Plutarch's Morals
with his curiosity and calumny and malignity, like the legs and arms of
the polypus, is wild and savage and unmanageable.
Sec. XX. Now one kind of caution against his snares is to know and ever
remember that, whereas the soul contains true and noble and reasoning
elements, as also unreasoning and false and emotional ones, the friend
is always a counsellor and adviser to the better instincts of the soul,
as the physician improves and maintains health, whereas the flatterer
works upon the emotional and unreasoning ones, and tickles and
titillates them and seduces them from reason, employing sensuality as
his bait. As then there are some kinds of food which neither benefit the
blood or spirit, nor brace up the nerves and marrow, but stir the
passions, excite the lower nature, and make the flesh unsound and
rotten, so the language of the flatterer adds nothing to soberness and
reason, but encourages some love passion, or stirs up foolish rage, or
incites to envy, or produces the empty and burdensome vanity of pride,
or joins in bewailing woes, or ever by his calumnies and hints makes
malignity and illiberality and suspicion sharp and timid and jealous,
and cannot fail to be detected by those that closely observe him. For he
is ever anchoring himself upon some passion, and fattening it, and, like
a bubo, fastens himself on some unsound and inflamed parts of the soul.
Are you angry? Have your revenge, says he. Do you desire anything? Get
it. Are you afraid? Let us flee. Do you suspect? Entertain no doubts
about it. But if he is difficult to detect in thus playing upon our
passions, since they often overthrow reason by their intensity and
strength, he will give a handle to find him out in smaller matters,
being consistent in them too. For if anyone feels a little uneasy after
a surfeit or excess in drink, and so is a little particular about his
food and doubts the advisability of taking a bath, a friend will try and
check him from excess, and bid him be careful and not indulge, whereas
the flatterer will drag him to the bath, bid him serve up some fresh
food, and not starve himself and so injure his constitution. And if he
see him reluctant about a journey or voyage or some business or other,
he will say that there is no hurry, that it's all one whether the
business be put off, or somebody else despatched to look after it. And
if you have promised to lend or give some money to a friend, but have
repented of your offer, and yet feel ashamed not to keep your promise,
the flatterer will throw his influence into the worse scale, he will
confirm your desire to save your purse, he will destroy your reluctance,
and will bid you be careful as having many expenses, and others to think
about besides that person. And so, unless we are entirely ignorant of
our desires, our shamelessness, and our timidity, the flatterer cannot
easily escape our detection. For he is ever the advocate of those
passions, and outspoken when we desire to repress them.[425] But so much
for this matter.
Sec. XXI. Now let us pass on to useful and kind services, for in them too
the flatterer makes it very difficult and confusing to detect him from
the friend, seeming to be zealous and ready on all occasions and never
crying off. For, as Euripides says,[426] a friend's behaviour is, "like
the utterance of truth, simple," and plain and inartificial, while that
of the flatterer "is in itself unsound, and needs wise remedies," aye,
by Zeus, and many such, and not ordinary ones. As for example in chance
meetings the friend often neither speaks nor is spoken to, but merely
looks and smiles, and then passes on, showing his inner affection and
goodwill only by his countenance, which his friend also reciprocates,
but the flatterer runs up, follows, holds out his hand at a distance,
and if he is seen and addressed first, frequently protests with oaths,
and calls witnesses to prove, that he did not see you. So in business
friends neglect many unimportant points, are not too punctilious and
officious, and do not thrust themselves upon every service, but the
flatterer is persevering and unceasing and indefatigable in it, giving
nobody else either room or place to help, but putting himself wholly at
your disposal, and if you will not find him something to do for you, he
is troubled, nay rather altogether dejected and lamenting loudly.[427]
Sec. XXII. To all sensible people all this is an indication, not of true or
sober friendship, but of a meretricious one, that embraces you more
warmly than there is any occasion for. Nevertheless let us first look at
the difference between the friend and flatterer in their promises. For
it has been well said by those who have handled this subject before us,
that the friend's promise is,
"If I can do it, and 'tis to be done,"
but the flatterer's is,
"Speak out your mind, whate'er it is, to me."[428]
And the comic dramatists put such fellows on the stage,
"Nicomachus, pit me against that soldier,
See if I beat him not into a jelly,
And make his face e'en softer than a sponge."[429]
In the next place no friend participates in any matter, unless he has
first been asked his advice, and put the matter to the test, and set it
on a suitable and expedient basis. But the flatterer, if anyone allows
him to examine a matter and give his opinion on it, not only wishes to
gratify him by compliance, but also fearing to be looked upon with
suspicion as unwilling and reluctant to engage in the business, gives in
to and even urges on his friend's desire. For there is hardly any king
or rich man who would say,
"O that a beggar I could find, or worse
Than beggar, if, with good intent to me,
He would lay bare his heart boldly and honestly;"[430]
but, like the tragedians, they require a chorus of sympathizing friends,
or the applause of a theatre. And so Merope gives the following advice
in the tragedy,
