the physician some, if their tooth
ache or even finger smart, run at once to the doctor, others if they are
feverish send for one and implore his assistance at their own home,
others who are melancholy or crazy or delirious will not sometimes even
see the doctor if he comes to their house, but drive him away, or avoid
him, ignorant through their grievous disease that they are diseased at
all. Similarly of those who have done what is wrong some are
incorrigible, being hostile and indignant and furious at those who
reprove and admonish them, while others are meeker and bear and allow
reproof. Now, when one has done what is wrong, to offer oneself for
reproof, to expose the case and reveal one's wrongdoing, and not to
rejoice if it lies hid, or be satisfied if it is not known, but to make
confession of it and ask for interference and admonishment, is no small
indication of progress in virtue. And so Diogenes said that one who
wished to do what was right ought to seek either a good friend or
red-hot enemy, that either by rebuke or mild entreaty he might flee from
vice. But as long as anyone, making a display of dirt or stains on his
clothes, or a torn shoe, prides himself to outsiders on his freedom from
arrogance, and, by Zeus, thinks himself doing something very smart if he
jeers at himself as a dwarf or hunchback, but wraps up and conceals as
if they were ulcers the inner vileness of his soul and the deformities
of his life, as his envy, his malignity, his littleness, his love of
pleasure, and will not let anyone touch or look at them from fear of
disgrace, such a one has made little progress in virtue, yea rather
none. But he that joins issue with his vices, and shows that he himself
is even more pained and grieved about them than anyone else, or, what is
next best, is able and willing to listen patiently to the reproof of
another and to correct his life accordingly, he seems truly to be
disgusted at his depravity and resolute to divest himself of it. We
ought certainly to be ashamed of and shun every appearance of vice, but
he who is more put about by his vice itself than by the bad reputation
that ensues upon it, will not mind either hearing it spoken against or
even speaking against it himself if it make him a better man. That was a
witty remark of Diogenes to a young man, who when seen in a tavern
retired into the kitchen: "The more," said he, "you retire, the more are
you in the tavern."[281] Even so the more a vicious man denies his vice,
the more does it insinuate itself and master him: as those people
really poor who pretend to be rich get still more poor from their false
display. But he who is really making progress in virtue imitates
Hippocrates, who confessed publicly and put into black and white that he
had made a mistake about the sutures of the skull,[282] for he will
think it monstrous, if that great man declared his mistake, that others
might not fall into the same error, and yet he himself for his own
deliverance from vice cannot bear to be shown he is in the wrong, and to
confess his stupidity and ignorance. Moreover the sayings of Bion and
Pyrrho will test not so much one's progress as a greater and more
perfect habit of virtue. Bion maintained that his friends might think
they had made progress, when they could listen as patiently to abuse as
to such language as the following, "Stranger, you look not like a bad or
foolish person,"[283] "Health and joy go with you, may the gods give you
happiness!"[284] While as to Pyrrho they say, when he was at sea and in
peril from a storm, that he pointed out a little pig that was quietly
enjoying some grain that had been scattered about, and said to his
companions that the man who did not wish to be disturbed by the changes
and chances of life should attain a similar composedness of mind through
reason and philosophy.

§ XII. Look also at the opinion of Zeno, who thought that everybody
might gauge his progress in virtue by his dreams, if he saw himself in
his dreams pleasing himself with nothing disgraceful, and neither doing
nor wishing to do anything dreadful or unjust, but that, as in the clear
depths of a calm and tranquil sea, his fancy and passions were plainly
shown to be under the control of reason. And this had not escaped the
notice of Plato,[285] it seems, who had earlier expressed in form and
outline the part that fancy and unreason played in sleep in the soul
that was by nature tyrannical, "for it attempts incest," he says, "with
its mother, and procures for itself unlawful meats, and gives itself up
to the most abandoned desires, such as in daytime the law through shame
and fear debars people from." As then beasts of burden that have been
well-trained do not, even if their driver let go the reins, attempt to
turn aside and leave the proper road, but go forward orderly as usual,
pursuing their way without stumbling, so those whose unreason has become
obedient and mild and tempered by reason, will not easily wish, either
in dreams or in illnesses, to deal insolently or lawlessly through their
desires, but will keep to their usual habits, which acquire their power
and force by attention. For if the body can by training make itself and
its members so subject to control, that the eyes in sorrow can refrain
from tears, and the heart from palpitating in fear, and the passions can
be calm in the presence of beautiful youths and maidens, is it not far
more likely that the training of the passions and emotions of the soul
will allay, tame down, and mould their propensities even in dreams? A
story is told about the philosopher Stilpo,[286] that he thought he saw
in a dream Poseidon angry with him because he had not sacrificed an ox
to him, as was usual among the Megarians:[287] and that he, not a bit
frightened, said, "What are you talking about, Poseidon? Do you come
here as a peevish boy, because I have not with borrowed money filled the
town with the smell of sacrifice, and have only sacrificed to you out of
what I had at home on a modest scale?" Then he thought that Poseidon
smiled at him, and held out his right hand, and said that for his sake
he would give the Megarians a large shoal of anchovies. Those, then,
that have such pleasant, clear, and painless dreams, and no frightful,
or harsh, or malignant, or untoward apparition, may be said to have
reflections of their progress in virtue; whereas agitation and panics
and ignoble flights, and boyish delights, and lamentations in the case
of sad and strange dreams, are like the waves that break on the coast,
the soul not having yet got its proper composure, but being still in
course of being moulded by opinions and laws, from which it escapes in
dreams as far as possible, so that it is once again set free and open
to the passions. Do you investigate all these points too, as to whether
they are signs of progress in virtue, or of some habit which has already
a settled constancy and strength through reason.

§ XIII. Now since entire freedom from the passions is a great and divine
thing, and progress in virtue seems, as we say, to consist in a certain
remissness and mildness of the passions, we must observe the passions
both in themselves and in reference to one another to gauge the
difference: in themselves as to whether desire, and fear, and rage are
less strong in us now than formerly, through our quickly extinguishing
their violence and heat by reason; and in reference to one another as to
whether we are animated now by modesty more than by fear, and by
emulation more than by envy, and by love of glory rather than by love of
riches, and generally speaking whether--to use the language of
musicians--it is in the Dorian more than in the Lydian measures that we
err either by excess or deficiency,[288] whether we are plainer in our
manner of living or more luxurious, whether we are slower in action or
quicker, whether we admire men and their discourses more than we should
or despise them. For as it is a good sign in diseases if they turn aside
from vital parts of the body, so in the case of people who are making
progress in virtue, when vice seems to shift to milder passions, it is a
sign it will soon die out. When Phrynis added to the seven chords two
chords more, the Ephors asked him which he preferred to let them cut
off, the upper or lower ones;[289] so we must cut off both above and
below, if we mean to attain, to the mean and to due proportion: for
progress in virtue first diminishes the excess and sharpness of the
passions,

  "That sharpness for which madmen are so vehement,"

as Sophocles says.

§ XIV. I have already said that it is a very great indication of
progress in virtue to transfer our judgement to action, and not to let
our words remain merely words, but to make deeds of them. A
manifestation of this is in the first place emulation as regards what we
praise, and a zeal to do what we admire, and an unwillingness either to
do or allow what we censure. To illustrate my meaning by an example, it
is probable that all Athenians praised the daring and bravery of
Miltiades; but Themistocles alone said that the trophy of Miltiades
would not let him sleep, but woke him up of a night, and not only
praised and admired him, but manifestly emulated and imitated his
glorious actions. Small, therefore, can we think the progress we have
made, as long as our admiration for those who have done noble things is
barren, and does not of itself incite us to imitate them. For as there
is no strong love without jealousy, so there is no ardent and energetic
praise of virtue, which does not prick and goad one on, and make one not
envious but emulous of what is noble, and desirous to do something
similar. For not only at the discourses of a philosopher ought we, as
Alcibiades said,[290] to be moved in heart and shed tears, but the true
proficient in virtue, comparing his own deeds and actions with those of
the good and perfect man, and grieved at the same time at the knowledge
of his own deficiency, yet rejoicing in hope and desire, and full of
impulses that will not let him rest, is, as Simonides says,

  "Like sucking foal running by side of dam,"[291]

being desirous all but to coalesce with the good man. For it is a
special sign of true progress in virtue to love and admire the
disposition of those whose deeds we emulate, and to resemble them with a
goodwill that ever assigns due honour and praise to them. But whoever
is steeped in contentiousness and envy against his betters, let him know
that he may be pricked on by a jealous desire for glory or power, but
that he neither honours nor admires virtue.

