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 com