g of his wife, or a father before his children, or
a lover in the presence of the loved one, or a master before his
scholars. For people are beside themselves with pain and rage if
reproached before those with whom they desire to be held in good repute.
And I think it was not so much wine that exasperated Alexander with
Clitus, as his seeming to put him down in the presence of many people.
And Aristomenes, the tutor of Ptolemy,[472] because he went up to the
king and woke him as he was asleep in an audience of some ambassadors,
gave a handle to the king's flatterers who professed to be indignant on
his behalf, and said, "If after your immense state-labours and many
vigils you have been overpowered by sleep, he ought to have rebuked you
privately, and not put his hands upon you before so many people." And
Ptolemy sent for a cup of poison and ordered the poor man to drink it
up. And Aristophanes said Cleon blamed him for "railing against the
state when strangers were present,"[473] and so irritating the
Athenians. We ought therefore to be very much on our guard in relation
to this point too as well as others, if we wish not to make a display
and catch the public ear, but to use our freedom of speech for
beneficial purposes and to cure vice. Moreover, what Thucydides has
represented the Corinthians saying of themselves, that "they had a right
to blame their neighbours,"[474] is not a bad precept for those to
remember who intend to use freedom of speech. Lysander, it seems, on one
occasion said to a Megarian, who was speaking somewhat boldly on behalf
of Greece among the allies, "Your words require a state to back
them":[475] similarly every man's freedom of speech requires character
behind it, and especially true is this in regard to those who censure
and correct others. Thus Plato said that his life was a tacit rebuke to
Speusippus: and doubtless Xenocrates by his mere presence in the
schools, and by his earnest look at Polemo, made a changed man of him.
Whereas a man of levity and bad character, if he ventures to rebuke
anybody, is likely to hear the line,

"He doctors others, all diseased himself."[476]

Sec. XXXIII. Yet since circumstances frequently call on people who are bad
themselves in association with other such to reprove them, the most
convenient mode of reproof will be that which contrives to include the
reprover in the same indictment as the reproved, as in the case of the
line,

"Tydides, how on earth