§ XV. Whenever, then, we begin so much to love good men that we deem
happy, "not only," as Plato[292] says, "the temperate man himself, but
also the man who hears the words that flow from his wise lips," and
even admire and are pleased with his figure and walk and look and smile,
and desire to adapt ourselves to his model and to stick closely to him,
then may we think that we are making genuine progress. Still more will
this be the case, if we admire the good not only in prosperity, but like
lovers who admire even the lispings and paleness of those in their
flower,[293] as the tears and dejection of Panthea in her grief and
affliction won the affections of Araspes,[294] so we fear neither the
exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of
Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our
love even under such trials, and join her, ever chanting that line of
Euripides,

  "Unto the noble everything is good."[295]

For the enthusiasm that can go so far as not to be discouraged at the
sure prospect of trouble, but admires and emulates what is good even so,
could never be turned away from what is noble by anybody. Such men ever,
whether they have some business to transact, or have taken upon them
some office, or are in some critical conjuncture, put before their eyes
the example of noble men, and consider what Plato would have done on the
occasion, what Epaminondas would have said, how Lycurgus or Agesilaus
would have dealt; that so, adjusting and re-modelling themselves, as it
were, at their mirrors, they may correct any ignoble expression, and
repress any ignoble passion. For as those that have learnt the names of
the Idæan Dactyli[296] make use of them to banish their fear by quietly
repeating them over, so the bearing in mind and remembering good men,
which soon suggests itself forcibly to those who have made some progress
in virtue in all their emotions and difficulties, keeps them upright and
not liable to fall. Let this also then be a sign to you of progress in
virtue.

§ XVI. In addition to this, not to be too much disturbed, nor to blush,
nor to try and conceal oneself, or make any change in one's dress, on
the sudden appearance of a man of distinction and virtue, but to feel
confident and go and meet such a one, is the confirmation of a good
conscience. It is reported that Alexander, seeing a messenger running up
to him full of joy and holding out his right hand, said, "My good
friend, what are you going to tell me? Has Homer come to life again?"
For he thought that his own exploits required nothing but posthumous
fame.[297] And a young man improving in character instinctively loves
nothing better than to take pride and pleasure in the company of good
and noble men, and to display his house, his table, his wife, his
amusements, his serious pursuits, his spoken or written discourses;
insomuch that he is grieved when he remembers that his father or
guardian died without seeing him in that condition in life, and would
pray for nothing from the gods so much, as that they could come to life
again, and be spectators of his life and actions; as, on the contrary,
those that have neglected their affairs, and come to ruin, cannot look
upon their relatives even in dreams without fear and trembling.

§ XVII. Add, if you please, to what I have already said, as no small
indication of progress in virtue, the thinking no wrong-doing small, but
being on your guard and heed against all. For as people who despair of
ever being rich make no account of small expenses, thinking they will
never make much by adding little to little,[298] but when hope is nearer
fruition, then with wealth increases the love of it,[299] so in things
that have respect to virtue, not he that generally assents to such
sayings as "Why trouble about hereafter?" "If things are bad now, they
will some day be better,"[300] but the man who pays heed to everything,
and is vexed and concerned if vice gets pardon, when it lapses into even
the most trifling wrongdoing, plainly shows that he has already
attained to some degree of purity, and deigns not to contract defilement
from anything whatever. For the idea that we have nothing of any
importance to bring disgrace upon, makes people inclined to what is
little and careless.[301] To those who are building a stone wall or
coping it matters not if they lay on any chance wood or common stone, or
some tombstone that has fallen down, as bad workmen do, heaping and
piling up pell-mell every kind of material; but those who have made some
progress in virtue, whose life "has been wrought on a golden base,"[302]
like the foundation of some holy or royal building, undertake nothing
carelessly, but lay and adjust everything by the line and level of
reason, thinking the remark of Polycletus superlatively good, that that
work is most excellent, where the model stands the test of the
nail.[303]

    [249] See Erasmus, Adagia, "Eadem pensari trutina."

    [250] Euripides, "Iphigenia in Tauris," 569.

    [251] See Ovid, "Metamorphoses," xii. 189, sq.

    [252] See Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 1103.

    [253] Compare Shakspere, "Tempest," A. i. Sc. i. 63,
    "And gape at widest to glut him."

    [254] Hesiod, "Works and Days," 361, 362. Quoted again
    by our author, "On Education," § 13.

    [255] "In via ad virtutem qui non progreditur, is non
    stat et manet, sed regreditur."--_Wyttenbach._

    [256] Adopting the reading of Hercher. See Pausanias, x.
    37, where the oracle is somewhat different.

    [257] For the town which parleys surrenders.

    [258] From Homer, "Iliad," xix. 386.

    [259] Compare Aristotle, _Rhetoric_, i. 11. [Greek: kai
    archê de tou erôtos gignetai autê pasin, otan mê monon
    parontos chairôsin, alla kai apontos memnêmenoi erôsin.]

    [260] The line is a Fragment of Sophocles.

    [261] See Hesiod, "Works and Days," 289-292.

    [262] The well-known Cynic philosopher.

    [263] Bergk. fr. 15. Compare Homer, "Iliad," vi. 339.
    [Greek: nikê d' epameibetai andras].

    [264] We are told by Diogenes Läertius, v. 37, that
    Theophrastus had 2000 hearers sometimes at once.

    [265] "Republic," vii. p. 539, B.

    [266] Sentences borrowed from some author or other,
    such, as we still possess from the hands of Hermogenes
    and Aphthonius; compare the collection of bon-mots of
    Greek courtesans in Athenæus.

    [267] A reference to Æsop's Fable, [Greek: Leôn kai
    Halôpêz]. Cf. Horace, "Epistles," i. i. 73-75.

    [268] This passage is alluded to also in "On Love to
    one's Offspring." § ii.

    [269] Madvig's text.

    [270] Thucydides, i. 18.

    [271] Homer, "Iliad," ix. 323, 324. Quoted also in "On
    Love to One's Offspring," § ii.

    [272] The remark about Demosthenes has somehow slipped
    out, as Wyttenbach has suggested.

    [273] Does this refer to [Greek: Pêlêiadeô] before
    [Greek: Hachilêos] in "Iliad," i. 1?

    [274] An allusion to some passage in a Play that has not
    come down to us.

    [275] Compare our Author, _De Audiendis Poetis_, § xi.
    [Greek: hôsper ho Agêsilaos ouk hypemeinen hypo tou
    kalou philêthênai prosiontos].

    [276] Reading with Madvig and Hercher, [Greek: to gar
    auton], sq.

    [277] Literally _cork-like_, so vain, empty. So Horace,
    "levior cortice," "Odes," iii. 9, 22.

    [278] Marks of a philosopher among the ancients. Compare
    our Author, "How one may discern a flatterer from a
    friend," § vii.

    [279] "Odyssey," xvi. 187.

    [280] Æschylus, "Toxotides," Fragm. 224. Quoted again by
    our author, "On Love," § xxi.

    [281] "Turpe habitum fuisse in caupona conspici, et hoc
    exemplo apparet, et alia sunt indicia. Isocrates Orat.
    Areopagitica laudans antiquorum Atheniensium mores, p.
    257: [Greek: en kapêleiô de phagein ê piein oudeis han
    oiketês epieikês etolmêse]: quem locum citans Athenæus
    alia etiam adfert xiii. p. 566, F."--_Wyttenbach._

    [282] Wyttenbach compares Quintilian, "Institut. Orat."
    iii. 6, p. 255: "Nam et Hippocrates clarus arte medicinæ
    videtur honestissime fecisse, qui quosdam errores suos,
    ne posteri errarent, confessus est."

    [283] Homer, "Odyssey," vi. 187.

    [284] Homer, "Odyssey," xxiv. 402.

    [285] Plato, "Republic," ix. p. 571, D.

    [286] A somewhat similar story about Stilpo is told in
    Athenæus, x. p. 423, D.

    [287] So Haupt and Herscher very ingeniously for [Greek:
    hiereusin].

    [288] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach as to the
    reading. The Dorian measure was grave and severe, the
    Lydian soft and effeminate.

    [289] See our author, "Apophthegmata Laconica," p. 220
    C.

    [290] Plato, "Symposium," p. 25, E.

    [291] This line is quoted again by our author, "On Moral
    Virtue," § vii.

    [292] Plato, "Laws," iv. p. 711, E.

    [293] See those splendid lines of Lucretius, iv.
    1155-1169.

    [294] "Res valde celebrata ex Institutione Cyri
    Xenophontea, v. 1, 2; vi. 1, 17."--_Wyttenbach._

    [295] This line is very like a Fragment in the "Danae"
    of Euripides. Dind. (328).

    [296] On these see Pausanias, v. 7.

    [297] Such as Homer could have brought. Compare Horace,
    "Odes," iv. ix. 25-28; and Cicero, "pro Archia," x.
    "Magnus ille Alexander--cum in Sigeo ad Achillis tumulum
    adstitisset, O fortunate, inquit, adolescens, qui tuæ
    virtutis Homerum præconem inveneris."

    [298] Contrary to Hesiod's saw, "Works and Days," 361,
    362.

    [299] So Juvenal, xiv. 138-140.

    [300] Like Horace's "Non si male nunc, et olim Sic
    erit." "Odes," ii. x. 16, 17.

    [301] _Noblesse oblige_ in fact.

    [302] Pindar, Frag. 206.