"Choose you for friends those who will speak their mind,
For those bad men that only speak to please
See that you bolt and bar out of your house."[431]
But they act just the contrary, for they turn away with horror from
those who speak their mind, and hold different views as to what is
expedient, while they welcome those bad and illiberal impostors (that
only speak to please them) not only within their houses, but also to
their affections and secrets. Now the simpler of these do not think
right or claim to advise you in important matters, but only to assist in
the carrying out of them: but the more cunning one stands by during the
discussion, and knits his brows, and nods assent with his head, but says
nothing, but if his friend express an opinion, he then says, "Hercules,
you only just anticipated me, I was about to make that very remark." For
as the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and lines neither bend nor
extend nor move of themselves, being without body and only perceived by
the mind, but only bend and extend and change their position with the
bodies whose extremities they are: so you will catch the flatterer ever
assenting with, and agreeing with, aye, and feeling with, and being
angry with, another, so easy of detection in all these points of view is
the difference between the friend and the flatterer. Moreover as regards
the kind of good service. For the favour done by a friend, as the
principal strength of an animal is within, is not for display or
ostentation, but frequently as a doctor cures his patient imperceptibly,
so a friend benefits by his intervention, or by paying off creditors, or
by managing his friend's affairs, even though the person who receives
the benefit may not be aware of it. Such was the behaviour of Arcesilaus
on various occasions, and when Apelles[432] of Chios was ill, knowing
his poverty, he took with him twenty drachmae when he visited him, and
sitting down beside him he said, "There is nothing here but those
elements of Empedocles, 'fire and water and earth and balmy expanse of
air,' but you don't lie very comfortably," and with that he moved his
pillow, and privately put the money under it. And when his old
housekeeper found it, and wonderingly told Apelles of it, he laughed and
said, "This is some trick of Arcesilaus." And the saying is also true in
philosophy that "children are like their parents."[433] For when
Cephisocrates had to stand his trial on a bill of indictment, Lacydes
(who was an intimate friend of Arcesilaus) stood by him with several
other friends, and when the prosecutor asked for his ring, which was the
principal evidence against him, Cephisocrates quietly dropped it on the
ground, and Lacydes noticing this put his foot on it and so hid it. And
after sentence was pronounced in his favour, Cephisocrates going up to
thank the jury, one of them who had seen the artifice told him to thank
Lacydes, and related to him all the matter, though Lacydes had not said
a word about it to anybody. So also I think the gods do often perform
benefits secretly, taking a natural delight in bestowing their favours
and bounties.[434] But the good service of the flatterer has no justice,
or genuineness, or simplicity, or liberality about it; but is
accompanied with sweat, and running about, and noise, and knitting of
the brow, creating an impression and appearance of toilsome and bustling
service, like a painting over-curiously wrought in bold colours, and
with bent folds wrinkles and angles, to make the closer resemblance to
life. Moreover he tires one by relating what journeys and anxieties he
has had over the matter, how many enemies he has made over it, the
thousand bothers and annoyances he has gone through, so that you say,
"The affair was not worth all this trouble." For being reminded of any
favour done to one is always unpleasant and disagreeable and
insufferable:[435] but the flatterer not only reminds us of his services
afterwards, but even during the very moment of doing them upbraids us
with them and is importunate. But the friend, if he is obliged to
mention the matter, relates it modestly, and says not a word about
himself. And so, when the Lacedaemonians sent corn to the people of
Smyrna that needed it, and the people of Smyrna wondered at their
kindness, the Lacedaemonians said, "It was no great matter, we only voted
that we and our beasts of burden should go without our dinner one day,
and sent what was so saved to you."[436] Not only is it handsome to do a
favour in that way, but it is more pleasant to the receivers of it,
because they think those who have done them the service have done it at
no great loss to themselves.
Sec. XXIII. But it is not so much by the importunity of the flatterer in
regard to services, nor by his facility in making promises, that one can
recognize his nature, as by the honourable or dishonourable kind of
service, and by the regard to please or to be of real use. For the
friend is not as Gorgias defined him, one who will ask his friend to
help him in what is right, while he will himself do many services for
his friend that are not right.
"For friend should share in good not in bad action."[437]
He will therefore rather try and turn him away from what is not
becoming, and if he cannot persuade him, good is that answer of Phocion
to Antipater, "You cannot have me both as friend and flatterer,"[438]
that is, as friend and no friend. For one must indeed assist one's
friend but not do anything wrong for him, one must advise with him but
not plot with him, one must bear witness for him but not join him in
fraud, one must certainly share adversity with him but not crime. For
since we should not wish even to know of our friends' dishonourable
acts, much less should we desire to share their dishonour by acting with
them. As then the Lacedaemonians, when conquered in battle by Antipater,