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 pr