    [303] Like Horace's _factus ad unguem_, because the
    sculptor tries its polish and the niceness of the joints
    by drawing his nail over the surface. Casaub. Pers. i.
    64; Horace, "Sat." i. v. 32, 33; A. P. 294; Erasmus,
    "Adagia," p. 507.

WHETHER VICE IS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE
UNHAPPINESS.[304]

§ I. ... He who gets a dowry with his wife sells himself for it, as
Euripides says,[305] but his gains are few and uncertain; but he who
does not go all on fire through many a funeral pile, but through a regal
pyre, full of panting and fear and sweat got from travelling over the
sea as a merchant, has the wealth of Tantalus, but cannot enjoy it owing
to his want of leisure. For that Sicyonian horse-breeder was wise, who
gave Agamemnon as a present a swift mare, "that he should not follow him
to wind-swept Ilium, but delight himself at home,"[306] in the quiet
enjoyment of his abundant riches and painless leisure. But nowadays
courtiers, and people who think they have a turn for affairs, thrust
themselves forward of their own accord uninvited into courts and
toilsome escorts and bivouacs, that they may get a horse, or brooch, or
some such piece of good luck. "But his wife is left behind in Phylace,
and tears her cheeks in her sorrow, and his house is only half complete
without him,"[307] while he is dragged about, and wanders about, and
wastes his time in idle hopes, and has to put up with much insult. And
even if he gets any of those things he desires, giddy and dizzy at
Fortune's rope-dance, he seeks retirement, and deems those happy who
live obscure and in security, while they again look up admiringly at him
who soars so high above their heads.[308]

§ II. Vice has universally an ill effect on everybody, being in itself a
sufficient producer of infelicity, needing no instruments nor ministers.
For tyrants, anxious to make those whom they punish wretched, keep
executioners and torturers, and contrive branding-irons and other
instruments of torture to inspire fear[309] in the brute soul, whereas
vice attacks the soul without any such apparatus, and crushes and
dejects it, and fills a man with sorrow, and lamentation, and
melancholy, and remorse. Here is a proof of what I say. Many are silent
under mutilation, and endure scourging or torture at the hand of despots
or tyrants without uttering a word, whenever their soul, abating the
pain by reason, forcibly as it were checks and represses them: but you
can never quiet anger or smother grief, or persuade a timid person not
to run away, or one suffering from remorse not to cry out, nor tear his
hair, nor smite his thigh. Thus vice is stronger than fire and sword.

§ III. You know of course that cities, when they desire to publicly
contract for the building of temples or colossuses, listen to the
estimates of the contractors who compete for the job, and bring their
plans and charges, and finally select the contractor who will do the
work at least expense, and best, and quickest. Let us suppose then that
we publicly contract to make the life of man miserable, and take the
estimates of Fortune and Vice for this object. Fortune shall come
forward, provided with all sorts of instruments and costly apparatus to
make life miserable and wretched. She shall come with robberies and
wars, and the blood-guiltiness of tyrants, and storms at sea, and
lightning drawn down from the sky, she shall compound hemlock, she shall
bring swords, she shall levy an army of informers, she shall cause
fevers to break out, she shall rattle fetters and build prisons. It is
true that most of these things are owing to Vice rather than Fortune,
but let us suppose them all to come from Fortune. And let Vice stand by
naked, without any external things against man, and let her ask Fortune
how she will make man unhappy and dejected. Fortune, dost thou threaten
poverty? Metrocles laughs at thee, who sleeps during winter among the
sheep, in summer in the vestibules of temples, and challenges the king
of the Persians,[310] who winters at Babylon, and summers in Media, to
vie with him in happiness. Dost thou bring slavery, and bondage, and
sale? Diogenes despises thee, who cried out, as he was being sold by
some robbers, "Who will buy a master?" Dost thou mix a cup of poison?
Didst not thou offer such a one to Socrates? And cheerfully, and mildly,
without fear, without changing colour or countenance, he calmly drank it
up: and when he was dead, all who survived deemed him happy, as sure to
have a divine lot in Hades. And as to thy fire, did not Decius, the
general of the Romans, anticipate it for himself, having piled up a
funeral pyre between the two armies, and sacrificed himself to Cronos,
dedicating himself for the supremacy of his country? And the chaste and
loving wives of the Indians strive and contend with one another for the
fire, and she that wins the day and gets burnt with the body of her
husband, is pronounced happy by the rest, and her praises sung. And of
the wise men in that part of the world no one is esteemed or pronounced
happy, who does not in his lifetime, in good health and in full
possession of all his faculties, separate soul from body by fire, and
emerge pure from flesh, having purged away his mortal part. Or wilt thou
reduce a man from a splendid property, and house, and table, and
sumptuous living, to a threadbare coat and wallet, and begging of daily
bread? Such was the beginning of happiness to Diogenes, of freedom and
glory to Crates. Or wilt thou nail a man on a cross, or impale him on a
stake? What cares Theodorus whether he rots above ground or below? Such
was the happy mode of burial amongst the Scythians,[311] and among the
Hyrcanians dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour according to the laws
the dead bodies of those who have made a happy end.

§ IV. Who then are made unhappy by these things? Those who have no
manliness or reason, the enervated and untrained, who retain the
opinions they had as children. Fortune therefore does not produce
perfect infelicity, unless Vice co-operate. For as a thread saws through
a bone that has been soaked in ashes and vinegar, and as people bend and
fashion ivory only when it has been made soft and supple by beer, and
cannot under any other circumstances, so Fortune, lighting upon what is
in itself faulty and soft through Vice, hollows it out and wounds it.
And as the Parthian juice, though hurtful to no one else nor injurious
to those who touch it or carry it about, yet if it be communicated to a
wounded man straightway kills him through his previous susceptibility to
receive its essence, so he who will be upset in soul by Fortune must
have some secret internal ulcer or sore to make external things so
piteous and lamentable.

§ V. Does then Vice need Fortune to bring about infelicity? By no means.
She lashes not up the rough and stormy sea, she girds not lonely
mountain passes with robbers lying in wait by the way, she makes not
clouds of hail to burst on the fruitful plains, she suborns not Meletus
or Anytus or Callixenus as accusers, she takes not away wealth, excludes
not people from the prætorship to make them wretched; but she scares the
rich, the well-to-do, and great heirs; by land and sea she insinuates
herself and sticks to people, infusing lust, inflaming with anger,
afflicting them with superstitious fears, tearing them in pieces with
envy.

    [304] The beginning of this short Treatise is lost. Nor
    is the first paragraph at all clear. We have to guess
    somewhat at the meaning.

    [305] In a fragment of the "Phaethon." Compare also "On
    Education," § 19.

    [306] "Iliad," xxiii. 297, 298.

    [307] "Iliad," ii. 700, 701.

    [308] 'Tis ever so. Compare Horace, "Sat." i. i. 1-14.

    [309] Adopting Reiske's reading.

    [310] Proverbial for extreme good fortune. Cf. Horace,
    "Odes," iii. ix. 4, "Persarum vigui rege beatior."

    [311] See Herodotus, iv. 72.

WHETHER THE DISORDERS OF MIND OR
BODY ARE WORSE.

§ I. Homer, looking at the mortality of all living creatures, and
comparing them with one another in their lives and habits, gave vent to
his thoughts in the words,

  "Of all the things that on the earth do breathe,
   Or creep, man is by far the wretchedest;"[312]

assigning to man an unhappy pre-eminence in extreme misfortune. But let
us, assuming that man is, as thus publicly declared, supreme in
infelicity and the most wretched of all living creatures, compare him
with himself, in the estimate of his misery dividing body and soul, not
idly but in a very necessary way, that we may learn whether our life is
more wretched owing to Fortune or through our own fault. For disease is
engendered in the body by nature, but vice and depravity in the soul is
first its own doing, then its settled condition. And it is no slight aid
to tranquillity of mind if what is bad be capable of cure, and lighter
and less violent.

