draws in the person
who relies on it. For true and friendly outspokenness attacks
wrong-doers, bringing pain that is salutary and likely to make them more
careful, like honey biting but cleansing ulcerated parts of the
body,[413] but in other respects serviceable and sweet. But we will
speak of this anon.[414] But the flatterer first exhibits himself as
disagreeable and passionate and unforgiving in his dealings with others.
For he is harsh to his servants, and a terrible fellow to attack and
ferret out the faults of his kinsmen and friends, and to look up to and
respect nobody who is a stranger, but to look down upon them, and is
relentless and mischief-making in making people provoked with others,
hunting after the reputation of hating vice, as one not likely knowingly
to mince matters with the vicious, or ingratiate himself with them
either in word or deed. Next he pretends to know nothing of real and
great crimes, but he is a terrible fellow to inveigh against trifling
and external shortcomings, and to fasten on them with intensity and
vehemence, as if he sees any pot or pipkin out of its place, or anyone
badly housed, or neglecting his beard or attire, or not adequately
attending to a horse or dog. But contempt of parents, and neglect of
children, and bad treatment of wife, and haughtiness to friends, and
throwing away money, all this he cares nothing about, but is silent and
does not dare to make any allusion to it: just as if the trainer in a
gymnasium were to allow the athlete to get drunk and live in
debauchery,[415] and yet be vexed at the condition of his oil-flask or
strigil if out of order; or as if the schoolmaster scolded a boy about
his tablet and pen, but paid no attention to a solecism or barbarism.
The flatterer is like a man who should make no comment on the speech of
a silly and ridiculous orator, but should find fault with his voice, and
chide him for injuring his throat by drinking cold water; or like a
person bidden to read some wretched composition, who should merely find
fault with the thickness of the paper, and call the copyist a dirty and
careless fellow. So too when Ptolemy seemed to desire to become learned,
his flatterers used to spin out the time till midnight, disputing about
some word or line or history, but not one of them all objected to his
cruelty and outrages, his torturing and beating people to death.[416]
Just as if, when a man has tumours and fistulas, one were to cut his
hair