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One might say, then, that it is difficult to distinguish flatterer and friend, if neither pleasure nor praise shows the difference; indeed, in services and courtesies we may often observe that friendship is outstripped by flattery. How can it be helped, will be our answer, if we are in quest of the real flatterer, who takes hold of the business with adroitness and skill, and if we do not, like most people, regard as flatterers merely those self-ministering Men too poor to afford a servant, and hence obliged to carry their own bottle of oil to the bath. Cf. Demosthenes, Against Conon, 16 (p. 1262). trencherslaves, so called, whose tongue will be wagging, as one man has put it, as soon as the water is brought for the hands, The ceremonial washing of the hands immediately before eating. for whom one dish and one glass of wine is enough to show their ill breeding with its display of vulgarity and offensiveness? Surely there was no need to press the case against Melanthius, the parasite of Alexander of Pherae, who, in answer to those who asked how Alexander was slain, said, By a stab through his ribs that hit me in my belly ; nor those who throng round a rich man’s table whom Not fire, nor steel, Nor bronze can keep From coming each day to dine.From the Flatterers of Eupolis according to Plutarch, Moralia, 778 E; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 303. nor the flatteresses in Cyprus, Cf. Athenaeus, 256 D. who when they had crossed over into Syria, acquired the nickname of ladderesses, because by prostrating themselves they afforded by their bodies a means for the women of the royal household to mount their carriages.