§ II. The fox in Æsop[313] disputing with the leopard as to their
respective claims to variety, the latter showed its body and appearance
all bright and spotted, while the tawny skin of the former was dirty and
not pleasant to look at. Then the fox said, "Look inside me, sir judge,
and you will see that I am more full of variety than my opponent,"
referring to his trickiness and versatility in shifts. Let us similarly
say to ourselves, Many diseases and disorders, good sir, thy body
naturally produces of itself, many also it receives from without; but if
thou lookest at thyself within thou wilt find, to borrow the language of
Democritus, a varied and susceptible storehouse and treasury of what is
bad, not flowing in from without, but having as it were innate and
native springs, which vice, being exceedingly rich and abundant in
passion, produces. And if diseases are detected in the body by the pulse
and by pallors and flushes,[314] and are indicated by heats and sudden
pains, while the diseases of the mind, bad as they are, escape the
notice of most people, the latter are worse because they deprive the
sufferer of the perception of them. For reason if it be sound perceives
the diseases of the body, but he that is diseased in his mind cannot
judge of his sufferings, for he suffers in the very seat of judgement.
We ought to account therefore the first and greatest of the diseases of
the mind that ignorance,[315] whereby vice is incurable for most people,
dwelling with them and living and dying with them. For the beginning of
getting rid of disease is the perception of it, which leads the sufferer
to the necessary relief, but he who through not believing he is ill
knows not what he requires refuses the remedy even when it is close at
hand. For amongst the diseases of the body those are the worst which are
accompanied by stupor, as lethargies, headaches, epilepsies, apoplexies,
and those fevers which raise inflammation to the pitch of madness, and
disturb the brain as in the case of a musical instrument,

  "And move the mind's strings hitherto untouched."[316]

§ III. And so doctors wish a man not to be ill, or if he is ill to be
ignorant of it, as is the case with all diseases of the soul. For
neither those who are out of their minds, nor the licentious, nor the
unjust think themselves faulty--some even think themselves perfect. For
no one ever yet called a fever health, or consumption a good condition
of body, or gout swift-footedness, or paleness a good colour; but many
call anger manliness, and love friendship, and envy competition, and
cowardice prudence. Then again those that are ill in body send for
doctors, for they are conscious of what they need to counteract their
ailments; but those who are ill in mind avoid philosophers, for they
think themselves excellent in the very matters in which they come short.
And it is on this account that we maintain that ophthalmia is a lesser
evil than madness, and gout than frenzy. For the person ill in body is
aware of it and calls loudly for the doctor, and when he comes allows
him to anoint his eye, to open a vein, or to plaster up his head; but
you hear mad Agave in her frenzy not knowing her dearest ones, but
crying out, "We bring from the mountain to the halls a young stag
recently torn limb from limb, a fortunate capture."[317] Again he who is
ill in body straightway gives up and goes to bed and remains there
quietly till he is well, and if he toss and tumble about a little when
the fit is on him, any of the people who are by saying to him,

                                    "Gently,
  Stay in the bed, poor wretch, and take your ease,"[318]

restrain him and check him. But those who suffer from a diseased brain
are then most active and least at rest, for impulses bring about action,
and the passions are vehement impulses. And so they do not let the mind
rest, but when the man most requires quiet and silence and retirement,
then is he dragged into the open air, and becomes the victim of anger,
contentiousness, lust, and grief, and is compelled to do and say many
lawless things unsuitable to the occasion.

§ IV. As therefore the storm which prevents one's putting into harbour
is more dangerous than the storm which will not let one sail, so those
storms of the soul are more formidable which do not allow a man to take
in sail, or to calm his reason when it is disturbed, but without a pilot
and without ballast, in perplexity and uncertainty through contrary and
confusing courses, he rushes headlong and falls into woeful shipwreck,
and shatters his life. So that from these points of view it is worse to
be diseased in mind than body, for the latter only suffer, but the
former do ill as well as suffer ill. But why need I speak of our various
passions? The very times bring them to our mind. Do you see yon great
and promiscuous crowd jostling against one another and surging round the
rostrum and forum? They have not assembled here to sacrifice to their
country's gods, nor to share in one another's rites; they are not
bringing to Ascræan Zeus the firstfruits of Lydian produce,[319] nor are
they celebrating in honour of Dionysus the Bacchic orgies on festival
nights with common revellings; but a mighty plague stirring up Asia in
annual cycles drives them here for litigation and suits at law at stated
times: and the mass of business, like the confluence of mighty rivers,
has inundated one forum, and festers and teems with ruiners and ruined.
What fevers, what agues, do not these things cause? What obstructions,
what irruptions of blood into the air-vessels, what distemperature of
heat, what overflow of humours, do not result? If you examine every suit
at law, as if it were a person, as to where it originated, where it came
from, you will find that one was produced by obstinate temper, another
by frantic love of strife, a third by some sordid desire.[320]

    [312] Homer, "Iliad," xvii. 446, 447.

    [313] See the Fable [Greek: Alôpêx kai Pardalis]. No.
    42, Ed. Halme.

    [314] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: ôchriasesi kai
    erythêmasi].

    [315] Forte [Greek: agnoian]."--_Wyttenbach._ The
    ordinary reading is [Greek: anoian]. "E coelo descendit
    [Greek: gnôthi seauton]," says Juvenal truly, xi. 27.

    [316] Compare the image in Shakspere, "Hamlet," A. iii.
    Sc. I. 165, 166.

      "Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
       Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."

    [317] Euripides, "Bacchæ," 1170-1172. Agave's treatment
    of her son Pentheus was a stock philosophical
    comparison. See for example Horace, ii. "Sat." iii. 303,
    304, and context.

    [318] Euripides, "Orestes," 258.

    [319] "_Aurum_ puta. Pactolus enim aurum fert. Videtur
    dictio e Pindaro desumta esse."--_Reiske._

    [320] "Libellus hic fine carere videtur. Quare autem
    opusculum hoc Plutarcho indignum atque suppositum visum
    Xylandro fuerit, non intelligo."--_Reiske._

ON ABUNDANCE OF FRIENDS.

§ I. Menon the Thessalian, who thought he was a perfect adept in
discourse, and, to borrow the language of Empedocles, "had attained the
heights of wisdom," was asked by Socrates, what virtue was, and upon his
answering quickly and glibly, that virtue was a different thing in boy
and old man, and in man and woman, and in magistrate and private person,
and in master and servant, "Capital," said Socrates, "you were asked
about one virtue, but you have raised up a whole swarm of them,"[321]
conjecturing not amiss that the man named many because he knew not one.
Might not someone jeer at us in the same way, as being afraid, when we
have not yet one firm friendship, that we shall without knowing it fall
upon an abundance of friends? It is very much the same as if a man
maimed and blind should be afraid of becoming hundred-handed like
Briareus or all eyes like Argus. And yet we wonderfully praise the young
man in Menander, who said that he thought anyone wonderfully good, if he
had even the shadow of a friend.[322]

§ II. But among many other things what stands chiefly in the way of
getting a friend is the desire for many friends, like a licentious woman
who, through giving her favours indiscriminately, cannot retain her old
lovers, who are neglected and drop off;[323] or rather like the
foster-child of Hypsipyle, "sitting in the meadow and plucking flower
after flower, snatching at each prize with gladsome heart, insatiable in
its childish delight,"[324] so in the case of each of us, owing to our
love of novelty and fickleness, the recent flower ever attracts, and
makes us inconstant, frequently laying the foundations of many
friendships and intimacies that come to nothing, neglecting in love of
what we eagerly pursue what we have already possession of. To begin
therefore with the domestic hearth,[325] as the saying is, with the
traditions of life that time has handed down to us about constant
friends, let us take the witness and counsel of antiquity, according to
which friendships go in pairs, as in the cases of Theseus and Pirithous,
Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades, Phintias and Damon,
Epaminondas and Pelopidas. For friendship is a creature that goes in
pairs, and is not gregarious, or crow-like,[326] and to think a friend
a second self, and to call him companion as it were second one,[327]
shows that friendship is a dual relation. For we can get neither many
slaves nor many friends at small expense. What then is the
purchase-money of friendship? Benevolence and complaisance conjoined
with virtue, and yet nature has nothing more rare than these. And so to
love or be loved very much cannot find place with many persons; for as
rivers that have many channels and cuttings have a weak and thin stream,
so excessive love in the soul if divided out among many is weakened.
Thus love for their young is most strongly implanted in those that bear
only one, as Homer calls a beloved son "the only one, the child of old
age,"[328] that is, when the parents neither have nor are likely to have
another child.

§ III. Not that we insist on only one friend, but among the rest there
should be one eminently so, like a child of old age, who according to
that well-known proverb has eaten a bushel of salt with one,[329] not as
nowadays many so-called friends contract friendship from drinking
together once, or playing at ball together, or playing together with
dice, or passing the night together at some inn, or meeting at the
wrestling-school or in the market. And in the houses of rich and leading
men people congratulate them on their many friends, when they see the
large and bustling crowd of visitors and handshakers and retainers: and
yet they see more flies in their kitchens, and as the flies only come
for the dainties, so they only dance attendance for what they can get.
And since true friendship has three main requirements, virtue, as a
thing good; and familiarity, as a thing pleasant; and use, as a thing
serviceable; for we ought to choose a friend with judgement, and rejoice
in his company, and make use of him in need; and all these things are
prejudicial to abundance of friends, especially judgement, which is the
most important point; we must first consider, if it is impossible in a
short time to test dancers who are to form a chorus, or rowers who are
to pull together, or slaves who are to act as stewards of estates, or
as tutors of one's sons, far more difficult is it to meet with many
friends who will take off their coats to aid you in every fortune, each
of whom "offers his services to you in prosperity, and does not object
to share your adversity." For neither does a ship encounter so many
storms at sea, nor do they fortify places with walls, or harbours with
defences and earthworks, in the expectation of so many and great
dangers, as friendship tested well and soundly promises defence and
refuge from. But if friends slip in without being tested, like money
proved to be bad,

  "Those who shall lose such friends may well be glad,
   And those who have such pray that they may lose them."[330]

Yet is it difficult and by no means easy to avoid and bring to a close
an unpleasant friendship: as in the case of food which is injurious and
harmful, we cannot retain it on the stomach without damage and hurt, nor
can we expel it as it was taken into the mouth, but only in a putrid
mixed up and changed form, so a bad friend is troublesome both to others
and himself if retained, and if he be got rid of forcibly it is with
hostility and hatred, and like the voiding of bile.

