they open their mouths against
you, or what can they urge, if you give up and abandon what you get this
bad name about?" Thus pain comes only from abuse, but profit from
reproof. And some correct their friends more daintily by blaming
others; censuring others for what they know are their friends' faults.
Thus my master Ammonius in afternoon school, noticing that some of his
pupils had not dined sufficiently simply, bade one of his freedmen
scourge his own son, charging him with being unable to get through his
dinner without vinegar,[468] but in acting thus he had an eye to us, so
that this indirect rebuke touched the guilty persons.

Sec. XXXII. We must also beware of speaking too freely to a friend in the
company of many people, remembering the well-known remark of Plato. For
when Socrates reproved one of his friends too vehemently in a discussion
at table, Plato said, "Would it not have been better to have said this
privately?" Whereupon Socrates replied, "And you too, sir, would it not
have become you to make this remark also privately?" And Pythagoras
having rebuked one of his pupils somewhat harshly before many people,
they say the young fellow went off and hung himself, and from that
moment Pythagoras never again rebuked anyone in another's presence. For,
as in the case of some foul disease, so also in the case of wrong-doing
we ought to make the detection and exposure private, and not
ostentatiously public by bringing witnesses and spectators. For it is
not the part of a friend but a sophist to seek glory by the ill-fame of
another, and to show off in company, like the doctors that perform
wonderful cures in the theatres as an advertisement.[469] And
independently of the insult, which ought not to be an element in any
cure, we must remember that vice is contentious and obstinate. For it is
not merely "love," as Euripides says, that "if checked becomes more
vehement," but an unsparing rebuke before many people makes every
infirmity and vice more impudent. As then Plato[470] urges old men who
want to teach the young reverence to act reverently to them first
themselves, so among friends a gentle rebuke is gently taken, and a
cautious and careful approach and mild censure of the wrong-doer
undermines and destroys vice, and makes its own modesty catching. So
that line is most excellent, "holding his head near, that the others
might not hear."[471] And most especially indecorous is it to expose a
husband in the hearin