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Others, like painters who set off bright and brilliant colours by laying- on dark and sombre tints close beside them, covertly praise and foster the vices to which their victims are addicted by condemning and abusing, or disparaging and ridiculing, the opposite qualities. Among the profligate they condemn frugality as rusticity; and among avaricious evil-doers, whose wealth is gained from shameful and unscrupulous deeds, they condemn contented independence and honesty as the want of courage and vigour for active life; but when they associate with the easy-going and quiet people who avoid the crowded centres of the cities, they are not ashamed to call public life a troublesome meddling with others’ affairs, and ambition unprofitable vainglory. Often enough a way to flatter a public speaker is to disparage a philosopher, and with lascivious women great repute is gained by those who brand faithful and loving wives as cold and countrified. But here is the height of depravity, in that the flatterers do not spare their own selves. For as wrestlers put their own bodies into a lowly posture in order to throw their opponents, so flatterers, by blaming themselves, pass surreptitiously into admiration for their neighbours: I am a miserable coward on the water, I have no stomach for hardships, I go mad with anger when anyone speaks ill of me; but for this man here, he says, nothing has any terrors, nothing any hardship, but he is a singular person; he bears everything with good humour, everything without distress. But if there be somebody who imagines himself possessed of great sense, and desires to be downright and uncompromising, who because he poses as an upright man, forsooth, always uses as a defence and shield this line: Son of Tydeus, praise me not too much, nor chide me,Homer, Il. x. 249. the accomplished flatterer does not approach him by this road, but there is another device to apply to a man of this sort. Accordingly the flatterer comes to consult with him about his own affairs, as with one obviously his superior in wisdom, and says that while he has other friends more intimate yet he finds it necessary to trouble him. For where can we resort who are in need of counsel, and whom can we trust? Then having heard whatever the other may say, he asserts that he has received, not counsel, but the word of authority; and with that he takes his departure. And if he observes that the man lays some claim to skill in letters, he gives him some of his own writings, and asks him to read and correct them. Mithridates, the king, posed as an amateur physician, and some of his companions offered themselves to be operated upon and cauterized by him, thus flattering by deeds and not by words; for he felt that their confidence in him was a testimony to his skill. In many a guise do the gods appear,From thes tock lines used at the close of the Alcestis, the Andromache, the Bacchae, and the Helena, of Euripides. and this class of dissimulated praise, which calls for a more cunning sort of precaution, is to be brought to light by deliberately formulating absurd advice and suggestions, and by making senseless corrections. For if he fails to contradict anything, if he assents to everything and accepts it, and at each suggestion exclaims good and excellent, he makes it perfectly plain that he The password asks, to gain some other end,Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Adesp. No. 365. his real desire being to praise his victim and to puff him up all the more.