§ IV. We ought not, therefore, lightly to welcome or strike up an
intimate friendship with any chance comers, or love those who attach
themselves to us, but attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our
friendship. For what is easily got is not always desirable: and we pass
over and trample upon heather and brambles that stick to us[331] on our
road to the olive and vine: so also is it good not always to make a
friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us, but
after testing them to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our
affection and likely to be serviceable to us.

§ V. As therefore Zeuxis, when some people accused him of painting
slowly, replied, "I admit that I do, but then I paint to last," so ought
we to test for a long time the friendship and intimacy that we take up
and mean to keep. Is it not easy then to put to the test many friends,
and to associate with many friends at the same time, or is this
impossible? For intimacy is the full enjoyment of friendship, and most
pleasant is companying with and spending the day with a friend. "Never
again shall we alive, apart from dear friends, sit and take counsel
alone together."[332] And Menelaus said about Odysseus, "Nor did
anything ever divide or separate us, who loved and delighted in one
another, till death's black cloud overshadowed us."[333] The contrary
effect seems to be produced by abundance of friends. For the friendship
of a pair of friends draws them together and puts them together and
holds them together, and is heightened by intercourse and kindliness,
"as when the juice of the fig curdles and binds the white milk,"[334] as
Empedocles says, such unity and complete union will such a friendship
produce. Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and
disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too
frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by
the diffusing and compacting of intimacy. And this causes at once an
inequality and difficulty in respect of acts of kindness, for the uses
of friendship become inoperative by being dispersed over too wide an
area. "One man is acted upon by his character, another by his
reflection."[335] For neither do our natures and impulses always incline
in the same directions, nor are our fortunes in life identical, for
opportunities of action are, like the winds, favourable to some,
unfavourable to others.

§ VI. Moreover, if all our friends want to do the same things at the
same time, it will be difficult to satisfy them all, whether they desire
to deliberate, or to act in state affairs, or wish for office, or are
going to entertain guests. If again at the same time they chance to be
engaged in different occupations and interests and ask you all together,
one who is going on a voyage that you will sail with him, another who is
going to law that you will be his advocate, another who is going to try
a case that you will try it with him, another who is selling or buying
that you will go into partnership with him, another who is going to
marry that you will join him in the sacrifice, another who is going to
bury a relation that you will be one of the mourners,

  "The town is full of incense, and at once
   Resounds with triumph-songs and bitter wailing,"[336]

that is the fruit of many friends; to oblige all is impossible, to
oblige none is absurd, and to help one and offend many is grievous.

  "No lover ever yet fancied neglect."[337]

And yet people bear patiently and without anger the carelessness and
neglect of friends, if they get from them such excuses as "I forgot," "I
did it unwittingly." But he who says, "I did not assist you in your
lawsuit, for I was assisting another friend," or "I did not visit you
when you had your fever, for I was helping so-and-so who was
entertaining his friends," excusing himself for his inattention to one
by his attention to another, so far from making the offence less, even
adds jealousy to his neglect. But most people in friendship regard only,
it seems, what can be got out of it, overlooking what will be asked in
return, and not remembering that he, who has had many of his own
requests granted, must oblige others in turn by granting their requests.
And as Briareus with his hundred hands had to feed fifty stomachs, and
was therefore no better provided than we are, who with two hands have to
supply the necessities of only one belly, so in having many friends[338]
one has to do many services for them, one has to share in their anxiety,
and to toil and moil with them. For we must not listen to Euripides when
he says, "mortals ought to join in moderate friendships for one another,
and not love with all their heart, that the spell may be soon broken,
and the friendship may either be ended or become closer at will,"[339]
that so it may be adjusted to our requirements, like the sail of a ship
that we can either slacken or haul tight. But let us transfer,
Euripides, these lines of yours to enmities, and bid people make their
animosities moderate, and not hate with all their heart, that their
hatred, and wrath, and querulousness, and suspicions, may be easily
broken. Recommend rather for our consideration that saying of
Pythagoras, "Do not give many your right hand,"[340] that is, do not
make many friends, do not go in for a common and vulgar friendship,
which is sure to cause anyone much trouble; for its sharing in others'
anxieties and griefs and labours and dangers is quite intolerable to
free and noble natures. And that was a true saying of the wise
Chilo[341] to one who told him he had no enemy, "Neither," said he, "do
you seem to me to have a friend." For enmities inevitably accompany and
are involved in friendships.

§ VII. It is impossible I say not to share with a friend in his injuries
and disgraces and enmities, for enemies at once suspect and hate the
friend of their enemies, and even friends are often envious and jealous
and carp at him. As then the oracle given to Timesias about his colony
foretold him, "that his swarm of bees would soon be followed by a swarm
of wasps," so those that seek a swarm of friends have sometimes lighted
unawares on a wasp's-nest of enemies. And the remembrance of wrongs done
by an enemy and the kindness of a friend do not weigh in the same
balance. See how Alexander treated the friends and intimates of Philotas
and Parmenio, how Dionysius treated those of Dion, Nero those of
Plautus, Tiberius those of Sejanus, torturing and putting them to death.
For as neither the gold nor rich robes of Creon's daughter[342] availed
her or her sire, but the flame that burst out suddenly involved him in
the same fate as herself, as he ran up to embrace her and rescue her, so
some friends, though they have had no enjoyment out of their friends'
prosperity, are involved in their misfortunes. And this is especially
the case with philosophers and kind people, as Theseus, when his friend
Pirithous was punished and imprisoned, "was also bound in fetters not
of brass."[343] And Thucydides tells us that during the plague at Athens
those that most displayed their virtue perished with their friends that
were ill, for they neglected their own lives in going to visit
them.[344]

§ VIII. We ought not therefore to be too lavish with our virtue, binding
it together and implicating it in various people's fortunes, but we
ought to preserve our friendship for those who are worthy of it, and are
capable of reciprocating it. For this is indeed the greatest argument
against many friends that friendship is originated by similarity. For
seeing that even the brutes can hardly be forced to mix with those that
are unlike themselves, but crouch down, and show their dislike, and run
away, while they mix freely with those that are akin to them and have a
similar nature, and gently and gladly make friends with one another
then, how is it possible that there should be friendship between people
differing in characters and temperaments and ideas of life? For harmony
on the harp or lyre is attained by notes in unison and not in unison,
sharp and flat somehow or other producing concord, but in the harmony of
friendship there must be no unlike, or uneven, or unequal element, but
from all alike must come agreement in opinions and wishes and feeling,
as if one soul were put into several bodies.

§ IX. What man then is so industrious, so changeable, and so versatile,
as to be able to make himself like and adapt himself to many different
persons, and not to laugh at the advice of Theognis, "Imitate the
ingenuity of the polypus, that takes the colour of whatever stone it
sticks to."[345] And yet the changes in the polypus do not go deep but
are only on the surface, which, from its thickness or thinness takes the
impression of everything that approaches it, whereas friends endeavour
to be like one another in character, and feeling, and language, and
pursuits, and disposition. It requires a not very fortunate or very good
Proteus,[346] able by jugglery to assume various forms, to be
frequently at the same time a student with the learned, and ready to
try a fall with wrestlers, or to go a hunting with people fond of the
chase, or to get drunk with tipplers, or to go a canvassing with
politicians, having no fixed character of his own.[347] And as the
natural philosophers say of unformed and colourless matter when
subjected to external change, that it is now fire, now water, now air,
now solid earth, so the soul suitable for many friendships must be
impressionable, and versatile, and pliant, and changeable. But
friendship requires a steady constant and unchangeable character, a
person that is uniform in his intimacy. And so a constant friend is a
thing rare and hard to find.

    [321] Plato, "Men." p. 71 E.

    [322] Quoted more fully by our author, "De Fraterno
    Amore," § iii.

    [323] "Eadem comparatione utitur Lucianus in Toxari T.
    ii. p. 351: [Greek: hostis an polyphilos hê homoios
    hêmin dokei tais koinais tautais kai moicheuomenais
    gynaixi; kai oiometh' ouketh' homoiôs ischyran tên
    philian autou einai pros pollas eunoias
    diairetheisan]."--_Wyttenbach._

    [324] From the "Hypsipyle" of Euripides.

    [325] A well-known proverb for beginning at the
    beginning. Aristophanes, "Vespæ." 846; Plato,
    "Euthryphro," 3 A; Strabo, 9.

    [326] An allusion to the well-known proverb, [Greek:
    koloios poti koloion]. See Erasmus, "Adagia," p. 1644.

    [327] The paronomasia is on [Greek: hetairos, heteros].

    [328] "Iliad," ix. 482; "Odyssey," xvi. 19.

    [329] Cf. Cicero, "De Amicitia," xix.

    [330] Sophocles, Fragm. 741. Quoted again by our author,
    "On Love," § xxiii.

    [331] For the image compare Lucio's speech, Shakspere,
    "Measure for Measure," A. iv. Sc. iii. 189, 190: "Nay,
    friar, I am a kind of burr; I shall stick."

    [332] "Iliad," xxiii. 77, 78.

    [333] "Odyssey," iv. 178-180.

    [334] "Iliad," v. 902, altered somewhat.

    [335] Bergk. p. 1344^3.

    [336] Sophocles, "Oedipus Tyrannus," 4, 5. Quoted again
    "On Moral Virtue," § vi.

    [337] A line from Menander. Quoted again "De Fraterno
    Amore," § xx.

    [338] Reading with Halm and Hercher [Greek: en tôi
    pollois philois chrêsthai.]

    [339] Euripides, "Hippolytus," 253-257, where Dindorf
    and Hercher agree in the reading.

    [340] Compare "On Education," § xvii.

    [341] Chilo was one of the Seven Wise Men. See
    Pausanias, iii. 16; X. 24.

    [342] For the circumstances see Euripides, "Medea," 1136
    sq.

    [343] For the friendship of Theseus and Pirithous, see
    Pausanias, i. 17; x. 29. The line is from Euripides,
    "Pirithous," Fragm. 591. Cf. "On Shyness," § x.

    [344] Thucydides, ii. 51.

    [345] Bergk. p. 500^3.

    [346] On Proteus, see Verg. "Georg." iv. 387 sq.; Ovid,
    "Art." i. 761; "Met." ii. 9; "Fasti," i. 367 sq., and
    especially Horace, "Epistles," i. i. 90: "Quo teneam
    vultus mutantem Protea nodo?"

    [347] Literally, "having no hearth of character," the
    hearth being an emblem of stability. Compare "How One
    may Discern a Flatterer from a Friend," § vii., where
    the same image is employed.

HOW ONE MAY DISCERN A FLATTERER FROM
A FRIEND.

§ I. Plato says,[348] Antiochus Philopappus, that all men pardon the man
who acknowledges that he is excessively fond of himself, but that there
is among many other defects this very grave one in self-love, that by it
a man becomes incapable of being a just and impartial judge about
himself, for love is blind in regard to the loved object, unless a
person has learnt and accustomed himself to honour and pursue what is
noble rather than his own selfish interests. This gives a great field
for the flatterer in friendship, who finds a wonderful base of
operations in our self-love, which makes each person his own first and
greatest flatterer, and easily admits a flatterer from without, who will
be, so he thinks and hopes, both a witness and confirmer of his good
opinion of himself. For he that lies open to the reproach of being fond
of flatterers is very fond of himself, and owing to his goodwill to
himself wishes to possess all good qualities, and thinks he actually
does; the wish is not ridiculous, but the thought is misleading and
requires a good deal of caution. And if truth is a divine thing, and,
according to Plato,[349] the beginning of all good things both to the
gods and men, the flatterer is likely to be an enemy to the gods, and
especially to Apollo, for he always sets himself against that famous
saying, "Know thyself,"[350] implanting in everybody's mind self-deceit
and ignorance of his own good or bad qualities, thus making his good
points defective and imperfect, and his bad points altogether
incorrigible.

§ II. If however, as is the case with most other bad things, the
flatterer attacked only or chiefly ignoble or worthless persons, the
evil would not be so mischievous or so difficult to guard against. But
since, as wood-worms breed most in soft and sweet wood, those whose
characters are honourable and good and equitable encourage and support
the flatterer most,--and moreover, as Simonides says, "rearing of horses
does not go with the oil-flask,[351] but with fruitful fields," so we
see that flattery does not join itself to the poor, the obscure, or
those without means, but is the snare and bane of great houses and
estates, and often overturns kingdoms and principalities,--it is a
matter of no small importance, needing much foresight, to examine the
question, that so flattery may be easily detected, and neither injure
nor discredit friendship. For just as lice leave dying persons, and
abandon bodies when the blood on which they feed is drying up, so one
never yet saw flatterers dancing attendance on dry and cold poverty, but
they fasten on wealth and position and there get fat, but speedily
decamp if reverses come. But we ought not to wait to experience that,
which would be unprofitable, or rather injurious and dangerous. For not
to find friends at a time when you want them is hard, as also not to be
able to exchange an inconstant and bad friend for a constant and good
one. For a friend should be like money tried before being required, not
found faulty in our need. For we ought not to have our wits about us
only when the mischief is done, but we ought to try and prevent the
flatterer doing any harm to us: for otherwise we shall be in the same
plight as people who test deadly poisons by first tasting them, and kill
or nearly kill themselves in the experiment. We do not praise such, nor
again all those who, looking at their friend simply from the point of
view of decorum and utility, think that they can detect all agreeable
and pleasant companions as flatterers in the very act. For a friend
ought not to be disagreeable or unpleasant, nor ought friendship to be a
thing high and mighty with sourness and austerity, but even its decorous
deportment ought to be attractive and winning,[352] for by it

  "The Graces and Desire have pitched their tents,"[353]

and not only to a person in misfortune "is it sweet to look into the
eyes of a friendly person," as Euripides[354] says, but no less does it
bring pleasure and charm in good fortune, than when it relieves the
sorrows and difficulties of adversity. And as Evenus said "fire was the
best sauce,"[355] so the deity, mixing up friendship with life, has made
everything bright and sweet and acceptable by its presence and the
enjoyment it brings. How else indeed could the flatterer insinuate
himself by the pleasure he gives, unless he knew that friendship
admitted the pleasurable element? It would be impossible to say. But
just as spurious and mock gold only imitates the brightness and glitter
of real gold, so the flatterer seems to imitate the pleasantness and
agreeableness of the real friend, and to exhibit himself ever merry and
bright, contradicting and opposing nothing. We must not however on that
account suspect all who praise as simple flatterers. For friendship
requires praise as much as censure on the proper occasion. Indeed
peevishness and querulousness are altogether alien to friendship and
social life: but when goodwill bestows praise ungrudgingly and readily
upon good actions, people endure also easily and without pain admonition
and plainspeaking, believing and continuing to love the person who took
such pleasure in praising, as if now he only blamed out of necessity.

§ III. It is difficult then, someone may say, to distinguish between the
flatterer and the friend, if they differ neither in the pleasure they
give nor in the praise they bestow; for as to services and attentions
you may often see friendship outstripped by flattery. Certainly it is
so, I should reply, if we are trying to find the genuine flatterer who
handles his craft with cleverness and art, but not if, like most people,
we consider those persons flatterers who are called their own
oil-flask-carriers and table-men, men who begin to talk, as one said,
the moment their hands have been washed for dinner,[356] whose
servility, ribaldry, and want of all decency, is apparent at the first
dish and glass. It did not of course require very much discrimination to
detect Melanthius the parasite of Alexander of Pheræ of flattery, who,
to those who asked how Alexander was murdered, answered, "Through his
side into my belly": or those who formed a circle round a wealthy table,
"whom neither fire, nor sword, nor steel, would keep from running to a
feast":[357] or those female flatterers in Cyprus, who after they
crossed over into Syria were nicknamed "step-ladders,"[358] because they
lay down and let the kings' wives use their bodies as steps to mount
their carriages.

§ IV. What kind of flatterer then must we be on our guard against? The
one who neither seems to be nor acknowledges himself to be one: whom you
will not always find in the vicinity of your kitchen, who is not to be
caught watching the dial to see how near it is to dinner-time,[359] nor
gets so drunk as to throw himself down anyhow, but one who is generally
sober, and a busybody, and thinks he ought to have a hand in your
affairs, and wishes to share in your secrets, and as to friendship plays
rather a tragic than a satyric or comic part. For as Plato says, "it is
the height of injustice to appear to be just when you are not really
so,"[360] so we must deem the most dangerous kind of flattery not the
open but the secret, not the playful but the serious. For it throws
suspicion even upon a genuine friendship, which we may often confound
with it, if we are not careful. When Gobryas pursued one of the Magi
into a dark room, and was on the ground wrestling with him, and Darius
came up and was doubtful how he could kill one without killing both,
Gobryas bade him thrust his sword boldly through both of them;[361] but
we, since we give no assent to that saying, "Let friend perish so the
enemy perish with him,"[362] in our endeavour to distinguish the
flatterer from the friend, seeing that their resemblances are so many,
ought to take great care that we do not reject the good with the bad,
nor in sparing what is beneficial fall in with what is injurious. For as
wild grains mixed up with wheat, if very similar in size and appearance,
are not easily kept apart, for if the sieve have small holes they don't
pass through, and if large holes they pass with the corn, so flattery is
not easily distinguished from friendship, being mixed up with it in
feeling and emotion, habit and custom.

§ V. Because however friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and
nothing more glads the heart of man, therefore the flatterer attracts by
the pleasure he gives, pleasure being in fact his field. And because
favours and good services accompany friendship, as the proverb says "a
friend is more necessary than fire or water,"[363] therefore the
flatterer volunteers all sorts of services, and strives to show himself
on all occasions zealous and obliging and ready. And since friendship is
mainly produced by a similarity of tastes and habits, and to have the
same likes and dislikes first brings people together and unites them
through sympathy,[364] the flatterer observing this moulds himself like
material and demeans himself accordingly, seeking completely to imitate
and resemble those whom he desires to ingratiate himself with, being
supple in change, and plausible in his imitations, so that one would
say,

  "Achilles' son, O no, it is himself."[365]

But his cleverest trick is that, observing that freedom of speech, is
both spoken of and reckoned as the peculiar and natural voice of
friendship, while not speaking freely is considered unfriendly and
disingenuous, he has not failed to imitate this trait of friendship
also. But just as clever cooks infuse bitter sauces and sharp seasoning
to prevent sweet things from cloying, so these flatterers do not use a
genuine or serviceable freedom of speech, but merely a winking and
tickling innuendo. He is therefore difficult to detect, like those
creatures which naturally change their colour and take that of the
material or place near them.[366] But since he deceives and conceals his
true character by his imitations, it is our duty to unmask him and
detect him by the differences between him and the true friend, and to
show that he is, as Plato says, "tricked out in other people's colours
and forms, from lack of any of his own."[367]

§ VI. Let us examine the matter then from the beginning. I said that
friendship originated in most cases from a similar disposition and
nature, generally inclined to the same habits and morals, and rejoicing
in the same pursuits, studies, and amusements, as the following lines
testify: "To old man the voice of old man is sweetest, to boy that of
boy, to woman is most acceptable that of woman, to the sick person that
of sick person, while he that is overtaken by misfortune is a comforter
to one in trouble." The flatterer knowing then that it is innate in us
to delight in, and enjoy the company of, and to love, those who are like
ourselves, attempts first to approach and get near a person in this
direction, (as one tries to catch an animal in the pastures,) by the
same pursuits and amusements and studies and modes of life quietly
throwing out his bait, and disguising himself in false colours, till his
victim give him an opportunity to catch him, and become tame and
tractable at his touch. Then too he censures the things and modes of
life and persons that he knows his victim dislikes, while he praises
those he fancies immoderately, overdoing it indeed[368] with his show of
surprise and excessive admiration, making him more and more convinced
that his likes and dislikes are the fruits of judgement and not of
caprice.

§ VII. How then is the flatterer convicted, and by what differences is
he detected, of being only a counterfeit, and not really like his
victim? We must first then look at the even tenor and consistency of his
principles, if he always delights in the same things, and always praises
the same things, and directs and governs his life after one pattern, as
becomes the noble lover of consistent friendship and familiarity. Such a
person is a friend. But the flatterer having no fixed character of his
own,[369] and not seeking to lead the life suitable for him, but shaping
and modelling himself after another's pattern, is neither simple nor
uniform, but complex and unstable, assuming different appearances, like
water poured from vessel to vessel, ever in a state of flux and
accommodating himself entirely to the fashion of those who entertain
him. The ape indeed, as it seems, attempting to imitate man, is caught
imitating his movements and dancing like him, but the flatterer himself
attracts and decoys other men, imitating not all alike, for with one he
sings and dances, with another he wrestles and gets covered with the
dust of the palæstra, while he follows a third fond of hunting and the
chase all but shouting out the words of Phædra,

  "How I desire to halloo on the dogs,
   Chasing the dappled deer,"[370]

and yet he has really no interest in the chase, it is the hunter himself
he sets the toils and snares for. And if the object of his pursuit is
some young scholar and lover of learning, he is all for books then, his
beard flows down to his feet,[371] he's quite a sight with his
threadbare cloak, has all the indifference of the Stoic, and speaks of
nothing but the rectangles and triangles of Plato. But if any rich and
careless fellow fond of drink come in his way,

  "Then wise Odysseus stript him of his rags,"[372]

his threadbare cloak is thrown aside, his beard is shorn off like a
fruitless crop, he goes in for wine-coolers and tankards, and laughs
loudly in the streets, and jeers at philosophers. As they say happened
at Syracuse, when Plato went there, and Dionysius was seized with a
furious passion for philosophy, and so great was the concourse of
geometricians that they raised up quite a cloud of dust in the palace,
but when Plato fell out of favour, and Dionysius gave up philosophy, and
went back again headlong to wine and women and trifles and debauchery,
then all the court was metamorphosed, as if they all had drunk of
Circe's cup, for ignorance and oblivion and silliness reigned rampant. I
am borne out in what I say by the behaviour of great flatterers and
demagogues,[373] the greatest of whom Alcibiades, a jeerer and
horse-rearer at Athens, and living a gay and merry life, wore his hair
closely shaven at Lacedæmon, and washed in cold water, and attired
himself in a threadbare cloak; while in Thrace he fought[374] and drank;
and at Tissaphernes' court lived delicately and luxuriously and in a
pretentious style; and thus curried favour and was popular with
everybody by imitating their habits and ways. Such was not the way
however in which Epaminondas or Agesilaus acted, for though they
associated with very many men and states and different modes of life,
they maintained everywhere their usual demeanour, both in dress and diet
and language and behaviour. So Plato[375] at Syracuse was exactly the
same man as in the Academy, the same with Dionysius as with Dion.

§ VIII. As to the changes of the flatterer, which resemble those of the
polypus,[376] a man may most easily detect them by himself pretending to
change about frequently, and by censuring the kind of life he used
formerly to praise, and anon approving of the words actions and modes of
life that he used to be displeased with. He will then see that the
flatterer is never consistent or himself, never loving hating rejoicing
grieving at his own initiative, but like a mirror, merely reflecting the
image of other people's emotions and manners and feelings. Such a one
will say, if you censure one of your friends to him, "You are slow in
finding the fellow out, he never pleased me from the first." But if on
the other hand you change your language and praise him, he will swear by
Zeus that he rejoices at it, and is himself under obligations to the
man, and believes in him. And if you talk of the necessity of changing
your mode of life, of retiring from public life to a life of privacy and
ease, he says, "We ought long ago to have got rid of uproar[377] and
envy." But if you think of returning again to public life, he chimes in,
"Your sentiments do you honour: retirement from business is pleasant,
but inglorious and mean." One ought to say at once to such a one,
"'Stranger, quite different now you look to what you did before.'[378] I
do not need a friend to change his opinions with me and to assent to me
in everything, my shadow will do that better, but I need one that will
speak the truth and help me with his judgement." This is one way of
detecting the flatterer.

§ IX. We must also observe another difference in the resemblance between
the friend and flatterer. The true friend does not imitate you in
everything, nor is he too keen to praise, but praises only what is
excellent, for as Sophocles says,

  "He is not born to share in hate but love,"[379]

yes, by Zeus, and he is born to share in doing what is right and in
loving what is noble, and not to share in wrong-doing or misbehaviour,
unless it be that, as a running of the eyes is catching, so through
companionship and intimacy he may against his will contract by infection
some vice or ill habit, as they say Plato's intimates imitated his
stoop, Aristotle's his lisp, and king Alexander's his holding his head a
little on one side, and rapidity of utterance in conversation,[380] for
people mostly pick up unawares such traits of character. But the
flatterer is exactly like the chameleon,[381] which takes every colour
but white, and so he, though unable to imitate what is worth his while,
leaves nothing that is bad unimitated. And just as poor painters unable
to make a fine portrait from inefficiency in their craft, bring out the
likeness by painting all the wrinkles, moles and scars, so the flatterer
imitates his friend's intemperance, superstition, hot temper, sourness
to domestics, suspicion of his friends and relations. For he is by
nature inclined to what is worst, and thinks that imitation of what is
bad is as far as possible removed from censure. For those are suspected
who have noble aims in life, and seem to be vexed and disgusted at their
friends' faults, for that injured and even ruined Dion with Dionysius,
Samius with Philip, and Cleomenes with Ptolemy. But he that wishes to be
and appear at the same time both agreeable and trustworthy pretends to
rejoice more in what is bad, as being through excessive love for his
friend not even offended at his vices, but as one with him in feeling
and nature in all matters. And so they claim to share in involuntary and
chance ailments, and pretend to have the same complaints, in flattery to
those who suffer from any, as that their eyesight and sense of hearing
are deficient, if their friends are somewhat blind or deaf, as the
flatterers of Dionysius, who was rather short-sighted, jostled one
another at a dinner party, and knocked the dishes off the table, _as if
from defect of vision_.[382] And some to make their cases more similar
wind themselves in closer, and dive even into family secrets for
parallels. For seeing that their friends are unfortunate in marriage, or
suspicious about the behaviour of their sons or relations, they do not
spare themselves, but make quite a Jeremiad about their own sons, or
wife, or kinsfolk, or relations, proclaiming loudly their own family
secrets. For similarity in situation makes people more sympathetic, and
their friends having received as it were hostages by their confessions,
entrust them in return with their secrets, and having once made
confidants of them, dare not take back their confidence.[383] I actually
know of a man who turned his wife out of doors because his friend had
put away his; but as he secretly visited her and sent messages to her,
he was detected by his friend's wife noticing his conduct. So little did
he know the nature of a flatterer that thought the following lines more
applicable to a crab than a flatterer, "His whole body is belly, his eye
is on everything, he is a creature creeping on his teeth," for such is a
true picture of the parasite, "friends of the frying-pan, hunting for a
dinner," to borrow the language of Eupolis.

§ X. However let us put off all this to its proper place in the
discourse. But let us not fail to notice the wiliness of the flatterer's
imitation, in that, even if he imitates any good points in the person he
flatters, he always takes care to give him the palm. Whereas among real
friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are
satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is
superior. But the flatterer, ever remembering that he is to play second
fiddle,[384] makes his copy always fall a little short of the original,
for he admits that he is everywhere outstripped and left behind, except
in vice. For in that alone he claims pre-eminence, for if his friend is
peevish, he says he is atrabilious; if his friend is superstitious, he
says he is a fanatic; if his friend is in love, he says he is madly in
love; if his friend laughs, he will say, "You laughed a little
unseasonably, but I almost died of laughter." But in regard to any good
points his action is quite the opposite. He says he can run quickly, but
his friend flies; he says he can ride pretty well, but his friend is a
Centaur on horseback. He says "I am not a bad poet, and don't write very
bad lines",

  "'But your sonorous verse is like Jove's thunder.'"

Thus he shows at once that his friend's aims in life are good, and that
his friend has reached a height he cannot soar to. Such then are the
differences in the resemblances between the flatterer and the friend.

§ XI. But since, as has been said before, to give pleasure is common to
both, for the good man delights in his friends as much as the bad man in
his flatterers, let us consider the difference between them here too.
The difference lies in the different aim of each in giving pleasure.
Look at it this way. There is no doubt a sweet smell in perfume. So
there is also in medicine. But the difference is that while in perfume
pleasure and nothing else is designed, in medicine either purging, or
warming, or adding flesh to the system, is the primary object, and the
sweet smell is only a secondary consideration. Again painters mix gay
colours and dyes: there are also some drugs which are gay in appearance
and not unpleasing in colour. What then is the difference between these?
Manifestly we distinguish by the end each aims at. So too the social
life of friends employs mirth to add a charm to some good and useful
end,[385] and sometimes makes joking and a good table and wine, aye, and
even chaff and banter, the seasoning to noble and serious matters, as
in the line,

  "Much they enjoyed talking to one another,"[386]

and again,

                        "Never did ought else
  Disturb our love or joy in one another."[387]

But the flatterer's whole aim and end is to cook up and season his joke
or word or action, so as to produce pleasure. And to speak concisely,
the flatterer's object is to please in everything he does, whereas the
true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure,
often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he
deems it best. For as the physician, if it be expedient, infuses saffron
or spikenard, aye, or uses some soothing fomentation or feeds his
patient up liberally, and sometimes orders castor,

  "Or poley,[388] that so strong and foully smells,"

or pounds hellebore and compels him to drink it,--neither in the one
case making unpleasantness, nor in the other pleasantness, his end and
aim, but in both studying only the interest of his patient,--so the
friend sometimes by praise and kindness, extolling him and gladdening
his heart, leads him to what is noble, as Agamemnon,

  "Teucer, dear head, thou son of Telamon,
   Go on thus shooting, captain of thy men;"[389]

or Diomede,

  "How could I e'er forget divine Odysseus?"[390]

But where on the other hand there is need of correction, then he rebukes
with biting words and with the freedom worthy of a friend,

  "Zeus-cherished Menelaus, art thou mad,
   And in thy folly tak'st no heed of safety?"[391]

Sometimes also he joins action to word, as Menedemus sobered the
profligate and disorderly son of his friend Asclepiades, by shutting him
out of his house, and not speaking to him. And Arcesilaus forbade Bato
his school, when he wrote a line in one of his plays against Cleanthes,
and only got reconciled with him after he repented and made his peace
with Cleanthes. For we ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit
him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as
we make use of some biting medicine, that will save and preserve the
life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing
about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens
the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always
useful. But the flatterer, always harping on one note, and accustomed to
play his accompaniment only with a view to please and to ingratiate
himself, knows not how either to oppose in deed, or give pain in word,
but complies only with every wish, ever chiming in with and echoing the
sentiments of his patron. As then Xenophon says Agesilaus took pleasure
in being praised by those who would also censure him,[392] so ought we
to think that to please and gratify us is friendly in the person who can
also give us pain and oppose us, but to feel suspicion at an intercourse
which is merely for pleasure and gratification, and never pungent, aye
and by Zeus to have ready that saying of the Lacedæmonian, who, on
hearing king Charillus praised, said, "How can he be a good man, who is
not severe even to the bad?"

§ XII. They say the gadfly attacks bulls, and the tick dogs, in the ear:
so the flatterer besieges with praise the ears of those who are fond of
praise, and sticks there and is hard to dislodge. We ought therefore
here to make a wide-awake and careful discrimination, whether the praise
is bestowed on the action or the man. It is bestowed on the action, if
people praise the absent rather than the present, if also those that
have the same aims and aspirations praise not only us but all that are
similarly disposed, and do not evidently say and do one thing at one
time, and the direct contrary at another; and the greatest test is if we
are conscious, in the matters for which we get the praise, that we have
not regretted them, and are not ashamed at them, and would not rather
have said and done differently. For our own inward judgement,
testifying the contrary and not admitting the praise, is above passion,
and impregnable and proof against the flatterer. But I know not how it
is that most people in misfortune cannot bear exhortation, but are
captivated more by condolence and sympathy, and when they have done
something wrong and acted amiss, he that by censure and blame implants
in them the stings of repentance is looked upon by them as hostile and
an accuser, while they welcome and regard as friendly and well-disposed
to them the person who bestows praise and panegyric on what they have
done. Those then that readily praise and join in applauding some word or
action on the part of someone whether in jest or earnest, only do
temporary harm for the moment, but those who injure the character by
their praise, aye, and by their flattery undermine the morals, act like
those slaves who do not steal from the bin, but from the seed corn.[393]
For they pervert the disposition, which is the seed of actions, and the
character, which is the principle and fountain of life, by attaching to
vice names that belong properly only to virtue. For as Thucydides
says,[394] in times of faction and war "people change the accustomed
meaning of words as applied to acts at their will and pleasure, for
reckless daring is then considered bravery to one's comrades, and
prudent delay specious cowardice, and sober-mindedness the cloak of the
coward, and taking everything into account before action a real desire
to do nothing." So too in the case of flattery we must observe and be on
our guard against wastefulness being called liberality, and cowardliness
prudence, and madness quick-wittedness, and meanness frugality, and the
amorous man called social and affectionate, and the term manly applied
to the passionate and vain man, and the term civil applied to the paltry
and mean man. As I remember Plato[395] says the lover is a flatterer of
the beloved one, and calls the snub nose graceful, and the aquiline nose
royal, and swarthy people manly, and fair people the children of the
gods, and the olive complexion is merely the lover's phrase to gloss
over and palliate excessive pallor. And yet the ugly man persuaded he is
handsome, or the short man persuaded he is tall, cannot long remain in
the error, and receives only slight injury from it, and not irreparable
mischief: but praise applied to vices as if they were virtues, so that
one is not vexed but delighted with a vicious life, removes all shame
from wrong-doing, and was the ruin of the Sicilians, by calling the
savage cruelty of Dionysius and Phalaris detestation of wickedness and
uprightness. It was the ruin of Egypt, by styling Ptolemy's effeminacy,
and superstition, and howlings, and beating of drums, religion and
service to the gods.[396] It was nearly the overthrow and destruction of
the ancient manners of the Romans, palliating the luxury and
intemperance and display of Antony as exhibitions of jollity and
kindliness, when his power and fortune were at their zenith. What else
invested Ptolemy[397] with his pipe and fiddle? What else brought
Nero[398] on the tragic stage, and invested him with the mask and
buskins? Was it not the praise of flatterers? And are not many kings
called Apollos if they can just sing a song,[399] and Dionysuses if they
get drunk, and Herculeses if they can wrestle, and do they not joy in
such titles, and are they not dragged into every kind of disgrace by
flattery?

§ XIII. Wherefore we must be especially on our guard against the
flatterer in regard to praise; as indeed he is very well aware himself,
and clever to avoid suspicion. If he light upon some dandy, or rustic in
a thick leather garment, he treats him with nothing but jeers and
mocks,[400] as Struthias insulted Bias, ironically praising him for his
stupidity, saying, "You have drunk more than king Alexander,"[401] and,
"that he was ready to die of laughing at his tale about the
Cyprian."[402] But when he sees people more refined very much on their
guard, and observing both time and place, he does not praise them
directly, but draws off a little and wheels round and approaches them
noiselessly, as one tries to catch a wild animal. For sometimes he
reports to a man the panegyric of other persons upon him, (as orators
do, introducing some third person,) saying that he had a very pleasant
conversation in the market with some strangers and men of worth, who
mentioned how they admired his many good points. On another occasion he
concocts and fabricates some false and trifling charges against him,
pretending he has heard them from other people, and runs up with a
serious face and inquires, where he said or did such and such a thing.